ContentID is getting EVEN MORE FUCKED than the troll in here



  • To borrow the bulletpoints from jwz's blog:

    How it worked before:

    • She's her own label, and owns the copyright / publishing rights on her own songs.
    • She registered her songs with Youtube, saying "these are mine". (That's different than posting the songs publicly.)
    • Because of that, when someone else uploads a Youtube video that uses her music as the soundtrack, she's the one who receives the Content-ID notification.
    • She then gets the choice to block that video, or to run ads on it.
    • She generally chooses the latter, which means she gets 1/3 of the revenue generated by the ads on the video that has her music in it, and gets her name on the page.

    So now Youtube is about to launch a new paid streaming service. If I'm understanding her post correctly, it goes like this:

    • Participation in the new service requires that your entire catalog be available for streaming, at high resolution.
    • Participation requires that you not release your music elsewhere earlier, e.g., no early releases for fans or backers.
    • You no longer get a choice of whether to do nothing, block a video, or run ads. Ads are mandatory.
    • Five year contract.
    • If you don't participate in the new service, then the option to obtain Content-ID ad revenue from the free version of Youtube no longer exists.
    • If you had previously been getting Content-ID ad revenue and choose not to participate in the new service, your channel will be deleted and all videos using your music will be blocked.

    Jesus, YouTube. That sucks.



  • Somehow, they managed to fuck both the artists and the viewers and make nobody happy, it seems. Now, if it wasn't for the fact that there's virtually zero competition for them, they'd already be kicked out on the side of the road, but guess it's gonna fly anyway.

    Don't you 'Muricans have some anti-monopoly laws or something for that? Because that's seriously fucked up.



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    Don't you 'Muricans have some anti-monopoly laws or something for that? Because that's seriously fucked up.

    We have anti-monopoly laws but no one cares about it unless it's Microsoft.



  • Yeah pretty much. Think of all the thousands of videos that will suddenly be blocked as artists decided not to participate in this deal. (And I can't imagine many artists will choose to participate, because these terms are shit.)



  • The worst part is that after everyone yells at them, they'll drop a few of the nastier points and then end up with a system that's still much worse than current, but nobody will really feel like complaining anymore.

    In fact, that's probably their tactic.



  • Don't you 'Muricans have some anti-monopoly laws or something for that? Because that's seriously fucked up.

    Sure, but Youtube isn't a media monopoly. There's CBS, NBC, Netflix, Comcast, ATT, etc.

    Nobody who matters will care that people who don't matter will have their videos blocked. Except for the other media companies, who actually benefit.


  • FoxDev

    @CreatedToDislikeThis said:

    In fact, that's probably their tactic.

    i wouldn't doubt that if you gave me a sack of money to doubt that...... well.... if you gave me a big enough bag of money i would because money



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    Don't you 'Muricans have some anti-monopoly laws or something for that?

    Yes, but someone has to actually complain first. Either someone in Congress, or a competing company.

    @Captain said:

    Nobody who matters will care that people who don't matter will have their videos blocked. Except for the other media companies, who actually benefit.

    Exactly. I can guarantee "artists" with MCN (multi channel networks) will be immunized somehow. YouTube pissed-off a lot of their big names when they changed the comments system to use Google+ (and many of those big names still have comments turned off as a result), so unless they're really dumb they won't make the same mistake twice.

    Little guys like Zoe Keating or me? Fuck 'em. We're YouTube, we don't give no shits.



  • YouTube, really dumb? Sure. this is 'do no evil' territory, remember.



  • YouTube has been doing nothing but evil since they implemented ContentID in the first place. (Which is, I remind you, already FAR more restrictive than actual copyright law.)



  • Oh, yes, it's completely following protocol from its electronic overlords in that respect.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    Somehow, they managed to fuck both the artists and the viewers and make nobody happy, it seems.

    I bet you RIAA/MPAA are happy, though.



  • @FrostCat said:

    I bet you RIAA/MPAA are happy, though.

    Sounds like they hired some ex-RIAA/MPAA employees actually.



  • @delfinom said:

    ex-RIAA/MPAA employees

    I don't think there is such a thing as an ex-RIAA employee. The damage is permanent.



  • I stopped uploading things to Youtube after they took down two videos I shot with my phone that had absolutely nothing in them that violated any copyright. (One was of my high-as-balls cat after being neutered, for instance.)

