Techdirt. Stories filed under "youtube"

Silliest Argument Ever: Just Because A YouTube Paywall Launches It Means More Money Is Made

Mike Masnick — Fri, 10 May 2013 10:18:11 PDT

On Tuesday, as rumors were spreading about YouTube's plans to launch a paywall we reminded folks that Google had actually tried this twice before and no one paid. On Thursday, the folks at HuffPost Live had me join a video panel discussing this. What we didn't realize was at the very moment we were talking about it, YouTube had officially launched the program. You can see the discussion below, where I play the role of the lone dissenter who argues that this is a dumb idea: What annoys me about this is that everyone else was making the same silly arguments that were debunked over and over again on the newspaper side -- that paywalls lead to a higher quality product and more investment into the content. That's not true if no one pays. It's a pretty simple equation: if you, say, get 10 subscribers for $2/month, that's $20/month. That's not that much money. If you can make more than that in advertising, then you're better off advertising. Yet, time and time again in the video above you see people claim that it's somehow automatic that putting up a paywall will mean "more money" and "the end of free content" or "profits so that more investment can happen in video."

All of that makes a huge assumption: that enough people will actually subscribe. Yet there's simply no basis for it, and yet people kept claiming it over and over again as if it had to be true. But we know it's not necessarily true, because we've already seen Google try exactly the same thing. Hell, let's take a look at the original Google Video, launched about six years ago, with a similar subscription offering: And now let's look at the new YouTube pay channels: It's basically the same thing, though, I'd argue that the original Google Video had even more brand name content. In 2010, when Google tried the exact same thing with YouTube, over the course of 10 days, they only got $10,000. I'm not against experimenting. And I'm not against models where people pay -- I think things like Netflix and Spotify and the like are really interesting business models. But, those work because of different factors: mainly a combination of convenience and a ton of content all together. People are paying for those because of the completeness of the offering. Here, people are being asked to spend between $1 and $10 per month for a single channel of content. It may work for a few specialized shows: Game of Thrones? Yeah, sure. But not many others.

This idea that people paying directly is the only "real" business model is just silly. The guy who did a video comment during the panel discussion who seemed to argue that this was necessary because it's "capitalism" doesn't understand economics. A bad business model is a bad business model.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

YouTube Once Again Building A Paywall On Which Old Media Can Hang Itself

Mike Masnick — Tue, 7 May 2013 20:21:35 PDT

People seem really good at forgetting history. While most people realize that Google bought YouTube early on in that company's existence, they tend to forget that this was, in part, because YouTube was beating the pants off of Google's own online service called Google Video. The big difference? Google Video's launch focused very much on selling videos and using annoying DRM that had to check in with a server any time you wanted to watch. It was a complete and total failure, which probably cost an even larger amount when you realize it made Google more desperate to buy YouTube.

A few years later, Google tried again, playing up the ability to pay for videos... and once again it flopped pitifully. A 10 day test brought in just a little bit over $10,000 -- which is hardly worth the effort involved.

Perhaps the third time's the charm? People are reporting that YouTube is getting ready to launch a paywall feature, which may have 50 "channels" locked up behind the wall. The idea is to be more of a Hulu or Netflix-type competitor, though rather than a flat fee for access to all locked up content, YouTube thinks people will pay $1.99/month per channel. That seems... pretty high. Perhaps they're hoping that times have changed and what failed in the past is now okay because people are accustomed to paying for this kind of thing. However, I still have trouble seeing how this succeeds. If anything, this just seems like a tool with which Hollywood can hang itself. It may jump on this thinking that it's a great new way to build an online revenue stream, without realizing all the potential hazards.

Cable and satellite channels, which traditionally rely on a dual revenue stream model, are eyeing YouTube’s subscription service to generate revenue from older shows and new programming, according to another person familiar with the project.

I'm sure plenty of old school execs are thrilled about this idea... until they see the actual numbers. This isn't about helping the old industry adapt, but giving them the tools to see how unlikely they are to succeed with a paywall.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

YouTube Wins Yet Another Complete Victory Over Viacom; Court Mocks Viacom's Ridiculous Legal Theories

Mike Masnick — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 15:18:10 PDT

A few weeks ago we took a look at the latest filings in the long-running Viacom/YouTube dispute and were somewhat stunned at the ridiculous arguments made by Viacom, suggesting that the burden of proof was on YouTube to prove it did not know the videos on its site infringed on Viacom's copyrights. The idea that copyright law works this way, in which the burden of proof is on the service provider to show a lack of knowledge of infringement, is crazy. Thankfully, the court agreed.

In a ruling released today, the court gave a total victory to Google/YouTube, granting it summary judgment, saying that YouTube was protected from claims of infringement via the DMCA's safe harbors, and mocking Viacom's legal theories at the same time. Might as well jump right in with some quotes, including the money quote that Viacom's legal theory is "extravagant." Elsewhere the judge calls it "ingenious."

Viacom's argument that the volume of material and "the absence of record evidence that would allow a jury to decide which clips-in-suit were specifically known to senior YouTube executives" (Viacom Opp. pp. 9-10) combine to deprive YouTube of the statutory safe harbor, is extravagant. If, as plaintiffs assert, neither side can determine the presence or absence of specific infringements because of the volume of material, that merely demonstrates the wisdom of the legislative requirement that it be the owner of the copyright, or his agent, who identifies the infringement by giving the service provider notice. 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3)(A). The system is entirely workable: in 2007 Viacom itself gave such notice to YouTube of infringements by some 100,000 videos, which were taken down by YouTube by the next business day. See 718 F. Supp. 2d 514 at 524.

Thus, the burden of showing that YouTube knew or was aware of the specific infringements of the works in suit cannot be shifted to YouTube to disprove. Congress has determined that the burden of identifying what must be taken down is to be on the copyright owner, a determination which has proven practicable in practice.

This was the crux of Viacom's argument. That because they could show a lot of infringement, and here and there point to some evidence that some people at YouTube might have known of general infringement, then the burden should be on YouTube. But the court clearly calls them on this, noting that's not what the law says, nor does it make sense. Instead, under the law, the burden is on Viacom and that makes sense.

From there, the court cut through the claim of "willful blindness" that Viacom (and some of the folks in our comments) were so fond of. The court's basic response is "huh?" Basically it points out that Viacom's argument makes no sense. It points out that the 2nd Circuit appeals court made it clear that red flag knowledge had to be about specific infringements and Viacom keeps talking about general knowledge. This is, of course, what plenty of us pointed at the time and the court clearly sees through Viacom's wacky argument.

Here, the examples proffered by plaintiffs (to which they claim YouTube was willfully blind) give at most information that infringements were occurring with particular works, and occasional indications of promising areas to locate and remove them. The specific locations of infringements are not supplied: at most, an area of search is identified, and YouTube is left to find the infringing clip. As stated in UMG Recordings v. Shelter Capital Partners, LLC, No. 10-55732, 2013 WL 1092793, at *12 (9th Cir. Mar. 14, 2013) ("UMG III"),
Although the parties agree, in retrospect, that at times there was infringing material available on Veoh's services, the DMCA recognizes that service providers who do not locate and remove infringing materials they do not specifically know of should not suffer the loss of safe harbor protection.
The Karim memorandum states that infringing clips of some well-known shows "can still be found," but does not identify the specific clips he saw or where he found them. The Wilkens declaration submitted by plaintiffs asserts that there were over 450 such clips on YouTube at the time, and presumably some of them contained the infringing matter seen by Mr. Karim. To find them would require YouTube to locate and review over 450 clips. The DMCA excuses YouTube from doing that search. Under § 512(m), nothing in the applicable section of the DMCA shall be construed to require YouTube's "affirmatively seeking the facts indicating infringing activity."

Mr. Karim's memorandum does not tie his observations to any specific clips. Application of the principle of willful blindness to his memorandum thus does not produce knowledge or awareness of infringement of specific clips-in-suit, out of the 450 available candidates. Nor does any other example tendered by plaintiffs.

