YouTube CEO says EU regulation will be bad for creators
theverge.com
theverge.com
It irritates me that no article I have ever read discussing Youtube's failings mentions anything about the people in charge. There have been several articles over the past couple years pointing out Youtube's ill effects on the world. In each case, the author makes it seem that Youtube is just a force of nature, with nobody at the wheel.
Meanwhile, the past week I've read two article that reference Susan Wojcicki, and neither are critical.
At least when Zuckerberg encounters the public, there's a chance someone might give him a piece of their mind over Facebook's failings. I doubt Wojcicki ever hears feedback from the public... nobody knows who she is.
"Information society service providers that store and provide to the public access to large amounts of works or other subject-matter uploaded by their users shall, in cooperation with rightholders, take measures to ensure the functioning of agreements concluded with rightholders for the use of their works or other subject-matter or to prevent the availability on their services of works or other subject-matter identified by rightholders through the cooperation with the service providers. Those measures, such as the use of effective content recognition technologies, shall be appropriate and proportionate. The service providers shall provide rightholders with adequate information on the functioning and the deployment of the measures, as well as, when relevant, adequate reporting on the recognition and use of the works and other subject-matter."
Now, as written, that seems to be not so bad for Youtube who already have content-ID for the rightsholders, but bad for other competing services starting up which would have to develop it?
That is generally the cause, effect and purpose of all government regulations, yes. (for all valid combinations of incumbent megacorp X and costly item Y)
> The service providers shall provide rightholders with adequate information on the functioning and the deployment of the measures, as well as, when relevant, adequate reporting on the recognition and use of the works and other subject-matter.
If I hold the right to any video, or music, YouTube is now required to tell me how their system for identifying copy-right violations work. I suspect this is the part they don't like, because their system does in fact not work particularly well. It works as well as any technical person would expect, but a lawyer at Sony or Disney will have unreasonable expectations about the correctness of Content-ID.
The EFF was recently interviewed [1] and discussed some of these issues and highlighted the importance the Santa Clara principles [2] for more transparent operation.
It's better to have formalized mechanisms than arbitrary behind the scenes processes these companies are running anyway with no transparency. Creators do not benefit from lack of transparency and no due process so this sudden concern for users on article 13 by Youtube and others without rolling out some due process consistent with the Santa Clara principles is entirely self serving and insincere.
[1] https://therealnews.com/stories/social-media-purge-silences-...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/09/santa-cla...
That actually seems low to me, given we're talking about numbers (revenue, users) in the billions.
[0] https://archive.org/details/his_girl_friday
edit: By "robust", I actually mean, "a bit overly proactive", in that the system seems to be efficient in its detection, but the system's design seems unavoidably vulnerable to false positives.
It's overly aggressive and has tons of false positive.
I pay for YouTube TV and their DVR messed up and didn't record 1 episode of a TV series.
After exhausting all legal ways to acquire said content, I found numerous links on page 1 and 2 of Google, offering the content with minimal shadiness. The trick was to search for a very specific titles, such as "Shark Tank Season 1 Episode 1" or "Shark Tank S1E1" etc. This filters out all the "general" results. If 37 year old me, years detached from pirating can figure this out in 10 minutes, it's clear Google gives zero f*cks unless compelled (legally) to do so.
Edit: To clarify, the streams were not hosted on YouTube, but rather Google results led me to 3rd party streaming options. This isn't a criticism of Content ID, more Google's policy towards privacy in general.
That's the true cost of their business. They'd just like to portray it as the law being an ass rather than their solution being inadequate for the laws.
It's a clear case of "Our machines aren't humans and we don't want to have to comply with laws that could substantially damage our payroll spend"
I don't monetise my videos by default but I've have a few videos where I have had 1-2 minutes of copyrighted music. When that happens they will force monetise the whole video for me and send the money made by it to the music copyright holder (BGM in my case). That seems a bit silly to me.
So either you have an automated and overzealous ContentID system or you limit upload capabilities for smaller creators (which would be the death of the internet).
Obviously the best solution would be to burden the copyright owners with prooving that they own certain content. So just DMCA pretty much. The copyright system is just so broken really. It only favors big content owners and middle men.
