Slashdot Mirror
YouTube Strikes Now Being Used As Scammers' Extortion Tool (torrentfreak.com)
Scammers are reportedly using YouTube's "three strike" system for extortion. "After filing two false claims against [YouTuber ObbyRaidz], scammers contacted him demanding cash to avoid a third -- and the termination of his channel," reports TorrentFreak. From the report: The YouTuber, who concentrates on Minecraft-related videos, reports that he's received two bogus strikes on his account. While this is nothing new, it appears the strikes were deliberately malicious with longer-term plan to extort money from him. "I have been striked twice and basically extorted," ObbyRaidz revealed this morning. "If I don't pay this dude he's going to strike a third one of my videos down."
The alleged scammer contacted ObbyRaidz, who lives in Texas, via Twitter. He or she warned the YouTuber that unless he paid a sum via PayPal or bitcoin, another complaint and therefore a third strike would be added to his account. "Hi Obby, We striked you," the message from "VengefulFlame" begins. "Our request is $150 PayPal or $75 btc (Bitcoin). You may send the money via goods/services if you do not think we will cancel or hold up our end of the deal. "Once we receive our payment, we will cancel both strikes on your channel. Again -- you are free to charge back if we don't but we assure you we will." The YouTuber was then granted "a very short amount of time" to make his decision whether to pay the amount or potentially lose his channel. The YouTuber goes on to say that YouTube has not provided any assistance resolving this problem. "It's very unfortunate and YouTube has not done very much for me. I can't get in contact with them. One of the appeals got denied," he explains.
The alleged scammer contacted ObbyRaidz, who lives in Texas, via Twitter. He or she warned the YouTuber that unless he paid a sum via PayPal or bitcoin, another complaint and therefore a third strike would be added to his account. "Hi Obby, We striked you," the message from "VengefulFlame" begins. "Our request is $150 PayPal or $75 btc (Bitcoin). You may send the money via goods/services if you do not think we will cancel or hold up our end of the deal. "Once we receive our payment, we will cancel both strikes on your channel. Again -- you are free to charge back if we don't but we assure you we will." The YouTuber was then granted "a very short amount of time" to make his decision whether to pay the amount or potentially lose his channel. The YouTuber goes on to say that YouTube has not provided any assistance resolving this problem. "It's very unfortunate and YouTube has not done very much for me. I can't get in contact with them. One of the appeals got denied," he explains.
I take it you don't believe news reporters or infomercial folks have real jobs either, eh?
say what you like, when big companies enact stupid rules there is always an opportunity for a good caper.
I got copystriked on a perfectly legal video I uploaded. My options? Appeal and potentially have it (out of my control) escalate to fighting it in court. Me vs. The Pokemon Mofia. No thanks. I know I already lost - even though I was well within my fair use rights. That's our legal system. It sucks. And the company wasn't even based in US, it was Japan.
On the other... cry me a river, Youtuber isn't a real job. It has, to me, that same air of illegitimacy that instagram 'infulencers' have.
If people/companies/organizations pay you to do something, it is a job. Whether you like it or not does not change its legitimacy. Many would say singing is not a job, but there are multi-millionaire recording artists.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
OMG what a gatekeeping asshole you are. It's not up to you to judge other people's livelihoods.
Yes there is right and wrong and he is likely in the right, but there is also business, and if you cost more than you make for corporate, they will just spit you out.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
The video portal is built for it.
Advertising and ad revenue sharing is it's core function.
The problem is the concessions the copyright lobby have forced upon them - they made them implement automated systems for copyright infringement strikes with no oversight and no repercussions for false claims.
This same stuff happens with the credit system, and the government had to step in and make regulation. And this is what happens with no-fly lists, where people show-up to an airport and the helpful man behind the counter says they are on the list, but can't say how or why or what to do about it. YouTube has a list now too, and there's no due process there either. The more we automate decision-making, the farther away we are from human judgement.
Your OS manufacturer can take software away from you, and there's no appeals process. Amazon can revoke e-book licenses without notice or due process. Your BIOS can tell you what software you can install. Artists are blocked from streaming their own music due to the invisible copyright gestapo. We are getting their with the legal process too, with automated plea deals being offered. The only thing this person can do is let it happen and sue YouTube, or move to another platform.
Ah, the No True Scotsman fallacy... An oldie but a goody.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It's hilarious actually. Copyright being used to harm the content creators.