It goes on to reject Viacom's theory that YouTube had the "right and ability to control" infringement on YouTube, by pointing out that its failure to monitor is completely allowed under the DMCA, contrary to Viacom's desire to pretend otherwise:

YouTube's decision to restrict its monitoring efforts to certain groups of infringing clips, like its decisions "to restrict access to its proprietary search mechanisms," do not exclude it from the safe harbor, regardless of their motivation.

Further, it points out that the rest of Viacom's arguments just show "the normal functioning of any service provider, and shows neither participation in, nor coercion of, user infringement activity." Basically, Viacom's bizarre attempt at making all service providers liable across the board has failed.

Finally, the court quickly dismisses Viacom's claim that because YouTube did deals to make its videos accessible via mobile phones, that syndication caused YouTube to lose its safe harbor protections. The court notes that this was just about making the videos accessible, not about YouTube selecting videos, but still letting users pick the videos they want to watch, but via their mobile phones. It notes that contrary to losing the safe harbor provisions, this is actually a reason for why the safe harbors are good, because it "serves the purpose" of the DMCA in "providing access to material stored at the direction of users."

Basically, Viacom has wasted an incredible amount of money on a massive lawsuit based on a very, very shaky premise that the court didn't buy the first time around, or the second time around. Of course, now we fully expect Viacom to throw more good money after bad, and keep trying to convince a court that its entirely unique interpretation of the DMCA makes sense.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Deftones Guitarist: People Who Download Our Music Are Fans, They're Welcome To Do So

Mike Masnick — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 13:30:42 PDT

Note: I started writing this post up prior to the unfortunate news that longterm Deftones bassist Chi Cheng passed away, after spending much of the past four years in a coma following a car accident. Sad news.

One of the points we've tried to make over and over again is that people who are downloading unauthorized copies of music, movies and other content are often huge fans, or have the potential to be huge fans. So it never made sense to us that some content creators treat them like criminals. Every so often, we see someone say something silly like "I don't want fans like that." People say that, but they almost certainly don't mean it, because it would likely mean the loss of a huge percentage of their biggest fans. As we've seen over the years, plenty of enlightened content creators recognize the basic situation and have happily embraced it. We can add Deftones guitarist Stephen Carpenter to that list as he explains eloquently why he's happy about people downloading his music.

"I say hallelujah to them. I say it for only one reason, the truth is people who download your music are your fans, or people who are potentially going to become your fans," he said. "And if you're going to be upset that someone is interested, or becoming interested in your stuff, then what's the point? What are you doing?"

He continued: "If it's all about money then certainly you're going to be offended. But if your intent is to enjoy what you're doing and have others enjoying it, then it should be a no brainer. I welcome all people to download the music. They won't be the first, they won’t be the last, and for anyone to fight that ... it's futile."

He later says he "can't be offended by someone enjoying" his music. He notes that he's watched the internet and downloading from the beginning and he hasn't felt he needed to change at all.

The discussion is from a half hour interview with Loud Guitars. The full interview (about half an hour) is fun to watch, with a lot of discussion on having a positive attitude on all sorts of things, from life to the internet to the music industry to just making music. He also talks about how great the internet is beyond just the downloading issue. He talks about how things like YouTube can help make great musicians famous and kickstart a career and how awesome that is (in fact, he has a "hobby" of searching YouTube for great guitarists to inspire himself to push himself further). Once again, a nice counter-point to those who have been arguing that YouTube is somehow harming artists or that fans should be treated like criminals.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Macklemore Explains Why Not Being On A Label Helped Him Succeed

Mike Masnick — Thu, 4 Apr 2013 13:10:54 PDT

Unless you've been totally under a pop-culture/music rock for the past few months, you've probably heard of Macklemore and his hit song (and video) Thrift Shop. Now at well over 200 million views, the song itself has been at the top of the charts and has sold over 4 million copies. In case you somehow have missed it, or in case you just want to watch it again, here's the video: The song itself was released last year, and built up a lot of buzz throughout the fall, but completely exploded at the beginning of this year. While I became aware of the song a while back, I didn't realize until recently that Macklemore is actually yet another story of a totally independent artist who found success not by signing with a label and having them throw a ton of money into promoting him, but by carving his own independent path (and using YouTube to connect with fans). In many ways, his story reminds me of Alex Day's.

A few weeks ago, Macklemore sat down with Chris Hardwick on the Nerdist podcast and it's great. Beyond some interesting discussions about sudden fame (and then doing laundry in the communal laundry room of your apartment building days after appearing on SNL), he does talk a little about being a successful musician without a label. Chris asks him about the no label part and mentions what a great story it is:

Chris: To see you and Ryan Lewis come out of Seattle just making stuff you like making, with no label, and oh you're at the top of the charts, and all these people are talking about the song... that's just a great story.

Macklemore: Yeah, I appreciate it. It is a very cool story. It's what you always hope for in terms of picking the independent path. It's cool to see that that's been a focal point. It's not just "Thrift Shop"; it's this kind of do-it-yourself attitude behind the music we've made -- that is also within the midst of this thrift shop song. That these two dudes chose to go independently, to turn down the labels. That the music industry is changing. That it's evolving. And to be at any sort of place where we're at the forefront of that, at the moment, is exciting.

Chris: It's so inspiring to so many young people who maybe -- and I think people are more and more used to the fact that they can just make stuff in their bedrooms and it can turn out to be huge. But every time it happens, it's that much more inspiring to a younger generation of people who go... 'there's no excuse any more to not go out and make stuff that you want.'

Macklemore: Absolutely. And that's what we watched people that came before us that have done it independently, whether it's Sub Pop, or whether it's... Mac Miller did it independently. And he had every major label hollering at him with huge seven figure offers and turned it down and still went number one on Billboard. There's examples of it that came before us, that had us say 'I think that it can work -- I'm not sure that it can work." But, at the end of the day, what's most important, and creative control is number one for Ryan and I. It's a no brainer.

Chris I'm sure you've been approached a million times at this point, but you still don't want the infrastructure of a label?

Macklemore: Yeah, there's no reason to do it. With the power of the internet and with the real personal relationship that you can have via social media with your fans... I mean everyone talks about MTV and the music industry, and how MTV doesn't play videos any more -- YouTube has obviously completely replaced that. It doesn't matter that MTV doesn't play videos. It matters that we have YouTube and that has been our greatest resource in terms of connecting, having our identity, creating a brand, showing the world who we are via YouTube. That has been our label. Labels will go in and spend a million dollar or hundreds of thousands of dollars and try to "brand" these artists and they have no idea how to do it. There's no authenticity. They're trying to follow a formula that's dead. And Ryan and I, out of anything, that we're good at making music, but we're great at branding. We're great at figuring out what our target audience is. How we're going to reach them and how we're going to do that in a way that's real and true to who we are as people. Because that's where the substance is. That's where the people actually feel the real connection.

And labels don't have that.

So you sign up for a label. There's not some magic button they're now going to push and it means that people are going to like who you are. Or that they're identify with your vision or your songs. It actually comes from sitting down, staring at a piece of paper for months or years on end, trying to figure out who you are as a person, and hoping that it comes through in the end. But a label's not going to do that for you.

Uh huh. Once again, it makes you wonder what people are thinking when they claim that YouTube is putting artists out of work.

The whole episode is worth listening to as Macklemore has a great perspective on all of this, and it's interesting to hear him discuss the oddity of his sudden increase in fame and how he's dealing with it, without letting it go to his head. But considering how often we've had similar discussions about artists who choose to go independent, I thought some would enjoy that particular snippet especially.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Musician Alex Day Explains How He Beat Justin Timberlake In The Charts Basically Just Via YouTube

Mike Masnick — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 11:53:55 PDT

Last summer, we wrote about UK musician Alex Day, creator of a number of very catchy tunes (seriously take a listen), and how he sold half a million songs by breaking all the "rules" that those from the old recording industry insist are true. You can read that article for the details, but the short version is that he has no label, relies pretty much entirely on YouTube, he encourages fans to use his his music as much as possible and he's regularly releasing new songs. Recently, he released his latest album in the UK the same day that music industry superstar Justin Timberlake did, and (at least on iTunes), Day's album charted better than Timberlake's, despite Timberlake basically having the entire force of the legacy music industry behind him. At that link above, James Altucher has another great interview with Day, in which he (once again) highlights the basics of how he built his success -- hitting on a bunch of points that we've regularly talked about here, and which industry insiders insist could never really work for anyone. First up, connect with fans:

Right from my first 30 subscribers, I began talking to the audience that was there and making videos directly for them and replying to comments, but I never saw it as a ‘fan base’ – I mainly just figured we were all bored kids.