    I often watch videos on Youtube, so they do still get some business from me, alas. I think this chick is right, though: the silicon valley hippies have become the man.


  • BINNED

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    Don't you 'Muricans have some anti-monopoly laws or something for that?

    We do. We also grant monopolies, usually in the form of copyrights and patents, but there are other forms. But the rule of law is so 19th-century. These days, the laws apply so broadly that everyone's guilty of something. That way, they can just pick someone out and find something to pin on them.

    Filed under: selective enforcement FTW


  • Fake News

    @antiquarian said:

    But the rule of law is so 19th-century. These days, the laws apply so broadly that everyone's guilty of something. That way, they can just pick someone out and find something to pin on them.

    Amen, brother.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @antiquarian said:

    That way, they can just pick someone out and find something to pin on them.

    I think they usually wait until they've decided that they don't like your face. Like that most people still think that they're living in a nation of laws.



  • @VaelynPhi said:

    the silicon valley hippies have become the man.

    Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
    Filed under: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Jesus, YouTube. That sucks.

    I agree.



  • Is this by any chance going to wind up destroying the Song Thread?
    😡 😿 🐊





  • So the moral of the story is that dumb women give feminists a bad name . . . again.

    Le sigh.



  • @glathull said:

    So the moral of the story is that dumb women give feminists a bad name . . . again.

    What the fuck are you talking about?

    Wait... do you think Zoe Quinn is the same person as Zoe Keating?



  • Just trashing your thread the same way you trash other threads with irrelevant, incorrect bullshit.

    And also, I don't think Zoe Keating is a very good cellist. So I don't really give a damn about her problems. Lots of other better string musicians don't get to have her problems.

    But other than that, mostly trolling.

    Also, google bad.



  • @glathull said:

    But other than that, mostly trolling.

    Your trolling is not fun and not creative, though. Go back to troll school.



  • They kicked me out of troll school. 😦

    I wasn't trollish enough.



  • That article isn't even the end of the story yet:

    Several journalists have contacted me to say that a Google PR rep told them my claims were “patently false”. “Patently” means clear and without doubt. Either someone is not telling the truth or the very nice rep I have been negotiating with, for a year, is patently unclear. ... [ZK's transcript of a conversation with YouTube rep]

    [ZK] If i wanted to just let content ID keep doing it’s thing, and it does a great job at and i’m totally happy with it and i don’t want to participate in the music service, is that an option?

    [YouTube rep] That’s unfortunately not an option.

    [ZK] Assuming i don’t want to, then what would occur?

    [YT] ... the content that you directly upload from accounts that you own under the content owner attached to the agreement, we’ll have to block that content. but anything that comes up that we’re able to scan and match through content ID we could just apply a track policy but the commercial terms no longer apply so there’s not going to be any revenue generated.

    So... I'm not sure what part Google is claiming is patently false, because it sure sounds to me like their left hand doesn't know what their right hand is doing.



  • In seriousness I'm not sure what to make of this.

    Artist wants free, unlimited access to distribution. Google says, no. If you are going to be popular enough to get on our radar, you are costing us money. We want our cut.

    Artist says, "No thanks."

    Google says, "Okay, we are going to fucks you ups, Lebowski."

    What's the problem?



  • The problem, at least IMO, is that your description is not even remotely close to what's happening.

    What is happening -- or at least what was happening according to Zoe Keating (there's some measure of Google not knowing what it's doing and/or backpedaling) -- is that Google is using YouTube's dominating position in the market to strongarm artists into signing up for its music streaming service. IMO, that's exactly the worst sort of behavior that things like the antitrust act are intended to prevent.

    Google already gets a cut of the affected artists' money, because the people being affected are those who currently use ContentID to place ads on, but not block, other users' uploads of their music. Google and the artist split the take on those ads currently. Now Google is removing that as an option unless the artists also sign up for the music service.



  • @EvanED said:

    So... I'm not sure what part Google is claiming is patently false, because it sure sounds to me like their left hand doesn't know what their right hand is doing.

    I believe what happened is someone high up at Google said, "hey this article is embarrassing us. We need to change the terms of this thing before we get roasted."
    "But what about the article itself?"
    "Let's just say the terms were always as generous as the ones we're changing to, and that the representative lied to her."



  • Okay, let me rephrase then.

    Google provides a platform that allows indie artists to put their content out there so that people can make the artist famous.

    Google says, "We want a bigger cut."