Bravo, well done; pass the anchovies, please.
If youtube is assisting these criminals, some prosecutor should charge youtube with conspiracy to defraud.
You're an idiot.
Sounds like someone is grumpy because their YT channel didn't take off like they had hoped.
The fact that you expended the energy on your comment says otherwise.
Well, only the little people. The big guys are immune.
I bet you tweeted #learntocode
You think they give a fuck about any individual channel? That's the part that wasn't "built for it" - customer service / creator relations / biz dev for the little people. Google/YT give zero fucks about you. Of course it's still a video portal, derp.
It's THEIRS. THEY make money off the advertising, and your shitty channel is a tiny, insignificant fleck of it. There is no one there to answer the phone when you have a fraud issue, etc. They aren't built that way, never intended to be.
Pay attention dummy, youtube is an ad farm, not a B2B-2C. They could give 4 square fucks about you per year, but they do not.
In Soviet Russia copyright breaks you.
The little fucker needs to file a criminal complaint for the extortion, and a complaint with PayPay since the little fucker has given him his PayPal account.
Exactly as intended. Scammers driving little people off youtube only further benefits the big guys. And they even get to keep their hands clean!
Do you mean all liberals or all true liberals?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Hey it's fun bashing on YouTube and trust me, I'm all game for a good pointing out how much YouTube's system of strikes and take downs suck. However, let us all stop for just a second to realize that YouTube did indeed reach out and fix the issue. Still their system sucks, though. It is heavily favored to take downs rather than legitimate moderation. They made amends in this instance I guess, but still it took way more energy than it ought to.
you never get a break because if you take two weeks off you come back and find 2/3rds of your subscribers gone. As for Patreon, the people "donating" are doing so with the expectation of more content. They're not really patrons in the traditional sense (e.g. a rich person throwing money at the arts with little regard to the results) they're basically pre-ordering the next vid, and if it doesn't arrive they cancel fast.
I'll take the 9-5 over being a Youtuber any day of the week.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
He would be content either way
We should all follow suit. The most important public venue for expression and debate gets shittier every day because Google cares about ads and not people.
" Whether you like it or not does not change its legitimacy."
So anything one is paid to do is "legitimate"???
Fascinating.
What makes it "illegitimate?"
Nah, we all hated Hatch looooonnnngggg before that. Back when he pushed to gerrymander that sweet NASA PORK to push solid boosters on the Space Shuttle design so Morton Thiokol, a major business in his home state of Utah, could lap at the government trough, resulting in the death of 7 astronauts. Set the USA Space Program back 35 years with that craven greed and stupidity.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
He says that the legitimacy does not depend upon you liking the thing, and that anything one is paid to do is a job.
Whether the job is legitimate is another thing. "Hitman" is certainly a job, but not a legitimate one since we do have laws prohibiting murder, including murder for hire. This'll remain so even if you happen to like murdering people.
Apropos, I do think that multi-millionaire recording artists are a sign that there's something wrong with copyright as we know it. Of course, many other things are wrong with copyright also. But as it stands, it's legitimate. Even though I don't like it.
Yes, if you do something that isn't illegal, and you get money for doing that, and the people giving you the money are getting what they expected, then that is the definition of a legitimate job.
An illegitimate job would be something fraudulent, or criminal
Can we stop for a second and realize that they are trying to extort $150? Who tries to extort $150? If you are going to commit a crime, at least go big. Go for $150,000 at least.
~ Mooga
If you are victim of this kind of extortion, file a police report, contact YouTube asking for the strikes to be canceled, and if they don't, go public and shame them into doing it.
Since filing a false police report is a crime by itself in most if not all US jurisdictions, you are basically daring YouTube to call you a lying criminal by their continuing to honor the false strike made by the criminal doing the extortion.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
If someone has a channel and is generating a profit stream from YouTube. Get's blackmailed and loses that profit stream because they can't contact YouTube and they get a third strike, can;'t appeal, can't reach anyone, does that leave Youtube (screw the t) open to legal troubles?
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
by creative grammar.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Youtuber isn't a real job.
job. noun.
1 a paid position of regular employment.
2 a task or piece of work, especially one that is paid.
So not only is it a job, but it is especially a job.
It has, to me,
No one gives a fuck about your own personal and incorrect definitions of existing words.
Execution on accusation.
There's nothing wrong with a Report button.