Another interesting point: he doesn't perform shows. This is a very interesting one, because we regularly get attacked in the comments by people who insist that we've claimed that the answer for musicians today is just to tour. Of course, we've never actually said that. There's a conflation there between where many artists are making money today and other ways in which artists can make money. In many ways, Day reminds me of Pomplamoose, who also used YouTube to build up a huge following and to make a living (both mixed cover songs with originals early on). You don't need to perform to make money, and Day has proven that.

Performing wasn't an avenue for me – the only gigs I've done are one-off launch events (to launch my album, for example) or gigs with friends (as I mentioned). I really don't feel the need to gig when I can reach my audience online and hit everyone at once, all over the world, and not exclude anybody, which a tour doesn't do.

And, yes, it sounds like he's doing quite well. Between YouTube and people buying the music (even though it's available for free on YouTube), he's doing quite well.

Typically I make around £3500 a month from YouTube (I'm on a network so they can sell the ad space higher) and at least £10,000 a month from music and merch sales. I've also done other projects – I co-created a card game with my cousin which we sell online, I have a business called Lifescouts I launched this year – which add a bit of extra cash to the pot also.

Basically: connect with fans and give them a reason to buy, and they will, even if the music is available for free. So much for the idea that no one will ever buy if it's free.

Also, while some insist that we hate record labels and think there's no role for them at all any more, nothing could be further from the truth. We've noted, repeatedly, that there is still a huge role for record labels, helping and enabling artists to do more for the artists that want that. What's different today is that artists have a choice. They can use a label, if they think that helps them, or they can do stuff themselves. And having that choice also gives the artist a lot more power and some more leverage. So it's interesting to see Day talk about his thoughts on labels. He's very open minded, pointing out that he's not against signing with a label, but they'd have to actually be able to do something for him and they've yet to show that they can do that without wanting to control absolutely everything.

Labels have never known what the hell to do with me. I always went in with an open mind – I don't like the idea that being proudly unsigned/independent instantly means I'm white and they're black and we have to duel to the death or whatever. There are a lot of things I do on my own because I have to, so I've got good at them, but it would definitely be easier with outside help! So I was willing to hear what they could offer and how we could work together and I still would be, but I don't think labels are ready to be that humble. They want to control everything. I like being able to decide my own songs and film my own music videos.

I've had several meetings with Island Records in the UK, the last of which ended with the guy saying he doesn't think I'm ready to be on a label yet because "we only sign artists we can sell at least a million copies of in the next three months" – but if he's waiting for me to get to that point without him, why do I need the label ever? I've also met with Warner, Sony, EMI – they were all the same, none of them expected to justify themselves and at best they were just trying to "figure out my secret" and at worst they were completely uninformed and lazy...

He talks about how a one-off deal with Universal solely for distribution of his CD helped get that CD into music shops, which was nice for sales, and those kinds of relationships are interesting to him. Ones where they control everything and don't add any actual value... are not. He even points to this hilarious video about his experience meeting with a major label. Seriously, watch this video. And, of course for those YouTube-haters out there, Day notes that YouTube has basically been everything for him:

It's just YouTube. I have Twitter and Facebook only because I sort of feel I have to, because I need to reach people in those places.... For the personal connection, it's all YouTube. I love it there. It's such a creative outlet. I've been making videos seven years and never got bored of it — one or two videos a week regularly all that time.

It genuinely saddens me when YouTube isn't lumped in as one of the essential social metrics with Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr (I do have a Tumblr too but like the others I don't really know how to use it). I understand YouTube and it's changed my whole life.

Wait, weren't we just hearing some old school musician insisting that YouTube had put 12,000 musicians out of work? Maybe it's just 11,999 then. Or, maybe it's the opposite. Maybe it's created an opportunity for lots and lots of musicians. But the key, as Day notes, is that you have to actually get YouTube. Miss that step and (shockingly), it might not work for you.

Either way, it's great to see Alex continue doing what he does best: making great music, connecting with fans and building a career.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Sega Offers Half-Hearted Non-Apology For Massive Youtube Takedown; Promises Not To Do It Again (With Caveats)

Tim Cushing — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 09:48:55 PDT

Remember last December when Sega was priming itself for a PSP Shining Force game and thought the best way to advertise the upcoming release was to take down anything and everything Shining Force-related on Youtube? Good times those, what with the takedowns and strikes against accounts and the hundreds of videos (some of which didn't even contain footage of the game) replaced with the well-known slash-mouthed emoticon and a quick "Sorry about that."

Now that the Shining Force game has been released, it appears that Sega is going to let things return to normal, or at least as normal as things can be after a massive takedown effort. Sega of America's Brand Manager offered the following ~~apology~~ diversionary statement of ~~contrition~~ half-hearted thanks and not-quite-promises.

Hey everyone,

Thank you to all of our fans for waiting while we worked hard to get this issue solved. While SEGA may need to remove videos in rare cases, we’re happy to confirm that there are no further plans to remove Shining Force videos uploaded to Youtube by users living in North American and European territories. Additionally, if you live in these territories and your video was removed, please get in touch with us at communityteam@sega.com so that we can look into it for you.

SEGA believes strongly in our fans and we apologize for any inconvenience. You all are what keep us going – thank you!

"Issue solved?" There was really no issue until the massive takedown effort began. Before that, everything seemed to be running fine. "Solved?" Once again, the issue was Sega's own making. It hardly seems proper that it take credit for "solving" it.

And bully for "no further plans to remove Shining Force videos." That's rather specific, innit? "We have no further plans FOR THIS PARTICULAR TITLE, but we reserve the right to remove other videos of other games, but in rare cases only, mostly because our release schedule isn't quite as packed as it was 15 years ago."

This announcement was conveniently buried on the 28th page of the Sega forum post discussing the video takedowns. Not exactly shouting it from the rooftops, but I suppose whoever's manning the Sega email inbox is probably not in any hurry to be bombarded with demands SoA un-strike their Youtube accounts.

All the damage done by Sega's short-sighted IP March to the Sea isn't going to be undone by a half-hearted non-apology that refers to Sega's own destructive actions as an "issue" to be "solved." Someone needs to inform those further up the chain of command that promoting a new game in an established series generally works better when you don't antagonize fans of the previous games. Not only that, but Sega needs to start seeing these uploaders as useful allies, rather than the only thing standing between it and a successful video game release.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Indian Studio Uploads Pirated Version Of Its Film To Its Official Youtube Account

Tim Cushing — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 09:11:38 PST

I can't imagine what went wrong here. You'd think an official Youtube account for a movie studio wouldn't be lacking in non-infringing content to upload. Nonetheless, India's Saregama Movies somehow ended up with a pirated movie as an official upload. Not only that, but the pirated version had gathered nearly 166,000 views before being taken 'round back and privatized by the studio. Twitter user Last Avenger screencapped the miscue in all its glory.

A search for Kamal DDR will bring up hundreds of listing, all pointing to various torrent links. Kamal DDR apparently "supplied" this copy to Saregama, although exactly how that ended up on the official channel rather than the studio's own un-pirated version remains a mystery.

Returning to the scene of the self-inflicted crime (as it were), viewers are now greeted with the familiar skewed-emoticon-o'-public-embarrassment.

No explanation for this switch-up has been provided by Saregama, so we're left with speculation. Could it be that torrenting the file was easier than finding it on the server? Was this preserved on a Saregama hard drive as evidence and labelled unclearly? Was this a disgruntled employee's last act? Rogue administrator? Are the phone calls truly coming from inside the house, torrentially-speaking? It also appears that this issue may not be limited to this film. Roughly a third of the links on Saregama's Upload list dead end with a "page not found" message.

