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Your hypothetical scenario is silly: it relies on the dubious assumption that neither YouTube nor the viewers have any agency about who they give money to. The

Your hypothetical scenario is silly: it relies on the dubious assumption that neither YouTube nor the viewers have any agency about who they give money to. The agency of the viewers was discussed in the other responses, so let's focus on the agency of YouTube. Why would YouTube pay ad revenue to a "bunch of other people" in a hypothetical world where YouTube could freely and legally host a copy of the content themselves, and take all the ad revenue for themselves? They have an incentive to pay something the creator (if they think that doing so would motivate them to create more content, and hence lead to more ad revenue in the future), but certainly not to a bunch of random people uploading the same content.

slver 6y ago
Your argument in favor of YouTube protecting IP rights basically applies 1:1 about the government protecting it. You do realize if YouTube alone protected copyright, we'd have a NotYouTube clone setup within minutes where the copies and ads will go to, or not? We have governments for this stuff, so we don't have to play whack-a-mole with copycats all over the internet and the world.
- saithound 6y ago
  1. I didn't give an argument in favor of YouTube protecting IP rights. 2. No that argument is still silly. It does not work for the same reason: it assumes no agency on part of economic actors. The only way your hypothetical "NotYouTube" could stay in business vs. YouTube is by adding enough value that they actually get ad revenue. If people decide to advertise on "NotYouTube", to the extent that it is profitable to run "NotYouTube", then "NotYouTube" will have the exact same incentive to motivate content creators by sharing part of their ad revenue with them. The argument is precisely that these copycats are a net positive: coordinating against them (playing whack-a-mole) is a net negative, with or without governments.
  - slver 6y ago
    > The only way your hypothetical "NotYouTube" could stay in business vs. YouTube is by adding enough value that they actually get ad revenue. Well, they have the same content as YouTube for starters. So all they need is a slightly sexier or faster app, and they're done. > "NotYouTube" will have the exact same incentive to motivate content creators by sharing part of their ad revenue with them. "NotYouTube" doesn't have content creators. Why would they. They have YouTube's content. See, the part you keep missing in your analysis is that without IP rights, NotYoutube doesn't need original content, full stop. It just needs to copy/paste YouTube's content. They don't have to share ad revenue with anyone. You really need to think through the entire chain of events that'll unfold if we had no IP rights. Creators will no longer be someone you need to deal with. They're just the gullible idiots who made something on their own, for others to just take it and profit from it. In a world without IP rights, content is worthless. So who would bother producing it? Let's figure that out. The only way for content producers to profit would be product placement deals. However the product placement should be inseparable from the content, because in a world without IP rights, anyone can just cut out the ads and sponsored messages from your content. So what's the conclusion here? All content will be just... ads. Not videos WITH ads. But the videos themselves will be ads. Ads for products you can sell, as those are the only thing you can sell for money in a world without IP rights. Probably also political propaganda, as politicians can pay for that as well, and then embezzle it from the budget. That's going to be all of it. Wow, I just got sad imagining that.
    - saithound 6y ago
      > So all they need is a slightly sexier or faster app, and they're done. YouTube is not just an app, it's a network that can distribute content along the lines of "200 million videos watched, 65k new videos uploaded per day", it's also the people who moderate it, it's also the people who market it, uptime and reliability, etc. And you'd have to beat YouTube on every single one of these to get at even a substantial fragment of those precious ad dollars. Notice that your hypothetical "NotYouTube" does not have _any_ advantage over actual-YouTube in a world without IP. It's in the business of connecting advertisers to potential customers, just like YouTube, and to be able to do that, they need content that people watch. And hence, it has an incentive to support the creation of such content. Especially so if it becomes the market leader (by having a slightly sexier app, or larger reach, or less obtrusive ads, or better recommendations, or a nicer privacy policy, some other appeal^1): with that advantage, more people will watch the new content on their website than elsewhere, so it will be able to get more ad revenue from hosting it than its competitors. There might be > You really need to think through the entire chain of events that'll unfold if we had no IP rights. Agreed. We should be especially careful not to: 1. assume that Econ 101 would also cease to apply, and that anyone would be able to make money by spinning up YouTube clones. If your dystopian vision was correct, Wikipedia would have been outcompeted by one of its ad-supported mirrors long ago. ^1 Note: All of these are QoL improvements for the users of the services. As long as there are many more content consumers than content creators (and there is overlap between the two categories), this may constitute a further argument against IP rights.