There's a lot fucking wrong with a Report button hooked up to nothing but scripts/flowcharts.
There's a colossal smell of bullshit* when a Report button is hooked up to nothing but algorithms and can be pressed by algorithms.
If your concern is "there's no way for me to argue the claim" then that circumstance is a member of the second sentence.
*also known as evidence that money is being made/saved/changing hands, likely at expense of something related to the original smell of ostensibility.
Your slashdot account has been suspended for an unspecified breach of terms. Generated email, do not reply.
Is this even legal I wonder. The GDPR requires there to be a 'human in the loop' when automated decisions have a serious impact on someone's life. For big youtubers this could qualify?
Counter-notification that the copyright claim is false or in bad faith is already a mechanism available to Youtubers. While this can turn into an extended and lengthy process for restoring the video, if the claim is baseless and the original copyright complaint can't be substantiated by initiating court action in the defendant's jurisdiction, then the video should be restored within 10 business days. https://support.google.com/you... Since a scammer is only looking for quick money and not a protracted legal battle that they can't win anyways (they're playing whack-a-mole odds to see who complies), this is a non-issue if the youtubers just use the tools provided them. Why did not a single top comment in this article, or the source article, or slashdot's commentary article mention this mechanism? Because none of you bothered to even google what someone might do in this situation.
I see your mod manipulation. Moderated TWO seconds after posting.
GDPR is not a US law, so it would be rather difficult to enforce in the case of a US person interacting with a US company from within the US.
How has this not happened yet?
It's all automated, and the strike decision rests with the body striking, so YouTube's official channel would be screwed.
At least you're original. Have you thought about blogging or vlogging about your favourite subject (original curse words)? It may pay you enough to be able to leave your moms basement.
You lower the level of discourse with your constant hateful negativity.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
If you have money on the line, host your own website.
This is why.
Well that meem did not work here, it is actually outside the now defunked soviet russia ( did you mean the USSR?) tha copyright breaks you, Iâ(TM)m not shore the soviets where so big on copyright
The problem is the concessions the copyright lobby have forced upon them - they made them implement automated systems for copyright infringement strikes with no oversight and no repercussions for false claims.
If enough people were to submit blatantly false copyright claims, wouldn't YouTube eventually be forced to provide more oversight and implement repercussions for making false claims? This would essentially make copyright infringes innocent until proven guilty.
Who, exactly, asked you?
You cared enough to write back. I stick by what I said. Fake job. Are you a struggling youtuber? Is that your butthurt?
The world's youngest self-earned billionaire did it via social media.
So...yeah.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The internet any time a youtube competitor comes out: "Eww this isn't youtube fuck off!"
The internet any time youtube is utterly useless and broken because it has zero serious competitors: "OMG why is youtube like this???"
They'll make it so that you have to be a large, registered corporation in order to file copyright infringement claims. This way large corps can go after smaller fish, but individuals have no recourse.
Always expect corrupt players to take a bad situation and make it worse, for you.
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6005900
To file a complaint is simply filling out an online form where you pinkie swear you have the authority of copyright holder. There is a simple patch to this problem, any copyright holder needs to have their complaint notarized. Any copyright holder agent would have an in-house notary. They could pump out legitimate notices, and the bad actors could be held accountable on both sides.
If you don't "Click the Bell Icon" (which most don't) you don't get notifications. Youtube no longer just shows you a list of all the videos from your subs. Instead you get a "curated" list. That list _will_ have the folks you clicked the bell on. But whether anyone else shows up is up to Youtube's algorithm.
More than once I've subscribed to a Youtuber, forgot to click the bell (or accidentally unclicked it) and a few months later wondered "gee, they dropped off the net" only to find I'd missed 4 or 5 good videos when Youtube dumped them back in my feed at random.
Well, not random. Consistently posting 10+ minute videos is (at the moment) how to rank up. Drop off for a week and your ranking goes to hell.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If they are going to let this fraud continue...then the only recourse is to hold YouTube legally responsible for this extortion. They make money off these people...if they're going to let them be scammed out if operation...maybe the rest of us should decide to just stop watching YouTube
I'm glad you pointed out that people can send a DMCA counterclaim. I wish more people knew about that. That's a very important part of DMCA, in my opinion. If you send a counterclaim, the service provider has to put the material back up, unless the complainant files suit in federal court. That's important!