Maybe original and pirated copies mingled freely within Saregama's local storage, much as they do on the open market. India's struggle with truly rampant piracy (as compared to the non-rampant piracy that is fretted about constantly by lobbyists and ICE heads) has been well documented and yet the country still cranks out roughly 80 million films (estimated) every year.

At the end of the day, Saregama's house is (mostly) back in order. Only the quizzical private-video-face remains, along with a selection of full-length films from the Saregama catalog (many with English subtitles) and a few unanswered questions.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Dead Kennedys Guitarist Joins Crusade Against Ad Networks & YouTube Despite Understanding Neither

Mike Masnick — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 12:32:55 PST

At the always wonderful SF Music Tech conference yesterday, I went to what should have been a fascinating panel discussion about "artist revenue streams." It had Kristin Thomson from the Future of Music Coalition, talking about their wonderful artist revenue streams project, as well as Steve Rennie, who manages the band Incubus, among others. And then there was the third panelist, East Bay Ray, of the band The Dead Kennedys. Despite that band once mocking the whole "home taping is killing music" argument, it appears that he's now turned into one of those grumpy old musicians who demands that everyone else figure out a way to pay him. So, rather than an interesting discussion about artist revenue streams, the panel basically turned into a big rant from East Bay Ray complaining about all these internet sites that don't pay him. His misunderstandings were legion. He held up a screenshot of a file sharing site in Russia, showing Dead Kennedys songs on them, and noted that he doesn't get paid for those. And, of course, those sites have ads. This is the thing that gets me. A group of music industry folks, led by Jon Taplin at USC, who don't seem to have the slightest clue about how online advertising actually works, keep insisting that when they see an ad from a big company on a site that has infringing materials, it means that "the pirates are getting rich and the artists are getting screwed."

What I find amusing is that professional musicians so often insist that others are simply not qualified to speak about the music business. And yet, they have absolutely no problem pretending they know how internet advertising works. Let's make this simple: internet display ads pay next to nothing -- especially on sites like the one that Ray was complaining about. Those kinds of sites can only get deals with complete bottom of the barrel remnant ad providers, whose payout numbers are so small that most people would laugh. Some -- like Google's AdSense -- only payout if people click, and these days no one clicks on banner ads. They don't even see them. These sites make next to nothing. I'd be amazed if they can clear $0.05 CPMs. That is, if they're lucky, they get five cents for every 1,000 views. If they're lucky.

Furthermore, folks like Ray are blaming the sites, which tend to be platforms or conduits for sharing, rather than the hosts or the actual people responsible for uploading the works. Either they don't understand this or they don't care, but they really seem to want to blame the middleman for the actions of end users.

Steve Rennie tried to talk Ray down a few times, with little luck. Rennie, rightly, pointed out that whining about the pennies some Russian site might get is a really fruitless activity, when there's so much opportunity to make revenue elsewhere. Why not focus on the actual revenue opportunities, instead of whining about the two and a half cents some Russian site got?

And, of course, Ray's anger isn't just at Russian file sharing sites, but basically every legitimate site as well. Even if they pay, they don't pay him enough. He, of course, singled out YouTube and further demonstrated his near total ignorance of the world by insisting that YouTube has "forced 12,000 musicians out of work." You might wonder how that's possible, and read the link for the full "math" and try to hold back the guffaws. The short version, as far as I can figure it out, is that he argues that YouTube only pays artists 35% of the revenue they get, but they should be paying 70% "like Apple." And then:

So, if they had done the same percentage as say iTunes, 30/70 instead of 65/35, that's a difference of about $600 million. Now if you take a middle class musician, say, $50,000 year, year in and year out, divide it into $600 million, that's 12,000 people that Google has siphoned the money off.

And that's 12,000 people that are now working in the salt mines of Walmart.

There are so many things wrong with this that I'm afraid to even try to list them all. First of all, YouTube revenue is incremental revenue on top of other revenue. This is revenue that did not exist at all prior to YouTube setting up ContentID and monetizing those views. This is not money that was somehow taken away from artists. Second, the revenue is not evenly distributed as his simple "division" implies. Bigger artists get more views, so even if his other nonsensical argument about how Google should fork over more of the money made sense, the "missing" money would still go disproportionately to bigger artists anyway.

And, of course, there are so many other factors at play here, including a whole bunch of musicians who only have careers because of YouTube. The fact that this "logic" is even considered seriously is so bizarre.

Rennie pushed back on some of Ray's claims, and Ray just went on something of a rampage, comparing internet sites to companies that exploited child labor in the past. When Rennie suggested that YouTube and other internet services were providing new and incremental revenue streams that simply didn't exist before, Ray referred to Rennie as "massa," which is incredibly obnoxious. He later insisted that "pirate sites are on the payroll of multinational companies," and then said that the internet companies were "pimps" and that "iTunes pays their 'girls' 70%, but Google only pays 30%." The fact that these companies created brand new revenue streams for him never seems to even enter his consciousness.

Finally, when people pointed out that there are a growing number of artists who are successful primarily because of the internet and new business models and services, he mocked those success stories, arguing that they got lucky -- saying that it's "just like a casino." Apparently, he's unfamiliar with the old recording industry which was much more of a pure lottery, where most people never were even allowed in the door, and ended up making nothing at all.

Oh, and poor Kristin barely got to speak at all, despite actually being the one with lots of actual data to share, rather than angry, ill-informed, misguided rantings. Later in the day I got to speak to Dave Allen, who we've written about before, and who was a founding member of Gang of Four -- a contemporary of the Dead Kennedys -- and he made a key point. Whenever the conversation focuses on "but what do we do about piracy," it becomes a complete waste of time. There are so many amazing new opportunities out there, with all sorts of fantastic ways to create, promote, connect, distribute, and monetize music. Whining about "losses" is just time spent not seizing opportunities.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

YouTube Stars Fighting YouTube Networks Over Their Contracts

Timothy Geigner — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 00:01:00 PST

As YouTube becomes more and more popular as a primary entertainment resource, it is going to have many of the same growing pains as traditional entertainment venues. If it can ever get past its "internet problems", it can move on to having actual entertainment issues. This means far more fun problems, like agents screwing young stars out of money, networks building contract language to screw young stars out of their artistic freedom, and lawyers threatening to enforce exclusive contracts to screw young stars out of their lives. Are you noticing a theme here? It's going to become increasingly important that formerly amateur YouTube stars read the contracts they sign with a growing number of upstart "YouTube Networks" very carefully, or else they are going to face situations such as we're seeing with Machinima stars, who are shutting down production because they're locked into lifetime and beyond contracts with the multi-channel network.

Vacas, known online as Braindeadly, has big brown eyes, a fauxhawk, a stubbly goatee and a British accent, discernible as he tells his 40,000 YouTube subscribers goodbye.

"I woke up today hoping to make a video, but I went into a call with Machinima this evening and they said that my contract is completely enforceable. I can't get out of it," Vacas tells the camera. "They said I am with them for the rest of my life — that I am with them forever. If I'm locked down to Machinima for the rest of my life and I've got no freedom, then I don't want to make videos anymore," he says quietly.

The screen fades to black.

Ominous, but not entirely unexpected. Those who make their bones on YouTube and any other new platform that might arise aren't going to have traditional avenues for making sure they know what they're signing. In the case of Vacas, he admits to this explicitly, later stating that he signed his Machinima contract quickly, not realizing they would own the rights to anything he produced on YouTube "in perpetuity, throughout the universe, in all forms of media now known or hereafter devised." Even death would not release Vacas of his contractual obligations. It sucks, but he signed it.

The point is that in these early days of YouTube channel capitalization, artists need to be very wary of sharks swimming in those waters. As the article points out, this isn't really new, it's just a different venue.

A recent string of high-profile disputes is prompting comparisons between YouTube networks and the exploitative Hollywood studios of the 1930s and '40s: Both convinced young and naive talent with little leverage to sign contracts that leave them at a disadvantage. For networks, that means contracts that bind creators to them indefinitely, demand rights to their content in perpetuity and take large ownership stakes in any resulting businesses.

