6 ms·

My understanding is that copyrighted content on Youtube is often uploaded under the guise of anonymous users, but this is illusory. Unauthorized videos are take

My understanding is that copyrighted content on Youtube is often uploaded under the guise of anonymous users, but this is illusory. Unauthorized videos are taken down with vigilance, we see this happening to content creators all the time for no good reason. If these videos get the thumbs up to stay up, they're in cahoots with copyright holders somehow (most likely) or are deliberately ignored for some other reason. One think you'll notice is that not just corporate sponsored content is region-locked; sometimes "anonymous" user videos get region locked. That is not a coincidence. All of which to say, I expect this to be the same case on PH. There's the usual wackamole game of unauthorized content being taken down, but much of what stays up from unauthorized sources probably does so out of permission that is not apparent on the surface. I think streaming companies place a premium on the appearance of content coming from users, and this is the result. If I'm right, then changes may not significantly alter the level of traffic to PH, which is what everyone is soothsaying about: that users will just go elsewhere. But I'm curious what's going to happen. Like you said, PH's model looks to ape youtube's, and the latter does not appear to be entirely reliant on "stolen" content.

nucleardog 6y ago
> Unauthorized videos are taken down with vigilance, we see this happening to content creators all the time for no good reason. If these videos get the thumbs up to stay up, they're in cahoots with copyright holders somehow (most likely) or are deliberately ignored for some other reason. One think you'll notice is that not just corporate sponsored content is region-locked; sometimes "anonymous" user videos get region locked. That is not a coincidence. This is all much less nefarious than you make it sound. When a rights-holder finds their IP in a video, they have the option of how to proceed. They can choose to take the video down completely, run ads and receive all or a share of the revenue, etc. If they choose to leave it up, it's almost always because they are receiving all of the revenue from the video now so they have no reason to take it down. There's no smokey back room deals going on here, this is just the rights enforcement tools provided by YouTube. Rights-holders do not always hold global rights to content and if the video contains content from multiple rights-holders, there are several competing claims that all need to be resolved. The reason the videos uploaded by users eventually end up resembling the videos uploaded by the rights-holder is because YouTube provides a mechanism for rights-holders to enforce the same restrictions they operate under on their content even when they weren't the ones to upload it. Source: I work in a company that does this, though not directly on that side of the business.
- slothtrop 6y ago
  There are account penalization i.e. a strike system associated with frequent infringement complaints, and it doesn't take many. While it's certainly the case that copyright holders will simply take over the revenue from unauthorized videos, my expectation is that most of these uploaders are not unwitting anonymous types: they actually represent the company. I had read an article years ago detailing that this can be the case but I can't be arsed to find it right now. It's not a huge leap when you consider it's also been revealed that a good chunk of torrents at one time had been seeded by IPs belonging to corporates.
asdf333 6y ago
Not in the beginning. You could find whole seasons of various copyrighted shows no problem.
- smaryjerry 6y ago
  You still can, usually they take up like only 2/3 of the image though.
  - marknutter 6y ago
    And they're sped up by like 50%.
nullc 6y ago
Youtube has broad 'covenant not to sue' contracts with various rights holding organizations which allows them to safely leave up infringing works while the rights holders can avoid paying residuals to artists whos contracts lacked the foresight to anticipate this kind of fraud. AFAIK porn performers don't generally get paid residuals, so there probably less interest in this sort of skulduggery.
bigbubba 6y ago
If youtube user bigbubba420 uploads a music video for an 80s synthpop song he doesn't own, the copyright owner for that video informs youtube of their ownership claim and revenue from the video an anonymous user uploaded is redirected into their pockets.
- slothtrop 6y ago
  This is true, though now bigbubba420 gets a strike on his account for the complaint and inches closer to a ban. And music uploaders throw on a ton of content, so I don't see how it can merely be a case of ad revenues taken over and continuing to do the same with impunity.
- coryrc 6y ago
  Also if travel_vlogger happens to walk by a store playing the radio, the ownership of their video and revenue is given to the music company and you can't do anything about it. Just easier to steal from the little guy.
grumple 6y ago
> Unauthorized videos are taken down with vigilance This is not universally true. For example, you can go on YouTube right now and probably find all sorts of music videos not hosted by the actual artists, so long as it’s older or more obscure music. Plus at this point it’s kind of moot; they already gained their user base from the first several years of illegal new content.
kodah 6y ago
Be aware you're comparing Google to a much smaller company. Of course they had the ability to do full DRM search much sooner. I'd look through the lens of technical hurdles much before I'd look through the lens of moralism.
- slothtrop 6y ago
  This is a good point. I don't think MindGeek is as sophisticated in detecting and taking down infringing content. However, complaints do get filed and videos do get taken down for infringing.
  - fakedang 6y ago
    > videos do get taken down for infringing. After a Lot of suffering. I believe there was an incident recently in which Pornhub refused to take down videos of a minor in what was an obvious situation of revenge porn.
    - slothtrop 6y ago
      I mean in the case of infringing on copyright. It's near instant. As far as revenge porn I don't think they gave it much thought.
      - fakedang 6y ago
        Yeah, well that means they got their priorities reversed badly, for this kind of business. I think the current model should have been the default from the start - if verified, paid content creators were the only ones allowed, they would get a much bigger share from their videos. Thank fuck Ryan Creamer was verified.
ericlewis 6y ago
This most certainly wasn't the case for YouTube in the early days either. Once Google took over they were WAY more strict about locking down infringing works.
viraptor 6y ago
> Unauthorized videos are taken down with vigilance, Yeah, right. Tell that to the flood of channels which will take cut single scenes out of tv series and twitch recordings and upload them to YT monetized.
- jokethrowaway 6y ago
  Isn't there some limited amount reproduction fair use?
  - viraptor 6y ago
    I would expect it applies to the separate cases, but not to an account which exists only for that purpose. There are cases where whole episodes / movies are split into pieces and posted in a playlist.
marknutter 6y ago
No, dude. I remember back in college when Youtube was the source for copyrighted content. That's how they got their start.

