YouTube – The Piracy Profiteers

 

Everyone knows you can find almost anything on YouTube and in most ways they are one of the best replacements for what used to be the domain of “Encyclopedias”  or “How To Books” toss in any number of other information or sound collections and you get what they are today.

 

All is well and fine, many people make a fortune as an author on YouTube, however there is a dark side to YouTube now owned by Google. That dark side is how they penalize users for pirated content, while they make millions on the same pirated content.

 

You see it’s all about how much money YouTube makes and how little the actual producer of that content makes that brings us to near slave to master contracts with the producers of the videos.

 

Long gone are the days when you could make a decent dollar for your efforts, now YouTube offers crumbs for your efforts while racking in millions of dollars for unpaid effort of YouTube producers.

 

Then comes online YouTube music and YouTubes latest scam.

 

If you upload a video containing a recording artist’s music in the background, they will inform you that you cannot make money on that video, however they do not tell you that they do make money on that video. So how do they bend the copyright act into profits for themselves?

 

Easy, they allow artists to claim profits from ads placed on your “pirated content” uploads, the video is the up loaders, but the music belongs to the artists, so instead of sharing profits, you the producer, YouTube gets your share and the artist gets his for the soundtrack.

 

Now here is the real kicker, or dirty deal by YouTube, this should be illegal or criminal, yet they get awat with it. If a sound tract gets a “STRIKE” meaning a taketown order for violation copyright law, YouTube passes on that strike to the producer, with the three strikes and you lose your account rule.

 

Meanwhile YouTube makes all the profit on both the striked videos and dodges the fact no one knows if using a musicians music will result in a strike or not, so YouTube makes millions, and leave the producers on the hook when they get a strike.

 

That’s a pretty cool deal, make all the money from piracy, and pass on the punishment to YouTube users or producers.

 

 

Addendum: The following is a letter I received in responce to this article.

 

Hello Jake,

Google owns Youtube and I find these bastards unbelievable. I produced over 50 videos, I never tried to make any money on them, meaning I never monetized them. They have pop music backgrounds so not my music and it results in them being labelled as Restricted due to copyright claim on the music.

 

I am fine with that, but hear me out.

 

They have the videos flagged with “The content identified in your video is listed below, along with details and actions.”

Then they tell you the video is blocked in “Guatemala, Uruguay, Bolivia, Mexico, Belize, U.S. Virgin Islands, Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, Suriname, Guam, U.S. Outlying Islands, El Salvador, Chile, French Guiana, Colombia, Northern Mariana Islands, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, United States, Honduras, Peru, American Samoa, Paraguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Guyana, Argentina, Puerto Rico

 

That’s fine also, then they tell you

 

“Ads may appear on your uploaded videos even if you haven’t monetized the videos yourself. If your video contains content to which you don’t own all necessary rights, the rights holder may have chosen to place ads on it. YouTube may also place ads on videos in channels not in the YouTube Partner Program.”

 

Youtube has a built in screening device when you upload a video.

 

“Our Copyright Management Suite is powered by Content ID matching, best-in-class technology used to detect potentially infringing content. It consists of our public DMCA webform, available to all 2 billion users who come to YouTube; the Copyright Match tool, our tool designed specifically for Creators and available to over 1,000,000 of them; and Content ID, our enterprise solution for those with scaled rights management needs like music labels, movie studios, or collection societies”

 

Now consider YOUTUBE is earning money, and paying artists from videos I upload, how the hell do they have the nerve to find a tiny percentage of artists, who refuse to share and order take down notices.

 

I used to consider Bryan Adams one of my favourite singers, but no more, that gready jackass hands out strikes when all you did was promote his music, that he would have been paid for as well. Not to mention why the hell does Google not simply add his music to the list they already have of music that they will block? See the message I got below.

 

“A copyright owner asked us to take down your video because they believe it contains material that violates their copyright. As a result: Your video was removed from YouTube

 

Your channel received a strike

 

If you get 3 copyright strikes, your account (along with any associated channels) will be subject to termination.”