As ugly as some of these contracts are, as are the intentions of those that wrote them, this should end up working itself out as YouTube matures as a primary entertainment platform. After all, Machinima can have all the dastardly contractual language it likes, but if the artists like Vacas refuse to produce in protest, what good does that do them? Eventually, a middle ground should and will be found. In the past, if you didn't like the contract offered to you by a major gatekeeper, you were pretty much out of luck. Today, however, not only are there more providers, but it's not difficult to "go it alone" if you choose such a path.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

GEMA Takes Kim Dotcom's Mega Launch Party Video Down, Despite All Songs Being Cleared

Mike Masnick — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 14:45:13 PST

GEMA and MEGA may have the same letters arranged differently, but you have to imagine that the hardline copyright maximalists at GEMA aren't at all pleased by Kim Dotcom's new Mega outfit, even if it's really not all that different than tons of other online cloud storage platforms. Still, it is a bit odd to see that GEMA had Mega's launch video removed from YouTube. There was music in the video, but as Dotcom notes, it was either his own music, or music by musicians who all gave permission to use it. My guess is that it may have more to do with the ongoing dispute between GEMA and YouTube, which means that any video with GEMA content is blocked in Germany. However, Dotcom filed a dispute, and notes that he plans to have his lawyers discuss the matter with GEMA.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Thank Joe Lieberman For YouTube Accidentally Censoring Key Syrian Watchdog's YouTube Channel

Mike Masnick — Tue, 8 Jan 2013 09:56:39 PST

Senator Joe Lieberman may finally be out of the Senate, but his "legacy" lives on. Over the years, we've noted that he's regularly sought to censor technology that terrorists use, on the ridiculous theory that censorship somehow makes the terrorists disappear. One of his campaigns, way back in 2008, was to force YouTube to magically censor videos from terrorists. After putting a lot of public pressure on YouTube, the company caved. And... as a result of that, it recently shut down the video channel of an important Syrian watchdog organization which had been posting video evidence of atrocities occurring in that country. YouTube has apologized and reinstated the channel, but this is what happens when you encourage censorship. It is impossible not to have it lead to censoring important speech.

YouTube sent the Observatory an email on Sunday that said its channels "syrianhro" and "almrsd" had "violated the policy of the site by publishing shocking and offensive videos," the Britain-based watchdog said.

The Observatory, which disseminates graphic videos on YouTube of atrocities from the bloody civil war the UN says has killed more than 60,000 people, condemned the closure.

"This is the second time in two months that the site administration has closed the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights channel," it said in a statement, in reference specifically to almrsd.

Of course, if we're to take Lieberman's theory to its logical conclusion, so long as no one can see the atrocities in Syria, we can all pretend they haven't happened, right?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

France Telecom Accused Of Holding YouTube Videos Hostage Unless It Gets More Money

Mike Masnick — Fri, 4 Jan 2013 09:36:08 PST

An interesting post from broadband news reporter Dave Burstein argues that anti-trust regulators in France may have basically enabled France Telecom to hold YouTube videos hostage unless Google backbone partner, Cogent, pays more money:

Millions of French netizens discover their YouTube streams sputter and die or never begin in the first place. Other video services, including TF1, are also struggling. The effect varies, sometimes randomly and sometimes by time of day. Respected consumer organization UFC-Que Choisir found between 20% and 50% of users surveyed online had problems.

Again, the existing connection remains and much of the traffic gets through. But Net traffic always grows and without regularly adding additional capacity many - not all - streams are blocked. French networks, with France Telecom in the lead, are refusing to accept growing traffic from Cogent, a major backbone carrier that services Google. They demand payment to accept all the streams their customers request. The independent French competition authority (Autorite de la concurrence) on September 20 approved the charging plan, leaving no doubt this is neutrality dispute.

The details suggest that this isn't so much a "neutrality" issue as a peering dispute. In fact, it actually sounds somewhat similar to the Level 3 / Comcast dispute from a few years back. In that case, Level 3 was providing service to Netflix, and Comcast worried about the big influx of traffic. Comcast (like France Telecom) demanded that Level 3 pay up for delivering it extra traffic. The bit that's interesting here is that French regulators got involved and said that this was legal in this case, though they're worried about the lack of transparency.

Of course all this does is show, yet again, how the internet's interconnectivity through peering arrangements is increasingly under pressure as certain broadband players become more powerful. And, unfortunately, the public (and their YouTube videos) may be at risk.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Pakistan Briefly Raises Youtube Banhammer; Reinstates It Three Minutes Later

Tim Cushing — Wed, 2 Jan 2013 20:04:38 PST

Pakistan's love/hate relationship with the internet seems to be mostly "hate" these days. Over the past couple of years, the Pakistani government has done as much as it can to cripple local access to the web, including seeking a nationwide web filtering system that would block off access to 50 million websites.

More recently, it joined a variety of nations which imposed a Youtube ban (or at least complained loudly and violently) because of Google's refusal to block or remove the "Innocence of the Muslims" video. Reacting to violent protests, Pakistan cut off Youtube, much to the dismay of its estimated 25 million internet users.

After the protests switched from decrying the offending video to decrying the offending censorious government, Pakistan decided to lift the ban... only to put it back in less time than it takes to sing [insert viral pop tune title here]:

A ban on YouTube, which Pakistan imposed after an anti-Islam video caused riots in much of the Muslim world, was lifted Saturday, only to be reinstated — after three minutes — when it was discovered that blasphemous material was still available on the site.

Much to the censor's dismay, the offending video remained just where the uploader had left it. The government stated it had "taken steps" to block offending content, but somehow the very thing that had prompted the shutdown had eluded the blockade, putting Muhammed directly in the path of badly-dubbed criticism.

This three-minute unbanning prompted another round of government-aimed criticism, this time with a bit more of a sarcastic edge, as a Pakistani journalist compared interior minister Rehman Malik to a kid playing with the light switch and pointed out that the same government that couldn't handle a website wants to be entrusted with stopping terrorism.

Unfortunately, part of the collateral damage of the Youtube ban is one of Pakistan's own -- Mohammed Shahid Nazir, a fishmonger whose song "One Pound Fish" has gone viral on the video service, racking up over eight million views.

The Nation’s report gave a sense of how famous Mr. Nazir managed to become, despite the ban on the video-sharing site in his home country: “Around 250 people, including local politicians met him at the airport, showering him with rose petals and chanting ‘Long Live One Pound Fish!’ while TV networks interrupted coverage of the fifth anniversary of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination to show his return live.”

Of course, that's the danger of blocking or taking down content viewed as dangerous, blasphemous, heretical or just plain infringing -- very often, legitimate, non-dangerous, non-offensive content gets caught in the sticky webs of overreaching entities.

I suppose the government has to be grateful that this past weekend's up-and-down action managed to leave the rest of the internet intact. It has to be tough living down a surreptitious Youtube blockade that manages to kill your own country's internet service while blocking the Youtube connection of a handful of unrelated (except by ISP) countries.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

No, The Major Labels Didn't Fake 2 Billion YouTube Views

Mike Masnick — Wed, 2 Jan 2013 05:24:39 PST

The record labels have a long history of knowing how to manipulate key numbers to their advantage. Look how labels have manipulated the various charts over the years and you'll find that it's a big part of how they do business. So it probably struck little by surprise to hear that the labels were now being accused of massively manipulating YouTube view counts to make certain songs look a hell of a lot more popular than they really are. The only problem? It's not actually true.

The DailyDot -- who normally does a fantastic job -- broke the story that got most of the attention, reporting:

Google slashed the cumulative view counts on YouTube channels belonging to Universal Music Group, Sony/BMG, and RCA Records by more than 2 billion views Tuesday, a drastic winter cleanup that may be aimed at shutting down black hat view count-building techniques employed by a community of rogue view count manipulators on the video-sharing site.

Universal's channel is the one that took the biggest hit. According to figures compiled by the YouTube statistics analysts at SocialBlade, the record company's YouTube channel lost more than 1 billion views from its preexisting tally of 7 billion views Tuesday.