On the topic of a penalty, imagine I steal $50 from you. You prove that I stole it, so I have to give the $50 back, and that's it. That's not a *penalty*. That's just "give it back".
Yes someone who makes a false DMCA claim is responsible for the expenses they cause, just as pretty much anyone is responsible for costs they cause in a wide variety of circumstances. That's not a penalty, that's just "you pay the cost of stuff you do".
I was involved in several rounds of comments and changes to DMCA and an actual penalty for reckless or negligent filing is the one thing we missed; we thought we had a pretty decent balance between the rights of copyright holders and those who use copyrighted worked (including the very important counterclaim provisions).
If I had to it to do over again, I'd advocate for a *penalty* for negilgent in addition to damages of the greater of treble damages or $1,000. Reckless notices would have a greater penalty, perhaps $10,000 or 5X damages.
This is what you get when you refuse to employ humans to process claims from other humans. Humans are smart, they will game your automation, every time, guaranteed.
I'm afraid I can't really blame YouTube directly for this sort of thing. We're all kind of responsible for this. We don't want to pay people to moderate our internet. So this it the result. Enjoy?
Soviet had no copyright at all
You do realize that YouTube is used by people for all sorts of reasons, right?
A few years back, a plumber I called out was telling me about posting videos on YouTube. His business was already doing just fine, but he was passionate about plumbing and wanted to see more people feel comfortable doing simple repairs. Let's suppose that he talked to a musician and procured the rights to use one of their tracks as a backing track for his videos. A few months later, what's to stop someone else with the rights to that music from making a claim against him? Enough fo those, and all of his videos could be taken down.
There were reports just last week of a Star Wars video that had its audio stripped out (to highlight the importance of John Williams' music) getting hit with a copyright strike by a company that has some of the rights to Star Wars music, despite the fact that all of the audio had been subbed for sounds the video's author made himself.
For me, this stuff actually matters.
Besides posting YouTube videos for fun with some friends (we have a few thousand subscribers to our Let's Play channel, but have turned off monetization since we're just in it for fun), I also post sermon videos for the church I attend. They're nothing fancy, but it's something we can do to include ill and infirm people in the weekly happenings of the church. We've recently been talking about livestreaming, as well as expanding it to cover the entire service. Expanding it would mean needing to procure the rights to stream musical performances for the various hymns and choruses we sing (we're already properly licensed to perform them, just not to stream those performances). Licensing for Christian music almost always goes through the CCLI, but there are a lot of new musicians cropping up all the time, and it's conceivable that not all of them understand the intricacies of licensing. It's conceivable as well that despite being properly licensed to perform and stream a performance of a song, some artist or other rights holder may be unaware of our license with the CCLI and initiate a strike against us, or else some ne'er-do-well may try to extort us.
Given that we risk losing access to years' worth of prior content, these aren't small questions. What happens to my plumber's videos or my church's videos may be small potatoes to you, but multiply that by everyone else at risk and it becomes clear that many of us stand to lose something personal that matters to us.
We can talk about news reporters having a job, but only if we also talk about how to legalize the torture of infomercial folks.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
YouTube is a business. First and foremost. A business that makes money by showing ads to people. At least so I heard. Anyway, what does NOT generate money is lawsuits. They cost money. Now, what's more likely to cost YouTube money: Losing one of the roughly 20 billion Minecraft-Let's-Players or looking into the issue of him getting scammed?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
YouTube's automated system doesn't require a DMCA claim to be submitted, it's an entirely internal system.
I wonder why more people don't put out claims against media from the larger companies through these forms, subjecting them to potentially the same random takedowns and de-monetization that other YouTubers have to live with...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Business at its finest. You didn't really expect any 'rights' beyond their TOS?
Cynicism aside, this is very unfortunate but with so many people uploading free content to be monetized by the platform owner, a few casualties here or there don't really make a lot of practical business sense to police (unless the bad press crosses some threshold). There must be a better way to report extortion to authorities, or has this kind of fraud/misrepresentation become fully legal all of a sudden?
The film community said the same thing about television and radio, and the theater community said the same thing about film.
Let me ask you something, what is it like living with shit for brains?
host your own website.
You appear to advocate replacing the YouTube silo with a site built on IndieWeb principles. I want that to be a viable option. But one thing that IndieWeb is currently missing is a recommendation engine. How does a viewer watching a video on someone's own website go about discovering related videos on other people's own websites?