    I really don't see the problem. Do you know what it would have cost Zoe to host her own music and videos? It would have cost a lot.

    As far as I can tell, she is whining about Google not being free for her anymore. She has to commit to a recording label just like everyone else has to when they get big enough.

    Sign on the dotted line or go get someone else to pay your distribution costs. Google is paying for her distribution. When that cost is low because no one watches your shit, then Google does things for free.

    But when you get popular, Google wants a piece of the action. Well duh.

    I'm happy to be wrong, I just don't see it your way at the moment.



  • @glathull said:

    Do you know what it would have cost Zoe to host her own music and videos? It would have cost a lot.

    Did I miss some Great VPS Crisis of 2015? With Google's infrastructure, she probably costs them as much as the cafeteria sandwich. And she could probably host the videos/music herself (or via her label/whatever), but what YouTube gets her is publicity - people will notice her in suggested videos, click on links, etc. But that goes both ways - artists are one of the main forces driving people to YouTube.

    Normally, you'd just split the share on the ads and everything would be fine, but Google decided to whip out the magenta dildo to fuck the artists with and basically said "if you want any cash, or even to keep your videos you've posted, your collective ass is ours now".



  • @glathull said:

    As far as I can tell, she is whining about Google not being free for her anymore. ... But when you get popular, Google wants a piece of the action.
    Then you need to work on your reading comprehension. As I said, Google has a piece of the action.

    @glathull said:

    She has to commit to a recording label just like everyone else has to when they get big enough.
    So first, there's nothing in this thing that is about labels. Second, why the "just like everyone else"? One of the great things about the internet is that it should dramatically lower the need to sign onto a label! I mean, put it this way. For all its flaws, ContentID does something that, in one respect, is actually really cool: it allows people to make creative derivative works of things (covers, edits, use songs as soundtracks on videos) and yet not be completely screwing the original artist because the artist can monetize those uses.

    And what Google is doing is removing this as an option, and saying "you can either sign up with our music service or screw over your fans that have done that (and forgo that revenue stream) or not monetize those videos". (And by the way, that last bit is an explicit argument against yours: Google would be "fine" with Keating removing her music from ContentID and not signing up for the streaming service, and then nothing would be monetized for anyone, including Google.) But I view the music service as a complete red herring; it's almost entirely unrelated to YouTube. Like I said, I think Google is taking YT's dominant position and using it to strongarm the artists.

    Like, IANAL and so I don't want to get into whether I think that this behavior is actually illegal, but I view it basically as tying. And I could go and write any tying case you care to present in a "$MONOPOLIST just says $WHATEVER; I don't really see the problem", and unless you think that there's just fundamentally no ethical problem with tying, I'd eventually find one that you had to argue against. For me, this meets that bar.



  • @EvanED said:

    IANAL

    I don't.



  • There's no great crisis, but this person has been working for years to build up a name, allegedly. Bandwidth wasn't free the last time I checked. Even if it were, she'd still have to learn how to run a streaming service, and opportunity cost isn't free either.



  • @EvanED said:

    So first, there's nothing in this thing that is about labels. Second, why the "just like everyone else"? One of the great things about the internet is that it should dramatically lower the need to sign onto a label! I mean, put it this way. For all its flaws, ContentID does something that, in one respect, is actually really cool: it allows people to make creative derivative works of things (covers, edits, use songs as soundtracks on videos) and yet not be completely screwing the original artist because the artist can monetize those uses.

    And what Google is doing is removing this as an option, and saying "you can either sign up with our music service or screw over your fans that have done that (and forgo that revenue stream) or not monetize those videos". (And by the way, that last bit is an explicit argument against yours: Google would be "fine" with Keating removing her music from ContentID and not signing up for the streaming service, and then nothing would be monetized for anyone, including Google.) But I view the music service as a complete red herring; it's almost entirely unrelated to YouTube. Like I said, I think Google is taking YT's dominant position and using it to strongarm the artists.

    Like, IANAL and so I don't want to get into whether I think that this behavior is actually illegal, but I view it basically as tying. And I could go and write any tying case you care to present in a "$MONOPOLIST just says $WHATEVER; I don't really see the problem", and unless you think that there's just fundamentally no ethical problem with tying, I'd eventually find one that you had to argue against. For me, this meets that bar.

    I get that you and a bunch of other people are very upset about this. My "just like everyone else" comment comes from the fact that nothing is free. It's a generalization. I don't care about the nitty-gritty details. Google already had a piece of the action, now they want a bigger piece, now they want your whole ass. Whatever. Doesn't matter.