This whole shitty EU law comes down to this: Old media/distributers were asleep at the wheel for 20 years. Now they realize they're being replaced. So they fight back the only big slow incumbents know how. Legislation and law suits.
Google is not a government service, and YouTube (forget about YouTube-As-You-Want-It) is not a constitutional right.
Have you forgotten that you are talking about an advertising company? That's what Google is.
Don't like the business decisions of a private company? Don't patronize it.
And hey, if you think that you can do better (and that people would give a shit) you can start your competing business. There are many alternatives to every one of Google's business lines, and there are very low barriers to entry.
Fundamentally, though: why are you using a company's product that you dislike so much?
No, this could apply equally to all companies, FaceBook and Twitter for example, or Amazon and their counterfeits. If your platform is too big for you to manage in a way that complies with basic consumer protections, you either need to step up your controls, or shrink your platform.
Do what services should do? Review the content before it's publicly available to ensure it's not breaking laws.
> That is changing and it's a terrible trend
I feel the opposite. For far too long, internet companies have taken liberties of everything being 'opt out' instead of 'opt in'. This is another example of that.
Yes, but how would they do this better than YouTube can? I just feel like it's better to deal with copyright after the fact. A big part of YouTube basically runs on fair use for example. Legislation like article 13 could hurt this doctrine.
> I feel the opposite. For far too long, internet companies have taken liberties of everything being 'opt out' instead of 'opt in'. This is another example of that.
But, it would affect primarily content creators of any kind. Well, the kind that isn't massive and can enter into sweeping deals with rights holders. This might not mean much to a lot of people. But the whole concept or commentary, reaction, memes, etc. and more broadly still, the internet in general relies on people being able to copy and repost and link stuff quickly and without fuss. You would basically change the internet to be even more corporate (i.e. favor big over small creators) than it is today.
Lol no.
It favors people who create original works of authorship that are fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Nothing more, nothing less.
It does not favor people who feel entitled to steal others' intellectual property, and/or who try to circumvent protections.
I really enjoy making docudramas and people enjoy what I create enough that they pay for it. That only works because of copyright.
I regularly pay the copyright office a $50 fee to register the works I create that I believe are most likely to be infringed. I also send around a dozen DMCA takedown notices once or twice a week. If not for the DMCA I would be sending cease and desist letters and filing lawsuits. This is way better.
(It should be noted that the DMCA does not take away my right to sue infringers (and win). It simply provides a simple way for me to quickly stop unauthorized distribution of my work, which happens to be what I care about most, as without the ability to control the distribution of my creative work I could not even dream of making a living from it. Without the existence of powerful tools to stop people from simply copying my work I wouldn't be making it. Which would suck.)
> Now they realize they're being replaced. So they fight back the only big slow incumbents know how. Legislation and law suits.
What do you recommend? Fistfights?
Yeah that's true. I'm saying DMCA is better than ContentID and its ilk.
Let's take a piracy example. I completely agree that DMCA-Takedowns directed at Google should be checked and (if the claim is valid) processed. It gets very problematic when you proactively filter uploads. Uploads should generally be allowed by default.
> What do you recommend? Fistfights?
No. Adapt. I realize this is easier said than done. But any company today has to constantly innovate. Never assume any given business model is save for anything more than short to mid-term. This is easier for tech companies because they breathe this kind of culture. But in the not-so-distant future every company will become more like that, or not exist anymore.
Eh, no. Tech companies have, by and large, just ignored existing legislation thus enabling them to host mountains of content at negligible cost.
They opened the floodgates - they should deal with the water (both that which is original & that which is stolen). They are 100% the cause of this issue and should be 100% of the solution.
If they're not able to do that, then they should get out of the business altogether.
Ignoring laws to lower your costs is not innovative in the slightest. Using the excuse that the internet is a new medium is malarky. Existing rules apply.
An automated filter is fine as long as mistakes can get arbitrated by a human, so the actual amount of human review required is much lower.
Would it? I feel like it would actually spark innovation in the host-your-own space. Which is closer to the original vision of the internet than submitting your content to a third party host that pre-screens it for approval.
Especially if you consider that the EU already explicitly included a ban of purely automated decisions in the GPDR (though "luckily" that is probably not applicable in the context of Article 13, yet).