Didn't happen with DMCA take down notices. How many people or companies have been prosecuted for perjury for filing a claim against something they don't own?
And YouTube doesn't pay the people making videos to be in a position that makes videos, nor is it regular employment, nor is it a task, nor is it work for hire.
It fails all of those tests.
YouTube publishes their videos and, if they get any views, people can choose to run ads on them and get a cut of the ad revenue. That's not a job. It's not even gig or contract work. It's exhibition.
The free market has to be protected. Only the free market, with protection and vindication for private property rights, can find a long term solution to this.
many of us stand to lose something personal that matters to us.
?? Really? Where's your local backup? YT is a distribution system. If YT (or your other cloud provider) goes bust/away for a day/ever, then you're back to sneakernet or torrents or floppies or something.
But the original masters should never leave your hands. If they DO then you're doing it wrong. Yep, it'd be a hassle to reupload somewhere else and send out new links and attract a new audience and all that, but it's possible. If YT has your only copy and for whatever reason it "goes away", then game over.
Don't DO that. The cloud is literally just "someone else's computer" -- if they get tired and turn it off, that should just be an inconvenience for you, nothing more.
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
When the dmca shitlists pile to the fucking roof I would think youtube would be forced to change the system so it forces people that copy strike to show identification and proof they own the item before a dmca takedown can be issued.
I know that's easier said than done...
really wish there was an alternative to youtube
At least give him some creme for that BURN...
If people/companies/organizations pay you to do something, it is a job. Whether you like it or not does not change its legitimacy. Many would say singing is not a job, but there are multi-millionaire recording artists.
By your logic "Lottery Player" would be a perfectly legitimate "job"
Try this against of the the big approved names. There will be oversight alright. Just not for the little guys.
Funny how the internet is friendly to the bad guys and never the good guys. Domain stolen / hacked? Providers put the genuine owner into auto-reply hell with no exit or resolution. Youtube now gets exploited to shut down channels and the huge Googleplex-owned platform has no humans available to help the folk who make the platform successful.
We need a fundamental shift to "fix" the internet. Because quietly the model has mutated to: https://xkcd.com/2105/
I have an acquaintance who makes his living busking, it's a job even though he sets his hours and only gets paid by people throwing money at him if they choose and the pay is very erratic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I'd think that there would be a ton of christian music out of copyright, it's not like christian music is a recent invention.
Still, these stories show some of the problems caused by perpetual copyright. If all copyright was 14 years, it wouldn't be hard to find music of any genre that was out of copyright. I've got a stack of records that are all at least 20 years old and a stack of CD's where most are at least 14 years old.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
By your logic "Lottery Player" would be a perfectly legitimate "job"
Who is paying you to play the lottery? Fans pay recording artists by buying albums or attending concerts.
If you can find someone to pay you to scratch lottery tickets, then yeah, it's a job.
News reporters these days are barely legit, and infomercial presenter has always been suspect. Next!
Heh, every day more MSM news readers are finding themselves unemployed precisely because Youtubers and other alt media has shown people that the MSM is simply propaganda, and that Youtubers and other alt-media are far more trustworthy on the whole.
Those in the MSM did this to themselves. Learn to code, bitches!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
I'm a major streaming company. I promise you have heard of us, but you probably didn't know that most other major streaming media companies pay us consulting fees for helping them with at least something and many times that something involves posting to youtube.
Our official access to youtube tech support is I shit you not; a full voicemail box. When we have problems we have to make personal calls to people we know at youtube until someone can help us.
I have a couple of videos on Youtube that have classical music in the background, the music being under Creative Commons/Royalty Free releases. I've probably received 10-12 DOZEN copyright claims /DMCA takedown/content claim requests from Youtube for dozens of companies claiming copyright to the music, often at the same time for the same piece of music. I dispute, win my dispute, but a few days later another claim would come in. So I just gave up.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
Your post is an example of something thats 100% correct, but yet does not reflect reality.
users, in the real world, do not back up shit. Users expect the cloud to save them. Users are barely aware of the concept of files or a file system, or where their shit is stored.
At the same time, there is additional content there with youtube videos. You may have a back and forth comments, extra content, that youtube is removing. Sure you could back up all those posts, but absolutely no user will do that. The problem is obviously the takedown system, and people gaming the system to steal money from "celebrities".