slver 6y ago

Your argument in favor of YouTube protecting IP rights basically applies 1:1 about the government protecting it. You do realize if YouTube alone protected copyright, we'd have a NotYouTube clone setup within minutes where the copies and ads will go to, or not? We have governments for this stuff, so we don't have to play whack-a-mole with copycats all over the internet and the world.

saithound 6y ago
1. I didn't give an argument in favor of YouTube protecting IP rights. 2. No that argument is still silly. It does not work for the same reason: it assumes no agency on part of economic actors. The only way your hypothetical "NotYouTube" could stay in business vs. YouTube is by adding enough value that they actually get ad revenue. If people decide to advertise on "NotYouTube", to the extent that it is profitable to run "NotYouTube", then "NotYouTube" will have the exact same incentive to motivate content creators by sharing part of their ad revenue with them. The argument is precisely that these copycats are a net positive: coordinating against them (playing whack-a-mole) is a net negative, with or without governments.
- slver 6y ago
  > The only way your hypothetical "NotYouTube" could stay in business vs. YouTube is by adding enough value that they actually get ad revenue. Well, they have the same content as YouTube for starters. So all they need is a slightly sexier or faster app, and they're done. > "NotYouTube" will have the exact same incentive to motivate content creators by sharing part of their ad revenue with them. "NotYouTube" doesn't have content creators. Why would they. They have YouTube's content. See, the part you keep missing in your analysis is that without IP rights, NotYoutube doesn't need original content, full stop. It just needs to copy/paste YouTube's content. They don't have to share ad revenue with anyone. You really need to think through the entire chain of events that'll unfold if we had no IP rights. Creators will no longer be someone you need to deal with. They're just the gullible idiots who made something on their own, for others to just take it and profit from it. In a world without IP rights, content is worthless. So who would bother producing it? Let's figure that out. The only way for content producers to profit would be product placement deals. However the product placement should be inseparable from the content, because in a world without IP rights, anyone can just cut out the ads and sponsored messages from your content. So what's the conclusion here? All content will be just... ads. Not videos WITH ads. But the videos themselves will be ads. Ads for products you can sell, as those are the only thing you can sell for money in a world without IP rights. Probably also political propaganda, as politicians can pay for that as well, and then embezzle it from the budget. That's going to be all of it. Wow, I just got sad imagining that.
  - saithound 6y ago
    > So all they need is a slightly sexier or faster app, and they're done. YouTube is not just an app, it's a network that can distribute content along the lines of "200 million videos watched, 65k new videos uploaded per day", it's also the people who moderate it, it's also the people who market it, uptime and reliability, etc. And you'd have to beat YouTube on every single one of these to get at even a substantial fragment of those precious ad dollars. Notice that your hypothetical "NotYouTube" does not have _any_ advantage over actual-YouTube in a world without IP. It's in the business of connecting advertisers to potential customers, just like YouTube, and to be able to do that, they need content that people watch. And hence, it has an incentive to support the creation of such content. Especially so if it becomes the market leader (by having a slightly sexier app, or larger reach, or less obtrusive ads, or better recommendations, or a nicer privacy policy, some other appeal^1): with that advantage, more people will watch the new content on their website than elsewhere, so it will be able to get more ad revenue from hosting it than its competitors. There might be > You really need to think through the entire chain of events that'll unfold if we had no IP rights. Agreed. We should be especially careful not to: 1. assume that Econ 101 would also cease to apply, and that anyone would be able to make money by spinning up YouTube clones. If your dystopian vision was correct, Wikipedia would have been outcompeted by one of its ad-supported mirrors long ago. ^1 Note: All of these are QoL improvements for the users of the services. As long as there are many more content consumers than content creators (and there is overlap between the two categories), this may constitute a further argument against IP rights.