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ASk HN: can youtube be considered a file sharing service now?
I'm finding more and more people on youtube are posting full length albums to their accounts for people to stream and listen to. I know there are a ton of applications which make it easy to convert these to virtually any audio format. With this in mind, can they be considered a music/file sharing service since its so easy for users to illegally download music from their site?
- stfu 14y agoI was wondering about the same. It seems that YouTube is on the one hand super sensitive about certain types of content, while on the other completely ignoring very obvious issues. I would argue that at least 50% of videos with a length of 30 minutes or more are in some form either a tv or movie rips.
- lewisgodowski 14y agoHmmm. Interesting question. I'm not sure it could be considered a file sharing service, because technically they aren't sharing the files. It's perfectly legal to allow music and whatnot to be streamed online (assuming you own the rights to the content). Users have just found a way around that so they can rip whatever is shared there. Using your same logic, couldn't movie studios selling DVDs be considered a file sharing service, because of how easy it is to rip the content off of them and onto your computer? From a producer and sound design/engineering perspective, I would never consider ripping a YouTube video due to the terrible bitrate of the audio. The max bitrate supported by YouTube is 192kbps, which is really lossy. If I can't get my hands on a lossless format (WAV), the lowest I'll consider going is 320kbps. Although, for the average listener, 192kbps is probably good enough. Especially when factoring in the fact that they're probably listening on crappy laptop speakers or overpriced Beats headphones.