YouTube doesn't protest the idea of upload filters. YouTube just doesn't want upload filters to be a thing so much that they might end up being regulated and have legal decisions based around them because that means Content ID will be regulated and have legal decisions based around it.
Afaik, this is just a way to reduce profitability of YouTube, which YouTube will be cunningly passing down to the creators and advertisers.
If YouTube thinks like that, thinks of content creators as a consumable asset, that would explain a lot.
So which is it? Do you think YouTube is too much in favour of DMCA or too against it?
Perhaps mystifying and arbitrary is just the way it looks when this kind of law is applied at scale (with robots as prescribed in the law.)
YouTube goes out of its way to grant rights holders a level of control that wouldn't be possible with a strict interpretation of the DMCA because an illegitimate DMCA takedown request would be a felony whereas an illegitimate Content ID claim goes unpunished.
EDIT: Note however that Article 13 strongly implies a system like Content ID. So the irony is that for YouTube Article 13 doesn't really change anything and the filter they complain about is bad for all the same reasons Content ID is bad.
No. DMCA takedown requests go like this
"I represent Bozo Media, they own all sharks wearing hats, and this video is infringing on their rights, take it down"
The only part that's under penalty of perjury (a felony) is the claim that you represent Bozo Media. If you do, you have not committed a crime regardless of whether the rest of what you wrote is obvious nonsense.
Maybe Bozo actually only owns "Toothy the hat-wearing shark", a large orange cartoon shark. Doesn't matter, not a crime to claim they own more.
Maybe the video is of a mouse wearing trousers, which is neither a shark, nor a hat, and definitely isn't the property of Bozo. Doesn't matter, still not a crime.
Is this awful? Yes. But it's the law. You are welcome to go to court, Youtube will even help you get that far if you're determined, but it will almost certainly bankrupt you even if you're right.
Warner vs Hotfile: "Warner adds that the DMCA only requires the penalty of perjury statement to confirm that the sender represents the copyright holder, not that the allegedly infringing links point to their copyrighted material, they say."
I didn't know that, why not? I would have assumed it was but then I'm not a legal expert.
And YT made sure it covers its ass by trading off perfection against making the RIAA/MPAA/etc happy with Content-ID and with who knows what systems and features only available to those big rightsholders.
To be fair, youtube was forced to do so because of corporate, news/media and political pressure. People forget that youtube also fought against the DMCA and corporate/media pressure before they lost.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ezp4xa/youtube-is...
https://www.recode.net/2016/6/20/11974514/taylor-swift-youtu...
> Listening to the CEO of YouTube cry "but think of the content creators!" is about as transparently self-serving as a US politician crying "but think of the children!"
Of course it is self-serving. But it's also true. Youtube has been consistent in their support of fair use because as you pointed out, it's in their own self interest.
The problem for youtube is that content creators on youtube aren't organized or powerful like the media companies. And whatever you think, they have to follow the law and like most companies, they are going to err on the side of caution when they are forced to.
The new EU law isn't great, but it forces Youtube to design systems that don't catch non-infringing content.
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20180906IPR...
> Any action taken by platforms to check that uploads do not breach copyright rules must be designed in such a way as to avoid catching “non-infringing works”.
Youtube is pushing article 13 as an attack of "fair use", when really for Youtube it's mostly an attack on the people uploading full episodes of tv shows with no added commentary.
combine this with:
> Parliament’s position toughens the Commission’s proposed plans to make online platforms and aggregators liable for copyright infringements.
(emphasis mine)
tl;dr: Design a system for a platform where you filter out every copyright infringement, because you're liable for them, but yo're not allowed to have any false positives.
I can see why they're having trouble with this.
But I think it is interesting how much credit these people that monetize YouTube don't give google at all.
Video hosting has always been expensive comparatively. They are large files. You tube stores multiple resolutions of your files.
YouTube hosting your video is free. You don't pay for it. These people that are bringing in $500 - $4,000 crying that 'youtube isn't giving me all my money' seem to also have a sense of entitlement in itself.
YouTube has a relationship with its creators. Creators get free video hosting, a video social platform and they can earn quite a bit of money doing it. YouTube in turns get a portion of the ad money too.
When YouTube demonetizes something they lose money too. They know their system can hurt their bottom-line in the end.