I fully support a death sentence for anyone who ransoms someone else. Its the lowest level of cowardice.
-
If they can make a living st it then it is a real job or at worst supplement income. Who are you to say what is real or not? Do they pay taxes on it? Yes? Job. Real job.
I have worked several years in the so called social media industry. It is a bunch of crap. However, it pays the bills. Real job.
You aren't thinking about this systemically. One cow doesn't bother Youtube none, but if the ad farm doesn't care for the well-being of their livestock? It's a question of how much of the herd they can afford to lose.
They literally can't be prosecuted. The perjury thing is just language to make the DMCA sound more even-handed, but the burden of proof is deliberately impossible to reach and in any case there is no penalty.
It says a lot about our current society when the victim of crime is held as the guilty party why those actually breaking the law are not. A company or individual gets hacked and they are blamed and in some cases penalized while the ones actually committing the hack walk away unscathed. In some cases there may be negligence on the part of the victim that allowed the hack but the blame should be laid at the feet of those committing the crime. I could leave my house and forget to lock the door but anyone who enters my home is breaking the law. If I didn't password my systems it's still a crime when you access my system. Now with the rapidly growing number of those committing crimes it would be foolish not to password my systems and implement other measures to protect myself but the lack of security measures doesn't make it legal for someone to access my without authorization. The Internet has provided criminals with one big smorgasbord of highly effective cyber crimes to extort money.
And for the record there is not a single OS running on any device that cannot be compromised. There is not a single web application or service that cannot be compromised. I cannot identify any component in our current technology stack that cannot be compromised. And the really dangerous hacks require physical access to the system but that is easier to do than most people think. How many state intelligence agencies have agents embedded at Google, Facebook, Twitter, MS, Amazon, IBM, Apple, and pretty much any other country with a large footprint in the digital age?
Yea, 75 odd years of copyrighted performances.
Question, does even correctly licensed such as the gp posters CCLI stop the fraudulent notices/claims?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
this whole thread is basically a circle-jerk around one AC's troll-dump at 1:46PM.
The music may be public domain, but a specific performance of it is still under copyright - and there are actually not many public domain recordings of classical music, because of the expense of getting an entire orchestra together and the awkward fact that the copyright term in some countries is about the same as the time since audio recording technology has been around.
I know some upload older stuff to archive.org if it is culturally significant.
The rest who want to make money just use Twitch and I guess Mixer.
Would be nice if we all had fast internet and could self host... what a dream.
It's just proof that a "three strikes and you're out" law has a lot of merit, isn't it?
You, are right. Youtuber is a job. On the other side, if the service youtube provides to a youtuber sucks (it allows the extortion) then the youtuber should change his/her service provider. Or nail youtube based on the contract he/she has with youtube.
how would you direct prospective viewers to your website to view it?
Otherwise, people who visit your site will see it.
I asked how people would visit your site in the first place.
Or your site may show up in a search.
The same company operates both YouTube and Google Search. Copyfraud scammers can derank your video there as well.
YouTube and parent Alphabet have substantial operations in the EU. You can submit GDPR requests via your Google account that you use to log in to YouTube, or go directly to takeout.google.com.
It's not really clear how GDPR would help in this case though.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It sounds like there's an additional problem, though: copyright detection algorithms can't always distinguish the slight differences between performances of the same work, so they flag a freely-licensed performance based on the similarity to a copyrighted performance. This isn't surprising when you consider that the detection is loose enough to flag videos that happen to be playing a song on the radio softly in the background, too.
The only solution to these problems is a loss of legal rights for repeated false flagging. That'll require congressional action, though -- youtube probably can't make that choice on their own without risking being sued.
This space intentionally left blank
So the real question is, now that YouTube is messing things up, which (preferably more ethical) alternatives should be promoted? Scott Adams has made very good use of periscope (pscp.tv). Not to mention, RMS would like people to use archive.org more. Perhaps it's time to put the spotlight on alternative video platforms and find ways to allow content creators to monetize their content respectfully and move away from a monopoly who's largest interest is to data-mine its users?
Alternative media? Like Infowars? What a joke.
I suspect this issue will take care of itself once one of two things happen: 1. Content providers will learn that Youtube is not a trustworthy enough platform for them to build a career on, and 2. Some other platform emerges to address their failings. Ideally, we'll see both.