Lots of other publications then picked up on the Daily Dot version and suddenly the story was everywhere -- in particular claiming that the labels were being punished for faked video views. Only problem? That's not really true. The report suggests that YouTube has begun a big campaign against view inflation by YouTube users across the board. That part is true. But the untrue part is that the major labels were faking so many views. Instead, it turns out that most of the issue was just that the labels had moved their videos from YouTube to Vevo -- the online video site that the labels had started a few years ago (built on top of YouTube technology). As Billboard notes, the "de-spamming" effort did delete about 1.5 million views from Sony and Universal Music videos -- so there may be some funny business, but that's tiny compared to the 2 billion views that disappeared. But the reason those went away was much more mundane:

The answer comes in the second way that YouTube changed its view count. The company recently decided to remove view counts for videos that are no longer live on the channel, or so-called "dead videos." For Universal and Sony, that meant thousands of music videos that over the past three years slowly have migrated to the VEVO channel, which is jointly owned by the two companies. A senior label executive confirmed the migration....

That meant high-profile videos that once lived separately on the Universal and Sony YouTube channels have been relocated to Vevo. As a result, the views that those videos received during their time on the dedicated label channels were taken away in YouTube's latest "clean up" effort.

In other words, those views happened; they weren't "faked" or even double counted when they went on to Vevo. But because the videos are no longer on the channel, YouTube considers them "dead videos." They still live on in YouTube, just under a different channel.

Considering how many people have been sending this story over, I know lots of people would like to believe Sony Music and Universal Music faked 2 billion views and were now being punished for it, but it's just not the case.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Homeless Man Who Got Free Boots From Cop Now 'Wants His Cut' Of YouTube Attention

Mike Masnick — Tue, 4 Dec 2012 07:47:40 PST

Ah, this is what you get when you build up ideas around the idea that every bit of content must be "owned." You may have heard the somewhat heartwarming story last week of NYPD Officer Lawrence DePrimo, seeing a homeless man in NYC without any shoes on, buying the man some boots and giving them to him. Without either man being aware of it, a tourist from Arizona, Jennifer Foster, saw this happening and took a photo of the situation. Some people were skeptical of the validity of the image, but after it was confirmed, DePrimo was hailed as a hero and we were once again reminded that not all people photographing police are doing so to embarrass them.

That said, a reporter for the NY Times caught up with the homeless man in question, Jeffrey Hillman, who hasn't received quite as much attention, only to find that he's barefoot again, saying that the boots were now hidden for his own safety:

"Those shoes are hidden. They are worth a lot of money," Mr. Hillman said in an interview on Broadway in the 70s. "I could lose my life."

From the interview, it appears that Mr. Hillman -- who has been homeless for many years -- may have plenty of other problems as well. However, in a moment of clarity... he put forth the kind of statement we're used to hearing all the time around here:

"I was put on YouTube, I was put on everything without permission. What do I get?" he said. "This went around the world, and I want a piece of the pie."

This is what you get, folks, in a world where you tell everyone that idea, concept, image, etc. must be "owned."

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Cindy Garcia Still Attacking YouTube Over Innocence Of Muslims Film

Timothy Geigner — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 14:41:00 PDT

Cindy Garcia apparently doesn't know when to stop. Perhaps more entertainingly, her legal team apparently was lifted out of some kind of law-driven sitcom. If you'll recall, we last heard from Garcia when she decided that she owned the dramatic performance (oh lord) she provided for the controversial film "Innocence Of Muslims." Armed with this unilateral declaration which deftly ignores precedent, such as Aalmuhammed v. Lee, she then attempted to get the film taken down from YouTube, ostensibly to win some kind of cat-is-already-out-of-the-bag-move championship that I'm not aware exists. All the while, her previously mentioned legal team offered up evidence that they fail to have a basic understanding of the first amendment by saying, "the First Amendment does protect American’s [sic] rights to freedom to express, and also the right to be free from expression."
"This guy totally gets us."
Well, Garcia and her team are back for more, and now they appear to think that YouTube is responsible for identifying the copyright holder of the film in question. The story reportedly goes something like this. Garcia phones up the attorney for Nakoula Basseley Nakoula (or whatever his name is this week) about a settlement offer and said attorney tells Garcia that she needs to contact the holder of the copyright on the film, which is not Nakoula (I have no idea if this is true). Then her lawyers emailed Timothy Alger, an outside consultant for Google.

"I have just been informed by Nakoula's attorney that Nakoula...DOES NOT OWN the rights to the film and will not claim copyright ownership on the rights to the film," Armenta wrote. "We believe it is YouTube's burden to identify the correct copyright holder, in light of Garcia's allegations that she owns the rights to her dramatic performance."

I can't imagine why YouTube should have the burden of copyright ownership discovery. How would they even go about doing that? In any case, Garcia's lawyers are citing the Viacom lawsuit against YouTube to put their handling of DMCA takedown requests in the spotlight. But there's a problem with such a citation, in that Google's position during the trial went in exactly the opposite direction on the question of copyright ownership being determined.

During the appeal in the Viacom case, Google's lawyers argued forcefully for a strict knowledge standard in determining an ISP's copyright liability. Google wanted copyright holders like Viacom to bear the burden of sending takedown notices because they were in the best position to determine what is infringing and what is not. "There's no central depository of copyrights," said Google's lawyer during the appellate hearing.

What Garcia's lawyers are attempting to do is to show that YouTube has been willing in the past to be quick with their takedown trigger fingers and are not responding similarly in this case. The difference, of course, is that Garcia is claiming ownership on something in which the law is, if I want to be extremely generous to Garcia's lawyers, ambiguous. To be less generous, the caselaw I referenced earlier determined that Garcia does not have any takedown rights over her performance, which is why YouTube is refusing to take the film down. And, as a California judge did once already, another judge has refused to issue an injunction to remove the film. In fact, that judge mentioned what I've been saying since Garcia first started her arm-waiving:

But on Thursday, the judge denied her request for a temporary restraining order, citing the fact that the alleged infringement commenced almost three months ago.

Where was Garcia and her team of kinda-lawyers when this film was first released? It was out for months before the controversy began and the fatwas were issued. If this was an infringement on her performance, why was it only after the media picked this story up that such infringement was alleged by Garcia?

The only logical answer is that until the negative press began, Garcia didn't care. Which means she's using DMCA notices, not because of any legitimate copyright claim, but rather in an attempt to stifle free speech.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Google Finally Changes ContentID Appeals Process

Mike Masnick — Wed, 3 Oct 2012 23:53:53 PDT

While some aspects of YouTube's ContentID feature have been quite cool, creating new ways for content creators to monetize their works, there have been significant problems too, especially in taking down legitimate content with little recourse for the uploader. Thankfully, it appears that the folks at YouTube have finally realized that the counter-notification/appeals process for ContentID takedowns was bogus. A lot of people get DMCA takedowns and ContentID takedowns confused, but they're different. With the DMCA, you have an official counternotice process, and if the copyright holder doesn't sue (realistically, file for an injunction), then YouTube puts your content back up after 10 business days. However, with ContentID, there are no legal rules. Google handled ContentID disputes by letting the copyright holder simply "reject" the dispute -- and that was about the end of it, even in cases where they were putting ads on someone else's content. Now, however, YouTube has revamped the appeals process so that if someone disputes a ContentID takedown, the copyright holder would need to file an actual DMCA claim if they want to keep claiming infringement:

Users have always had the ability to dispute Content ID claims on their videos if they believe those claims are invalid. Prior to today, if a content owner rejected that dispute, the user was left with no recourse for certain types of Content ID claims (e.g., monetize claims). Based upon feedback from our community, today we’re introducing an appeals process that gives eligible users a new choice when dealing with a rejected dispute. When the user files an appeal, a content owner has two options: release the claim or file a formal DMCA notification.

This is a much more reasonable process that doesn't allow people claiming copyright to effectively take over a video regardless of whether or not the video's uploader disputes it. This probably should have happened a long time ago, but it's good to see it finally has.

The announcement also claims that their system is becoming better at avoiding "invalid claims." It sounds as though there's some sort of threshold now, where if something is borderline, it goes into a manual review queue, rather than automatically being taken down. So the more "gray area" cases will get a human review first.