Understanding this is a business relationship between the two entities would probably make their attempts more professional. Maybe open a business that represents a large sets of these YouTubers instead of each one make a video about it. That way their collective views are significant chunk and they can apporoach YouTube as a professional entity.
Instead they post drama videos about it.
Only free videos are hosted for free, so basically be de-monetizing the videos Youtube brings the hosting costs on themselves, among other things.
Torrents seem to be doing it perfectly fine for free.
People keep speaking about YouTube as if its main function is video storage, while if fact the main thing they bring to the table these days is suggestions, search and a massive pre-established audience. If there was a way to plug into their search/suggestions/ads without giving away control of your video files, a lot of high-earning content creators would likely to do just that. However, there is no such option. I'm not aware of any reliable video search outside of Google.
>Understanding this is a business relationship between the two entities would probably make their attempts more professional. Maybe open a business that represents a large sets of these YouTubers instead of each one make a video about it.
But that's the thing. Content creators don't want a business relationship. The promise of Web 2.0 was that there will be no editors or publishers, just a generic UGC platforms. This idea is massively backfiring right now in all kinds of ways.
.. for quick 30s clips that you want to spread virally through a txt msg to my tech-illiterate mother?
I don't follow, your comment makes zero sense and your analogy makes even less sense.
YT warning about regulations means nothing, because the regulations don't force them to be biased against small producers. Though they are, because of business reasons. (But that's their hypocrisy, to show worry about content producers while their real worry is business related.)
> The burden of copyright proof will be too high for most independent creators to instantly demonstrate.
If I record a video, and YT bans it because their faulty algorithm triggered a false alarm, how exactly the "burden of copyright proof" should be "too high" for me?
First of all, they should prove that someone else owns the copyright. If they're mistaken - because of copyright trolls or faulty algorithms - it should be their burden, not the authors'.
That's rather optimistic; it's not a court of law.
According to the rules as written, Youtube is responsible for not taking down the content. If they do not take down content which is actually copyrighted by someone else, they are the ones getting huge fines. Of course they'd err on the side of caution in this case.
I think this is symptomatic of an underlying problem with the increasingly centralised Internet.
It used to be that if you wanted to share content online, you put it on your web site and others could visit. If it was infringing someone else's copyright and they objected, they would send a friendly message and/or legal C&D notice to you, and you'd probably all be sensible about things.
Today, ISPs don't tend to provide everyone with some basic web hosting allowance any more, while a tiny number of huge third party content hosts are making staggering amounts of money from redistributing others' content as a middleman. However, those hosts typically have no obligation to anyone to provide this service.
So all the small creators are making themselves beholden to businesses that see them as the tree that money grows on but are quite happy to cut off a whole branch if there's any fruit that might be rotten rather than risk spoiling the lot.
On top of that, a significant proportion of people are also uploading other people's content to the hosting services, but for some reason the hosting services get to have magic legal shields that mean they can be running extremely lucrative business models based in no small part on turning a blind eye to being accessories to infringement, all while offering debatable social benefits over what we used to have instead.
So I think "erring on the side of caution" is probably understating things. The hosting services would do almost anything to defend that legal shield and their business model, because as things stand the hosts are basically laughing all the way to the bank while mysteriously immune to the normal laws that apply to you and me and while having no real obligation to the people who provide the very content on which the hosting service depends.
The Internet has been handed over to de facto monopolies operating under a thin pretext of competitive legitimacy.
We'll probably see antitrust action to split them up in twenty years or so, by which time it will be too late to make a difference.
The only thing that can change this is physical server decentralisation, which is going to rely on massive bandwidth improvements and nation-state grade security protocols.
When I can run a personal server on a personal device and serve content to thousands - some of whom may want to peer it, if it's interesting enough - then we may see a genuinely free Internet.
As it is, instead of "seeing censorship as damage and routing around it", the Internet has been seen as political damage itself, and the political system has effectively neutered it by reducing it to yet another financialised cultural channel.
Uhh... you can do this right now.
Like most people you may not have the skills or equipment necessary to do so, but 100% anyone can do this today, down to hosting their own DNS server. (And then they can discover that it is much cheaper to pay someone else to do it for them.)