You are totally blocking my view of the wall. - Dogbert
"Uh, we reasonably believed that within reason we were acting in good faith to the best of our knowledge. Meanwhile all the other poor suckers paid up, aw yeah. Er, I mean, we do not recall."
Are you kidding? This is the age of "the little guy on the Internet". Kids with no prior experience making youtube channels showing stuff like makeup tips and whatnot getting courted by real megacorps because they do a better job of advertising and 'market creation' than the megacorp can do by itself.
Wait, churches have to pay money for their choir to sing?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
> concessions the copyright lobby have forced upon them
Yes, the copyright lobby insisted that Youtube never verify the veracity of any claims or even if the claimant has the rights to a single piece of music.
This is just Youtube not caring one whit who gets the ad revenue for a video as long as they get their share.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
YouTube is turning into some sort of Wild West infested with political correctness.
For songs not in the public domain, yeah. The classic hymns are pretty much all in the public domain, so you can sing Amazing Grace or what have you, but try to sing anything from basically the last century and you'll need a CCLI license. From what I recall, their prices are actually fairly reasonable, since they understand that their target audience generally isn't flush with cash.
I'd think that there would be a ton of christian music out of copyright, it's not like christian music is a recent invention.
That's true, but then you're limiting yourself to hymns, more or less. That's fine if the church is going for a more traditional style of worship, but a lot of churches prefer either a mixed or contemporary style, both of which will almost certainly incorporate more recent songs.
But yes, I quite agree that the copyright situation is out of hand. I'm actually a big fan of the idea I've seen floated in the comments around here before, where the base term is reduced to something like 14 years, there's the option to extend every few years for as long as the rights holder wants, but each extension costs exponentially more than the last. It forces people to either use those rights productively (i.e. get their money's worth) or else release the rights to the public domain, either of which is a net win for society.
Churches literally ARE flush with cash, so much so that many pastors can afford extravagant lifestyles. Churches are a tax avoidance scam and should be taxed! Better yet, people wise up to the business of selling indulgences and drag the church leaders to the ground screaming.
Hmm, Interesting.
I thought that at least in Canada fair use granted quite a few rights to educational institutions and these are institutions that are making huge bank off of education. Being clearly not-profit, and I don't know how you could argue against it being an educational institution, churches would seem legally allowed to use whole copyrighted works in the education of their flock. Copyright Act (R.S.C., 1985, c. C-42), Section 29.4, 29.5, 30.04
But it seemed pretty complicated, later on down the page to seems to contradict itself. So I definitely do not understand all the nuances of copyright fair use. Fair use might only apply if there is no method available to pay for it???? I cannot tell.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
many of us stand to lose something personal that matters to us.
?? Really? Where's your local backup? YT is a distribution system. If YT (or your other cloud provider) goes bust/away for a day/ever, then you're back to sneakernet or torrents or floppies or something.
At least when it came to my own situation, I wasn't talking exclusively about the content itself with that comment. I was talking about the whole package of what YouTube provides, as well as the sunk cost in terms of the time we've spent setting things up how they are now. As you said, it's an easy distribution system, which is in large part because it's available via the most ubiquitous delivery platform in the history of humanity (the world wide web). Having that level of availability is incredibly important given that we're serving an audience that includes college students and centenarians. You mention floppies and torrents, but those aren't viable distribution options if you're trying to reach a general audience with video, which I suspect you already knew.
Sneakernet is more viable, and up until a few years ago that was actually how we did things, but it was feasible at the time because we were only doing audio. We simply burned a few cassettes/CDs after the service and handed them off to family members or others who would be seeing the infirm that week. It generally worked, but it took a lot of manpower (e.g. babysitting burners, delivery, etc.), had ongoing material costs (even the cost of CDs gets scrutinized at cash-strapped churches, not to mention the cost of duplicators/burners), and only the sermon audio was included (see the previous post regarding CCLI licensing). It was worse in pretty much every way than what we have today, since equipment would break down and family members would frequently either lose the CD or forget to hand them off to the people who needed them.