We'll see how all of this works out, but it's good to see that Google is taking many of the complaints about ContentID's overeager takedowns seriously.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Brazilian Judge Overreacts, Orders Arrest Of Head Of Google's Operations In Brazil Over Refusal To Censor YouTube Video

Mike Masnick — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 12:35:00 PDT

We've noted in the past that Brazil doesn't seem to have much of a concept of safe harbors for secondary liability, as it's blamed Google for actions of its users in the past, even once ordering that YouTube be shut down, or blocked due to a video that someone didn't want seen. Once more, the Brazilian courts are at it again. Last week, a judge apparently ordered Google to take down a YouTube video that attacked a mayoral candidate for the city of Campo Grande. Google refused, and the judge, Flavio Peren, has responded by ordering all Google services be shut down for 24 hours and that the head of Google's operations in Brazil, Fabio Jose Silva Coelho, be arrested.

To say that this is an extreme overreaction, would be an understatement. Because of one video, about one local mayoral candidate (which, thanks to this publicity many more people are likely to see), all of Google should be blocked for people in Brazil and the head of Google's operations in Brazil should be arrested? Talk about a disproportionate response. Not only is it extreme, it makes no sense. Google didn't create or upload the video. It's just hosting it. If the video is illegal, blame whoever created it and uploaded it.

Google is appealing the ruling, but it still seems extreme. Google's transparency report has noted in the past that Brazil is perhaps the most aggressive country when it comes to content removal requests -- but that only suggests that someone should be thinking more carefully about how fast the Brazilian courts are to issue these kinds of injunctions without seeming to understand Google's role.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

White House Goes Too Far In Asking Google To Pull Controversial Video

Mike Masnick — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 03:08:25 PDT

Last week, we reported on Google's decision to block access in Egypt and Libya to the controversial, hate-mongering video that's been cited as leading to the violent reactions in the Middle East. We wondered if this was the right move, noting the seriousness of the violence and the ridiculousness of the video. However, Paul Levy's thoughts on this make sense. While we may worry about what line Google may draw, it is a private company and it's not doing this due to government pressure, but as part of it's own decision:

Its removal is not the same as deferring to government censorship, and as much as I hate to give mob violence the satisfaction of an effective heckler’s veto, we cannot expect that online service providers will never remove material simply because it is deemed offensive by wide swaths of the population. Moreover, I can’t help but wondering if the violent response isn’t just what the film-makers were hoping for. So by leaving the image on its site so that we can understand the controversy, while taking it down where broad access to the material is likely to cause the greatest harm, Google has made a comprehensible judgment.

As such, even if we disagree with the choice, it's a defensible choice.

However, things may have crossed the line late last week. There were reports that the White House strongly suggested that YouTube pull the video entirely. Of course, they didn't come out and say that exactly, but rather suggested that YouTube "review the video to see if it was in compliance with their terms of use."

But when it's the White House suggesting that, it's a pretty clear situation in which the President is applying pressure on a private company to censor speech. Of course, we've seen this before, though not with the White House directly. Four years ago, we saw Senator Joe Lieberman similarly pressure YouTube to start blocking "terrorist" videos on YouTube. Lieberman, of course, loves to pressure private companies into blocking speech. He did similar things to try to censor Wikileaks and even pushed some bad legislation to try to increase censorship powers of the federal government.

Either way, the White House putting pressure on Google has troubling implications, even if we agree that the video in question is a hate-mongering disgrace. As various free speech activists told Politico (link above) there are some troubling implications here:

"There's no indication that the government is questioning the right of these idiots to make that repellent film. On the other hand, it does make us nervous when the government throws its weight behind any requests for censorship," the American Civil Liberties Union's Ben Wizner said in an interview Friday.

"I am actually kind of distressed by this," said Eva Galperin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Even though there are all these great quotes from inside the White House saying they support free speech....by calling YouTube from the White House, they were sending a message no matter how much they say we don't want them to take it down, when the White House calls and asks you to review it, it sends a message and has a certain chilling effect."

Google, for its part, has actually stood up to the White House on this one, and said that it won't pull the clip, though it had begun blocking the video in India and Indonesia, where they determined the video itself was illegal, and the company needed to comply with local laws.

Of course, all of this is unlikely to have much, if any, impact on the violence and anger. And that's part of the problem and the ridiculousness with arguing for censorship. It seems quite likely that a very large percentage of those involved in the mob violence to this haven't even seen the video themselves. Caving in to censorship "hints" from government doesn't actually hide the content or calm much anger. In fact, it's likely to just draw more attention to it. The video is despicable and the reaction to it is horrifying on a number of levels. The loss of life is massively upsetting, especially over something so stupid. So I can certainly understand the instinct to try to "do something," and to reach for the easiest target: censoring the video. But not only would it be completely ineffectual, it opens up a whole host of other problems. Dealing with hate speech by seeking to censor it almost always just encourages more hate speech (and even more idiotic violent reactions). It may be an "easy" thing to do, but it's no solution to deep-seeded problems. It just creates new problems.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Copyright Killbots Strike Again: Official DNC Livestream Taken Down By Just About Every Copyright Holder

Tim Cushing — Wed, 5 Sep 2012 01:32:42 PDT

Here we go again. Less than 24 hours ago, content-protection bots killed a livestream of the Hugo Awards, thanks to the brief appearance of fully approved clips from an episode of Dr. Who. The whole situation was completely absurd to anyone harboring the tiniest vestige of common sense, but IP-protection software isn't built on common sense: it's built on algorithms.

This time, content protection via crawling bots have taken down another approved, perfectly legal stream. The victim this time? The Democratic National Convention's official stream, hosted at YouTube. As Wired reports, if you're looking to catch up on last night's activities, including a speech by Michelle Obama, don't bother:

The video, posted by the official YouTube account for the convention, DemConvention2012, was blocked, according to YouTube, for ostensibly infringing on the copyright of one of many possible suspects:

This video contains content from WMG, SME, Associated Press (AP), UMG, Dow Jones, New York Times Digital, The Harry Fox Agency, Inc. (HFA), Warner Chappell, UMPG Publishing and EMI Music Publishing, one or more of whom have blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.
Sorry about that.
When contacted by Wired for comment, Erica Sackin, an Obama campaign staffer who works on digital outreach, had no knowledge of the outage, asked this reporter for the url and then upon seeing the takedown, said, "I'll have to call you back."

The video has since been updated to state that "This video is private." There's probably quite a bit going on behind the scenes at the moment, but fortunately Wired snagged the complete list of claimants for future reference. Take a good, long look at that list. There's a few of the usual suspects in there, including AP, UMG and Warner, entities not known to be shy about claiming content that isn't theirs.

Now, these entities aren't directly responsible for this takedown. This is more of an automated match situation, but it still doesn't change the fact that the inherent stupidity of the action, automated or not, does absolutely nothing to lock down stray, unmonetized content and absolutely everything to highlight the ridiculous nature of copyright protection in a digital age.

If Google can work with copyright holders to produce content matching software, it seems like it might be possible to designate certain accounts or entities as "off limits" from the wandering killbots. If the stream is authorized by, I don't know, the party of the current President of the United States, maybe, just fucking maybe, everything's "above board."

Sure, defining legitimate, pre-approved accounts may prove to be as difficult as determining which content is infringing and which isn't, but this should be the sort of thing that content holders should be working toward, rather than simply moving from disaster to disaster, smugly secure in the knowledge that filthy file sharers are getting content-blocked thousands of times a day.

Nice going, huge list of content holders. Your boundless, maximalist enthusiasm is just another nail in the coffin containing what's left of copyright's reputation.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Stupid, Antiquated German Regulations Mean Germans Couldn't Watch Our Google Hangout With Rob Reid Yesterday

Mike Masnick — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 13:16:55 PDT

Yesterday we did our live streaming interview with Rob Reid about his book, Year Zero, which was a lot of fun. During the course of the video, we discovered (via some tweets) that people in Germany were blocked from watching. As I said in the video, I assumed that this was part of the dispute in Germany between YouTube & GEMA, the German collection society that is demanding huge fees for any music that is played on YouTube. Because -- unlike every other major collection society -- GEMA had refused to come to the table to negotiate a license, YouTube ended up pulling basically all music videos in Germany. I thought perhaps something related to that was why Google Hangouts weren't allowed. Though, I couldn't figure out how that made sense, since we weren't playing any music (Rob's offer to sing, notwithstanding).

