I wonder what the internet would look like if everyone did something like this rather than having all their content hosted on a central platform. What would the internet look like if video hosting platforms were as popular and as easy to set up / maintain as a blog platform like WordPress?
10-15 years ago we all had our own wordpress/static/ghost blogs hosted on our own domains, and then Blogger, Medium and Substack entered the space with the added benefits of discoverability and a very significant chunk of the self-hosted blogs moved to those platforms.
I feel that with YouTube we just skipped that initial self-hosted step and immediately went to the centralized platforms (Google Video, Vimeo and eventually YouTube)
I mean, before the Internet, how many people used to read vs watch TV? Video was meant to win. If video demands centralization for technical reasons, centralization wins too.
In the same way, blogs can't compete with video for ads.
This is a benefit for most users, I'd imagine.
It is on content creators to diversify their business. If a contractor has only a single customer because that customer is the most profitable, would you pity them when they are fired by that customer? Or would you call them bad at business for failing to diversify?
Yes, this is the monopoly part of the argument. There are no real and practical alternatives for content creators, it seems.
If there is a single customer, it is not a monopoly, but a monopsony:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Monopsony&oldid=9...
Would the "average" Google employees really care about this? I would rather imagine that only executive level employees of Google could be happy about this. And these people play much deeper political games than caring about a wrong word.
Killing small businesses definitely counts as a market distortion. Good luck arguing it doesn't.
And there is no competitive service, because YT is an audience provider, and not specifically a video hosting provider.
In fact these problems would go away if YT offered a paid tier - with proper support - for content providers.
But YT and Google are averse to treating anyone else as an equal partner, so that's never going to happen.
Ad-revenue you receive doesn't even make you a contractor. It's basically like working for free and then being tossed something at the end for your efforts. There is no legal agreement or obligation to continue paying you.
It is amazing what the Internet has turned out to be. A place where big tech companies can profit off the work of others, while convincing them that they are the beneficiaries.
I disagree. I think that people have convinced themselves that they are customers of YouTube.
There is a lot of projection on things like YouTube and Facebook, then people get mad because it actually isn't that after all.
Not for nothing - platform usage costs money. It's for the average per-user cost of building and running the platform.
This might be right if they were a mom and pop store with 5 others within a couple of blocks. There is no viable alternative to Youtube so they don't get to make these calls.
As a parent stated, the content creators are NOT the clients. Client is the one who pays you money. So advertisers need to be kept happy. If this guy goes down, the guitar makers will advertise on the next guy/lady in line. And the (true) client (advertiser) will be happy.
One of the reason that Google is making crazy money is that they cut plenty of corners in support. And it serves THEM (YT) right to do so.
This video has less than 100k views. "Charlie bit my finger" has 876 Million views.
In work I use the phrase "it is not a Problem until it becomes one".
One content creator (or a thousand) complaining is NOT a problem for YT. A Problem is if YT drops from 100M views per day (or whatever that number is) to 20M views per day.
If you ask me, YouTube is having it good. And if this content creator goes down, his followers will jump on the next guitar player teacher person.
Apologies if my comment seems to cold. I believe it reflects the mentality of YT.
In a sense, they are Google's products.
Youtube does not order contractors but offers a service for production and consumption of content- so they have customers creating content and others just consuming- both being customers of their service.
I'm not sure one has anything to do with the other.
No, the DMCA allows for counter claiming and it not being an issue. Google's policies go beyond what's required for the DMCA, and stem from the early several billion dollar copyright lawsuit they settled out of court with the major labels fairly early on. It's an extralegal system negotiated between Google and the labels.
> However they have in the past sued people who have issued false DMCA claims.
Can you give an example of someone they've sued for making false claims?
You're conflating two different things, perhaps intentionally.
Content ID, which is the additional system you're referring to, does not and cannot cause an account to be closed[1]. If content in your video is flagged by Content ID, all that happens is that the advertising revenue from your video is directed to the purported copyright holder, or the video is removed from YouTube. You do not receive any strikes and your channel is not limited in any way.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/howyoutubeworks/policies/copyright/#...
Copyright strikes[2] are a completely different kettle of fish, and Google is bound by the DMCA to immediately and without question remove the allegedly infringing content. In fact, they are expressly forbidden by law to perform any sort of investigation before making the content unavailable or they risk losing immunity under the safe harbour provisions.
And far from accepting DMCA claims "with no recourse" as you suggest, they openly publish a variety of training materials to teach users exactly how to file a counter-claim[3], and they routinely accept those counter-claims and restore the content.
[2] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2814000
[3] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2807684
>Can you give an example of someone they've sued for making false claims?