If we wanted to go back to sneakernet today while maintaining video, however, it'd be worse. Burning video to DVDs takes substantially longer, meaning we likely wouldn't be able to have the DVDs ready right after the service. At that point, we'd need to figure out some sort of alternative way to deliver things (e.g. have dedicated delivery people?). Relatedly, while we got a lot of pushback when we moved from cassettes to CDs around 1999, there wasn't even a peep when we stopped burning CDs and started pointing people to the MP3s on the website in 2017. Virtually everyone has a connection to the Internet at this point (if for no other reason than to be able to FaceTime/Skype with grandkids) or else has a family member who visits with a smartphone, but we still have church members who never saw a point in upgrading from VHS and whose eyes glaze over if you mention Windows Media Player or VLC. You can give them a link and they'll be fine, but hand them a DVD and they'll wonder why it doesn't work in their CD player.
There's a massive cost and convenience savings that comes from being able to just tell everyone "go to the church website and click on the video you want to watch". Theoretically, we could switch to Vimeo or another hosting site, as you suggested, but that wouldn't be an insignificant cost to us in terms of hours spent reuploading, retagging, and relinking videos. Calling it a hassle is putting it lightly.
LOL, confusing hearing what you desperately want to believe as more trustworthy just because it comes from a guy sitting in an unheated basement in Moscow.
You're walking around naked while praising the price you paid for your clothes.
BlueStrat
Churches literally ARE flush with cash, so much so that many pastors can afford extravagant lifestyles.
Some churches are, sure. As I assume you do, I tend to stay away from those ones since it's clear to me that many of them are rotting from the top.
Just as there are bad people and bad companies, there are bad churches too. That doesn't mean they're all the way you think, however. For instance...
A) The last church I was at, the pastor moved from a nice job at a large church to pastoring full-time at a small church. Because the small church could only afford to pay him a few thousand dollars per year, he had to work a second full-time job to support his family. Oh, and his wife was pregnant with their second child when they moved, so they were dealing with all of that during the transition to working two full-time jobs.
B) My wife grew up at a church that offered a modest-but-full salary to its pastor, but when it came time to cut the checks each month the treasurer was a bit harebrained, so the pastor would frequently go a month or two between paychecks. And even when he did get paid, some of the checks were only for half his salaried amount because money was tighter than expected at the church. He had five kids and a wife.
C) Part of the reason we're only getting around to considering livestreaming where I'm at is now is because we had to figure out how to budget the $100/year it would cost to license the music. Not $100/month. Per year.
D) And I've never been to a church that does indulgences. For my part, we "wised up" to the practice over 500 years ago and made a big ruckus about it. Perhaps you've heard of the Protestant Reformation?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
We already know how this all plays out. What is old is new again.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
The problem is the concessions the copyright lobby have forced upon them - they made them implement automated systems for copyright infringement
They made them?! Google could buy out the entire Entertainment Industry if it wanted.
No. The copyright goons made Google do this stuff like a roach makes you buy insect poison.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
A better example would be ball players and actors, I think.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
The solution is to upload to both YouTube and Vimeo at the same time. That way, if the channel on one services suffers, the other channel on that other service survives, while you fight the complaints. Then you count the odds, and see, which service is more reliable and less prone to abuse.
You don't have to reupload all the videos in one go, but several of them every now and then. Since you're at it, do a proper soundcheck and adjust issues with audio quality and volume strength.
Anything you get paid to do that doesn't hurt anyone else is legitimate, yes.
To access an audience you already have.
My technical videos are just on my own website. Click on the link and they download and play fine in any browser, not even any JavaScript required.
Or use Vimeo, or one of the other lesser providers. And pay a little for the service.
Sure, if you want to access a new audience of teenages, you may be stuck with YouTube. But YouTube is not synonymous with Video.
I also search for videos using a search engine which runs across all video stites, and DuckDuckGo and Bing make this quite nice. Sadly most people just search YouTube.
Keeping a site where any random member of the public can create an account and upload videos alive requires walking a fine line. They have to respond sufficiently robustly to copyright infringements to avoid being sued out of existance and sufficiently robustly to advertiser complains to avoid the ad-revenue drying up. Unfortunately the economics of running a site where any random member of the public can watch and upload videos for free means that on average very little human attention can be spent on each user.
Yes there are a few users who attract enough eyeballs that real money is invovled and afaict at least some of those users do get special treatment from youtube but they are a tiny minority.
I think your suggestion of mass fraudulent copyright claims is far more likely to mean the end of youtube as we know it than to mean better protection for creators.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Why does YouTube even need to pay people? So many narcissistic people out there would put up the same videos even if YouTube didn't get paid. Other educational videos would be posted as well, similar to how Wikipedia editors keep doing what they're doing without being paid.