However, as pointed out by Ruquay K Calloway, the actual story may be more bizarre. While YouTube has been rightfully proud of launching Hangouts On Air (the feature we used to broadcast live) worldwide, Germany is actually missing from the big list.

It turns out that it may be a different ridiculous regulation, however. There's an old "broadcasting law" in Germany that was put on the books decades ago to stop pirate TV stations. And it says you can't broadcast to more than 500 people without a special license. And, because that's impossible for every one-off person seeking to use a tool like Hangouts on Air, it appears that Hangouts On Air is just off-limits in Germany. So, I'm sorry for all the Germans who wanted to watch the video live, but perhaps an effort should be made to wipe that silly rule off the books already.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

How Google's ContentID System Fails At Fair Use & The Public Domain

Mike Masnick — Wed, 8 Aug 2012 14:55:11 PDT

We recently covered how YouTube briefly pulled down the NASA-uploaded public domain video footage from the Curiosity rover's Mars landing. We were quite careful in the piece not to call it a DMCA takedown, because it was pretty clear that the DMCA was not involved. Unfortunately, many have been assuming that it was via the DMCA (and there are even lengthy comments discussing aspects of the DMCA). However, the DMCA had nothing to do with it. It appears that the whole thing was due to the way that YouTube's ContentID system works.

Tim Lee has a great post explaining how ContentID works in such situations, including the story of another video -- which involved commentary on the Curiosity landing done by Lon Seidman of the site CT Tech Junkie, which quickly received five claims from media organizations to copyright in the content. In response to all of this, the EFF has an important post highlighting the serious problems of an automated system like ContentID, which simply cannot understand algorithmically when content may be fair use or public domain. The EFF's fear is that the ContentID system doesn't have the (extremely limited, unfortunately) protections that the DMCA includes, and which were the focus of much discussion in our original post.

Content ID, by contrast, is an opaque and proprietary system where the accuser can serve as the judge, jury, and executioner. Worse, the person whose speech is being silenced has little recourse. The Content ID system tips whatever balance is present in the DMCA and allows even more pernicious forms of manipulation and abuse. In a Wired column earlier this year, Andy Baio enumerated some of the problems that YouTube users encounter:

But there has been a dramatic rise in Content ID abuse in the past couple of years, wielded in ways never intended. Scammers are using Content ID to steal ad revenue from YouTube video creators en masse, with some companies claiming content they don’t own deliberately or not. The inability to understand context and parody regularly leads to “fair use” videos getting blocked, muted or monetized.

But even without taking scammers into account, the premise behind Content ID is just incompatible with fair use and the public domain. It's impossibly complicated to define in a set of "business rules" for automated enforcement. Allowing Content ID robots to apply the rules leads to oversimplification that chills legitimate speech.

If anything, as Tim Lee's article explains, ContentID is actually demonstrating (quite clearly) why there are so many concerns about copyright takedowns. Copyright system supporters often insist that it's "easy" for sites to recognize and take down infringing content, and use any evidence of infringement as a damning sign of a site not doing enough. But, the reality on the ground is that making a determination on whether or not something is infringing is not nearly as easy as some people believe:

But in accommodating the demands of large copyright holders, YouTube has inadvertently reminded us all of the crucial point that flagging copyright infringement isn't nearly as simple as it is often portrayed by rightsholders. Even scanning videos for exact content matches that exceed certain thresholds (in order to preserve at least some fair uses) actually fails in all sorts of interesting ways.

Rather than acting as a neutral arbitrator between major content companies and independent organizations, YouTube's system favors the larger rightsholders that make use of its Content ID system over smaller creators. And because it's a private system that goes beyond the DMCA, the Content ID system is under no legal obligation to comply with the DMCA's safeguards and timelines.

ContentID certainly has some nice features -- including an innovative new revenue stream for content creators. But there are significant problems with it, concerning how it handles fair use and public domain material, which serve to highlight why the idea of a "silver bullet" solution for online infringement is so problematic.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Homeland Security Issuing Its Own DMCA Takedowns On YouTube To Stifle Speech

Mike Masnick — Wed, 1 Aug 2012 10:06:16 PDT

We recently wrote about the fight over copyright/fair use in political videos. In the comments, someone anonymous pointed us to a YouTube page including a typical takedown notice.. Here's a screenshot. This is actually the first time I can recall that I've seen a takedown that had "multiple" takedown notices. So it's interesting that YouTube even has such an error message. But what really caught my attention was the second claimant listed. United States Department of Homeland Security. Homeland Security? Issuing copyright takedowns? For what it's worth, the commenter who submitted this pointed us to another video, which they claim is the same as what was taken down. I have no idea if it's the same video or not, but it is some idiotic conspiracy mongering, taking one comment from a reporter completely out of context, and pretending President Obama said it, when he did not. I never understand conspiracy theories like that, but that's really neither here nor there.

The real question is why is Homeland Security issuing takedowns? Works produced by the federal government, of course, can't have copyright. However, it is possible for the government to hold copyrights -- mainly if someone else gets it and assigns it to the government. So it's possible that happened here, though it still seems like a strange move. If the video is the same as the other one pointed to, it's just conspiracy theory claptrap, and I don't see why DHS would even bother issuing a takedown.

But, even if we assume that the copyright itself and the takedown were legit, does this seem reasonable at all? Having a government agency directly using a copyright claim to take down a video? Especially when that group is DHS -- in which national internet censor ICE exists. Giving it the power to censor videos too just seems like it's going way too far. It's not as if Homeland Security is going to bring the work "to market" to make money, so it's not like there's an "impact on the market" for the work. The only reason to issue the takedown -- no matter how accurate the claim is -- is to silence speech. A government organization using a government-granted monopoly to stifle speech may be all too common, but that doesn't mean it should pass by unremarked upon.

I reached out to people at YouTube to see if they could explain why DHS appears to be issuing DMCA takedowns, and got back the equivalent of a "no comment." I also reached out to Homeland Security, who at first seemed interested in looking into the details and then completely stopped responding to emails. Having not received further communication from them in over a week at this point, I'm just going with the post as is, in the hopes that maybe someone out there can explain why the federal government is using copyright to censor speech?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

YouTube Wants You To Comment Under Your Real Name

Timothy Geigner — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 22:06:00 PDT

I've written before about the benefits of having an open commenting system on websites, complete with anonymity, and I still believe in that stance. I've also made the point that the comments and communities a site develops can often be as much the stars of the show as the original content. So, it goes without saying that the more you enable your community to provide awesome and relevant commentary, while not locking the system down, the better off you're going to be. I think Techdirt does this well, by still allowing for anonyous comments while providing benefits for having a profile with a comment history (participation in contests, credibility through history, etc.).

YouTube (famous for its often-awful comments) has never been completely open, but the majority of commenters use standalone accounts with pseudonyms. Now, according to a recent CNN article, YouTube is actively encouraging users to link their accounts with their real identities (via Google+, of course), not just by prompting them to do so but also by asking them to explain why if they decline.

"Try to comment on a video today and a window will pop up with the title "Start using your full name on YouTube," which will sign you in with your Google+ account. A YouTube spokesperson told BetaBeat that this option has been offered since June 29 and that users with a Google+ account will see the same thing if they try to upload a video.
If you don't want to use your Google+ account, you can refuse -- but then you're taken to a second prompt, which asks "Are you sure?" Then, like some kind of Internet degenerate, you must explain why you don't want to use your full name."

Now, this may be a tad irritating to anyone who insists on commenting anonymously, but I think if the strategy works to get more people to comment while being accountable then the benefits will outweigh the annoyance. Because if there has been any single great all-encompassing truth about the last decade, it's this: if you're looking for a reason to hate humanity, spend 20 minutes browsing YouTube comments.

Having said that, it's important that YouTube still allow the option to comment anonymously. Without that option, you may lose valuable comments from people with legitimate fear of reprisal if their name is associated with their words, whether that reprisal comes from friends, family, their employers, or the government. But being proactive in encouraging users to comment under their accounts is a good thing, which may very well breed a better commenting community.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story