    This is what happens when you don't own your platform and you don't take control of your brand. This is precisely what happens when you put your stuff our there on someone else's shit. As maciej pointed out, it's not that expensive to do this yourself. But my response is that it's expensive enough that no one really rolls their own.

    You go out and build a brand on YouTube. You have made a deal with Darth Vader here. You can pray that he doesn't alter it further. You know this. Everyone knows this. But then he alters the deal.

    Are we surprised? Apparently, some people are. ZK got into this deal for free. She put her stuff on youtube at no cost to herself. Boom. Just free bandwidth to begin with. Then she leveraged that free shit to build a brand. She got followers. Google got interested, google gave her ads and revenue--all at no or a very small cost to her.

    Now google wants her to commit to the platform that gave her some modicum of success to begin with, all at no charge, all with no commitment, all with her not really being all that good of a musician to begin with.

    This is an outrage how? Because google changed the terms of the deal? It's fucking google! What do you expect? And it's also real life where if you use stuff for free you can guaran-damn-tee you will pay for it down the road.

    I don't see how there's any monopolist/abuse behavior going on here. What exactly does YouTube have a monopoly on? Free video hosting services? The not-so-free services that take a cut of your ads (which, by the way, you don't have to sell all by yourself, google provides those for you too). Does google have a monopoly on recording contracts and exclusivity deals?

    No. There's no anti-trust behavior going on here. What's going on here is that a bunch of kids are pissed off that a company that claims to do no evil is actually acting like a company and trying to make money on something besides display ads for once in its life.

    Get off my lawn, you kids don't remember how awful it was in the early 80s, etc. etc. etc. fine. I just think this whole thing is an absurd and whiney thing to be upset about.



  • @glathull said:

    As maciej pointed out, it's not that expensive to do this yourself. But my response is that it's expensive enough that no one really rolls their own.

    You're missing the point. It's not the matter of cost - after all, much bigger artists and record labels are on YouTube, even though they have enough money to host the songs until the end of the universe. It's the matter of publicity - YouTube is easily sharable, embeddable, and gets you people via recommendations.

    @glathull said:

    You go out and build a brand on YouTube. You have made a deal with Darth Vader here. You can pray that he doesn't alter it further. You know this. Everyone knows this. But then he alters the deal.

    And you're just saying it's perfectly fine to do so. Even though the alteration is basically retroactive due to that one single line that says "if you opt out now, we're taking all you've got down". Even though they're pulling what's not much more than a bait and switch. Even though Google is abusing their power as a pretty much only notable video hosting provider, which is exactly the situation the antitrust acts seek to prevent, except it's not Microsoft this time, so nobody gives a fuck.

    @glathull said:

    I don't see how there's any monopolist/abuse behavior going on here.

    You have a serious fucking problem with your ethics, then.

    They're punishing people who don't sign pretty much all the rights out to YouTube by taking down their content, without any way to simply opt out and keep your videos on an allegedly free video hosting site. There's no way to vote with your feet for people, because YouTube has gobbled up any other notable video sharing site and they'll have to keep coming back because all content is there, and because of that there's no way to do so for artists if they want to share their music and videos in an accessible way.

    If that's not a monopoly abuse, then fucking tell me what is.



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    They're punishing people who don't sign pretty much all the rights out to YouTube by taking down their content, without any way to simply opt out and keep your videos on an allegedly free video hosting site. There's no way to vote with your feet for people, because YouTube has gobbled up any other notable video sharing site and they'll have to keep coming back because all content is there, and because of that there's no way to do so for artists if they want to share their music and videos in an accessible way.

    If that's not a monopoly abuse, then fucking tell me what is.

    What?! YouTube is taking down content? From their own platform? Because people don't want to agree to their terms of service?

    Color me both shaken and stirred.

    You seem to be under the severely mistaken impression that a) people go to YouTube to discover content, and b) that people care what the beginning of a link looks like.

    When was the last time you looked at a link and thought to yourself, "Hmmm. I'm pretty sure that's a video. But it doesn't say youtube at the front. I guess I won't click it."?

    You've never done that. No one has ever thought that. Ever.

    When was the last time you thought to yourself, "Hmmm. I'm kind of bored right now. I have no idea what to do. I know! I'll go to YouTube and just randomly search for stuff in a desperate attempt to fill this empty hole that some people call a soul! Yes! That's exactly what I need to do!"?