nucleardog 6y ago

> Unauthorized videos are taken down with vigilance, we see this happening to content creators all the time for no good reason. If these videos get the thumbs up to stay up, they're in cahoots with copyright holders somehow (most likely) or are deliberately ignored for some other reason. One think you'll notice is that not just corporate sponsored content is region-locked; sometimes "anonymous" user videos get region locked. That is not a coincidence. This is all much less nefarious than you make it sound. When a rights-holder finds their IP in a video, they have the option of how to proceed. They can choose to take the video down completely, run ads and receive all or a share of the revenue, etc. If they choose to leave it up, it's almost always because they are receiving all of the revenue from the video now so they have no reason to take it down. There's no smokey back room deals going on here, this is just the rights enforcement tools provided by YouTube. Rights-holders do not always hold global rights to content and if the video contains content from multiple rights-holders, there are several competing claims that all need to be resolved. The reason the videos uploaded by users eventually end up resembling the videos uploaded by the rights-holder is because YouTube provides a mechanism for rights-holders to enforce the same restrictions they operate under on their content even when they weren't the ones to upload it. Source: I work in a company that does this, though not directly on that side of the business.

slothtrop 6y ago
There are account penalization i.e. a strike system associated with frequent infringement complaints, and it doesn't take many. While it's certainly the case that copyright holders will simply take over the revenue from unauthorized videos, my expectation is that most of these uploaders are not unwitting anonymous types: they actually represent the company. I had read an article years ago detailing that this can be the case but I can't be arsed to find it right now. It's not a huge leap when you consider it's also been revealed that a good chunk of torrents at one time had been seeded by IPs belonging to corporates.

asdf333 6y ago

Not in the beginning. You could find whole seasons of various copyrighted shows no problem.

smaryjerry 6y ago
You still can, usually they take up like only 2/3 of the image though.
- marknutter 6y ago
  And they're sped up by like 50%.

nullc 6y ago

Youtube has broad 'covenant not to sue' contracts with various rights holding organizations which allows them to safely leave up infringing works while the rights holders can avoid paying residuals to artists whos contracts lacked the foresight to anticipate this kind of fraud. AFAIK porn performers don't generally get paid residuals, so there probably less interest in this sort of skulduggery.

bigbubba 6y ago

If youtube user bigbubba420 uploads a music video for an 80s synthpop song he doesn't own, the copyright owner for that video informs youtube of their ownership claim and revenue from the video an anonymous user uploaded is redirected into their pockets.

slothtrop 6y ago
This is true, though now bigbubba420 gets a strike on his account for the complaint and inches closer to a ban. And music uploaders throw on a ton of content, so I don't see how it can merely be a case of ad revenues taken over and continuing to do the same with impunity.
coryrc 6y ago
Also if travel_vlogger happens to walk by a store playing the radio, the ownership of their video and revenue is given to the music company and you can't do anything about it. Just easier to steal from the little guy.

grumple 6y ago

> Unauthorized videos are taken down with vigilance This is not universally true. For example, you can go on YouTube right now and probably find all sorts of music videos not hosted by the actual artists, so long as it’s older or more obscure music. Plus at this point it’s kind of moot; they already gained their user base from the first several years of illegal new content.

kodah 6y ago

Be aware you're comparing Google to a much smaller company. Of course they had the ability to do full DRM search much sooner. I'd look through the lens of technical hurdles much before I'd look through the lens of moralism.

slothtrop 6y ago
This is a good point. I don't think MindGeek is as sophisticated in detecting and taking down infringing content. However, complaints do get filed and videos do get taken down for infringing.
- fakedang 6y ago
  > videos do get taken down for infringing. After a Lot of suffering. I believe there was an incident recently in which Pornhub refused to take down videos of a minor in what was an obvious situation of revenge porn.
  - slothtrop 6y ago
    I mean in the case of infringing on copyright. It's near instant. As far as revenge porn I don't think they gave it much thought.
    - fakedang 6y ago
      Yeah, well that means they got their priorities reversed badly, for this kind of business. I think the current model should have been the default from the start - if verified, paid content creators were the only ones allowed, they would get a much bigger share from their videos. Thank fuck Ryan Creamer was verified.

ericlewis 6y ago

This most certainly wasn't the case for YouTube in the early days either. Once Google took over they were WAY more strict about locking down infringing works.

viraptor 6y ago

> Unauthorized videos are taken down with vigilance, Yeah, right. Tell that to the flood of channels which will take cut single scenes out of tv series and twitch recordings and upload them to YT monetized.

jokethrowaway 6y ago
Isn't there some limited amount reproduction fair use?
- viraptor 6y ago
  I would expect it applies to the separate cases, but not to an account which exists only for that purpose. There are cases where whole episodes / movies are split into pieces and posted in a playlist.

marknutter 6y ago

No, dude. I remember back in college when Youtube was the source for copyrighted content. That's how they got their start.