Christopher Brady.
https://www.engadget.com/2019-08-20-youtube-lawsuit-false-ta...
https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/15/20915688/youtube-copyrig...
The whole copyright strike system is in addition to the DMCA, and is part of what was negotiated with the labels (in addition to ContentID).
Also, what are you quoting "with no recourse" from?
That's completely false, and all you need do is click the links I provided to see that it is. Copyright strikes are only issued in conjunction with DMCA takedown requests, Content ID does not and cannot cause you to receive strikes, and does not and cannot shut your channel down.
>Also, what are you quoting "with no recourse" from?
From a parent comment at the start of this thread, which I've only now realised wasn't made by you, so please ignore the phrase "as you suggest" and focus on the substantive portions of my comment that address the inaccuracies in your claim.
I never disputed any of that. I'm saying that the copyright strike system used by youtube on takedown requests:
* goes above and beyond what's required by the DMCA.
* is part of what was negotiated by Google and the labels (in addition to ContentID). The labels were concerned about people spamming their content and just uploading faster than they can takedown. This gives them a mechanism to shut down accounts for 'bad actors' who just keep uploading faster than the labels can issue takedowns.
* doesn't always remove strikes even when a counter-claim is filed because of above.
I never brought up ContentID, and my arguments are orthogonal to it's implementation and history.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/19/20812144/youtube-copyrigh...
Applies equally to heroin. When are we legalising it?
Now thats a keen insight and not a warning of a monopoly I was aware of. You're dead right.
People could stop using Google today but most don’t, because Google is just so much better than everyone else as searching.
Should Google/YouTube be regulated because people dislike what the company is doing, but just not enough to actually stop using their products.
Great point, though. They are saving millions - in order to provide actual customer support they would have to hire a lot of people from all around the world.
Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't Google/YT TOS saying that by uploading materials user gives away its rights to these (or at least some rights)?
Your assertion that Google has a monopoly in this market is wrong for several reasons. The first is that there is no market for Googke/YouTube to control. Ad revenue which covers less than their overhead makes them a non-profit and YouTube in particular is closer to meeting the requirements for being classified as a government protected service than an anti-trust concern.
Second,nobody makes money in the free media hosting and distribution product domain. This is well known and is a large part of why they have virtually no competition.
Third, YouTube wouldn't even have a system that automatically takes down channels except that laws were written that required them to do so.
Google doesn't make money from YouTube, and they only acquired it for the good will providing a free service generates for them. Recently the head of YouTube has been making weird even retarded decisions, but it's still a free service that operates in an application domain that basically can't make money by definition.
Do you have a source for this? I feel like Microsoft would have liked to have known that, back when they lost an antitrust case around a freely provided web browser.
>Ad revenue which covers less than their overhead makes them a non-profit
That's not what "non-profit" means.
>nobody makes money in the free media hosting and distribution product domain.
Nobody has been profitable, but that doesn't mean nobody is trying or nobody could if the market weren't anti-competitive. There is also plenty of case-law in the US establishing that just because an anti-competitive scheme wasn't profitable doesn't make it legal. Hell, a lot of anti-competitive activity works specifically because it's not profitable in the short term.
>YouTube wouldn't even have a system that automatically takes down channels except that laws were written that required them to do so.
But not in the manner that they do. The point being made wasn't that their management of takedown notices is itself anti-competitive behavior, it's that the fact they don't have to change it to something more reasonable is evidence that they don't have any competition, which is indicative of a monopoly in the space.
>they only acquired it for the good will providing a free service generates for them
Again, source. I know YT is unlikely to be profitable right now, but I seriously doubt the purchase was a good-will gesture rather than a strategic long-term investment. I don't think there were a lot of people whose opinion of Google went up as a result of the purchase.
>r......d
Really? Was that necessary to make your point?
In any case, I don't think anyone is saying other video platforms wouldn't have copyright claims, they're saying that in a more competitive space, the mechanisms for handling those claims would be better. E.g., they might actually tell the creator in the linked video what the violation actually is.
If Google/Youtube were NOT a monopoly, they would have invested significant amount of money in customer support. However, there is zero. The only reason they get away with this is because they have a monopoly. They are saving hundreds of millions in support costs by not delivering any support. Unlike more overt monopolistic actions like raising prices, etc, what they do instead of increase their profits by taking away functionality that their customers should be receiving.
The fact you can get all your work taken away because of fraud, and have no recourse is unacceptable. Yet there really is no viable alternative. I hope content creators band together and form a class action lawsuit against Google and break up their monopoly. It's disgusting.