    No one does that either. Ever.

    Calling google a monopolist in the free video sharing platform space and getting angry when they change the way they want to handle your content is like getting angry at McDonald's because they won't serve you a decent steak, then screaming about how they have a monopoly on the only kind of food that's convenient for you to eat, and by the way, if you disagree with me, your ethics are suspect.

    Go to a grocery store, you whiny brat. Try paying for shit every once in a while. I just checked in with my ethics. They are doing fine in the dungeon I keep them in. Quite healthy considering that I feed them almost nothing.



  • @glathull said:

    When was the last time you thought to yourself, "Hmmm. I'm kind of bored right now. I have no idea what to do. I know! I'll go to YouTube and just randomly search for stuff in a desperate attempt to fill this empty hole that some people call a soul! Yes! That's exactly what I need to do!"?

    No one does that either. Ever.

    Okay, now you're just delusional. Or trolling. Both possibilities make continuing this discussion entirely fucking pointless.

    I think even @ben_lubar would call you a fucking Google apologist at this point.



  • @glathull said:

    When was the last time you thought to yourself, "Hmmm. I'm kind of bored right now. I have no idea what to do. I know! I'll go to YouTube and just randomly search for stuff in a desperate attempt to fill this empty hole that some people call a soul! Yes! That's exactly what I need to do!"?

    No one does that either. Ever.

    You really don't think millions of people dick around on YouTube every day for entertainment?



  • I'm doing it right now! 1 down, 999999n to go!



  • Stop filling your empty hole!



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    They're punishing people who don't sign pretty much all the rights out to YouTube by taking down their content, without any way to simply opt out and keep your videos on an allegedly free video hosting site.

    No they are not. The artist is still free to put all his/her content up on youtube for free. Nothing have changed there.

    What Google is changing is what happens for artists who want to be paid each time their content is shown on Youtube.

    They can now only be paid if they sign up for googles music service.



  • Yes. Of course people go around wasting tons of time on YouTube with no particular point. I didn't say that they don't.

    I said that people don't start with a blank youtube page and just search for random stuff. The entry point for every youtube session is always a link to something from an external source. You might spend a lot of time on the "related" stuff, and you might think, "Oh that's funny/awesome!" and then you think it's a good idea to search for retarded midget porn.

    But my point is that no one actually goes out and searches for "attractive classical cellist" and ends up at one of ZK's videos.

    She isn't discoverable that way, and people don't discover content on youtube that way.

    On the other hand, you can Bing and decide to search for ZK or you can search for her on duckduckgo or even yahoo! and get to one of her videos faster than if you try to find her through a more generic search on youtube itself.

    If google were hiding search results and forcing you to actually be on the youtube platform to find her videos, I might have a sliver of sympathy for your monopolist argument. But that's not the case.

    There is no monopoly. What there is here is a situation where a person uses a free platform to market herself. Then she uses google's free service to monetize herself and make an admittedly small amount of money. Then google looks at the situation and says, "Hey, you've done pretty well for yourself. You've used your talent and your ingenuity and marketing abilities to get some attention. Good for you. Now you have to pay the piper for all that free shit you've used."

    It's ugly; it's bad. It's typical google in all its stupid ways. But it's not monopolistic bullshit that is being called here. Any other free video sharing service would be just as advantageous to ZK as youtube is. It's a link to a free hosting service; it's just as discoverable via search; it's just as free.

    The only possible argument for monopoly here is that no other platform could provide the relatively small amounts of money that ZK has made. A) it's a small amount of money. The damage is small, and B) By all means, sound the alarms!! Google has a monopoly on google's network of advertisers!! The horror!

    The bottom line here is that a bunch of people are all butthurt because something you thought was free turned out not to be free. I'm shocked--shocked, I tell you. Learn to pay for shit. Own your identity and your artistic work. Don't farm those things out to someone else and expect good results.



  • @glathull said:

    I said that people don't start with a blank youtube page and just search for random stuff. The entry point for every youtube session is always a link to something from an external source.

    Um....you're wrong?



  • Okay, I'm willing to entertain that. Am I wrong in a meaninglessly pedantic way because you and one other person are doing that right now so that you can say that I'm wrong? Or are you suggesting that this is a typical use-case?



  • This post is deleted!


  • And from that data you can extrapolate . . . nothing that has to do with my point.




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