Possibly the most important change that my previous post alluded to was that everyone's ISP used to bundle some basic web space in the same way that they bundled a basic email account and ran their own Usenet server. You automatically had a web site if you just ticked the "on" box, and you could upload your content with a simple FTP transfer. Many ISPs provided some "my first web site" level instructions to get you started on building things yourself, even with the inevitable "under construction" graphic.
Sadly, those days are mostly gone. With the rise of centralised hosting (sorry, "cloud") services, ISPs seem to have backed away from including those kinds of secondary facilities in their typical plans, except for maybe email addresses. And so now, it is mostly only larger organisations and the geeks and enthusiasts who self-host in any meaningful sense, and everyone else is hosting their basic business site on Facebook, their blog on Medium or WP, their geek-friendly site on GitHub, their vlog on YouTube, etc.
People (and companies they work for) respond to incentives.
Dear Youtube / Google / Alphabet, this mess is on your head.
I find it extremely hard to believe that an ad business that depends on scale and a long tail of videos, would ever just limit it to videos produced by big companies.
I'm sure they'll make do even if it passes, because they literally have no choice.
That's orthogonal to what the Article 13 really says. If anything, it will "force" the platforms to prioritize original content over remakes.
However, in implementation, it's much easier to make a few deals with large companies, rather than to ensure that each of the tens of millions of nobodies with 10 subscribers completely adheres to the letter of the law.
All that this regulation does is (surprise!) add intermediaries, reducing the amount of money youtube and content creators get, and increasing the barrier of entry for new creators. Less creators means the customers get less creative content.
Independent content creators don't have the resources to go to EMI and cut a deal for using their music as soundtrack for their videos.
In addition, for a big company being sued is part of business, while for a regular guy it can mean bankruptcy. Taking the risk of using other people's stuff--even if it should obviously be considered fair use--might be too much of a gamble for most people.
This is of course bad because the quality could go down and it makes the whole process more frustrating, but most importantly it makes reviewing stuff risky, specially for negative reviews where it's not unusual for the author of the reviewed item to sue for defamation (and now for using footage without permission) if a negative review becomes popular.
The problem of being sued to shut down negative reviews remains, though.
It's not orthogonal at all. What the CEO said lines up precisely with what Article 13 says.
> If anything, it will "force" the platforms to prioritize original content over remakes.
Your wording is very peculiar. "remakes" can be original content. Like the remake of "A Star is Born" is original content. Youtube's issue isn't about "remakes". It's about critism and fair use.
The only thing EU regulation is meant to due is to stifle discussion, criticism, artist creation, etc in favor of multinational corporations and of course the political elite.
It's not about "original content", but the ability of the media conglomerates to suppress smaller creators and take their money. It's about using law, money and regulation to bully and intimidate and silence.
Youtube already does this to a limited degree as media companies have subsidiaries that pretty much mark everything as a copyright violation and force independent creators to prove their innocence. When in a fair society, things should be reversed. Innocence should be assumed and the guilt has to be proven.
It doesn't make sense otherwise.
These are smart people. With mostly bad ideas IMHO, but smart. They know what they're doing. This law has too many issues to be good for regular people.
The EU is not the US.
If it was the US I would definitely put lobbying as the only or main reason for passing such a law, but the EU doesn't seem to be as favorable to lobbists (see GMOs, labelling laws), while they seem to love pushing their agenda no matter what nowadays (see attacking other member states like Hungary and Poland), and creating a just-in-case legal framework to better their chances makes very much sense for them, IMHO.
That's what I think, anyway. No one knows, for sure it's not the official explanation that it helps content creators, or they're unbelievably incompetent.
The content filter however seems to be the logical result of YouTube's impasse with collecting societies like GEMA and its ilk -- not quite the equivalent of the RIAA because of the complex legal situation surrounding its licensing requirements (tl;dr: in some situations you can be subject to GEMA licensing fees without actually using GEMA registered music).
In a nutshell: RIAA is infamous for going after teenagers who illegally fileshared a few MP3s, GEMA is infamous for going after small businesses and non-profit events for publicly playing or performing music without permission. They're both problematic but in very different ways.
But you're right that newspaper definitely favor the law as well which is a problem for unbiased reporting.