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Comment by sterlind | Hacker News Reader

For the same reason a storage company shouldn't be able to burn all the stuff in your unit if they evict you.

YT is not a storage company. You do not have a contract with them to store your data with an obligation to return it.

Don't know about where you live but where I do storage units are regulated and could not put a "burn your stuff" clause into the tenant contract even if they wanted to. It's a surprisingly highly regulated business.

A storage company can't burn my stuff because:

1. That's arson, a crime.

2. I have a contract with them (including consideration) to store my stuff.

But aren’t they? Maybe not literally burn, but aren’t there multiple reality TV shows about repossessed storage units?

That's for the money that's owed them from not paying the rent.

YouTube doesn't charge rent or other fees, and I'm not sure how they'd auction your digital copyrighted IP anyhow.

Yeah, but most places will put your storage unit into "default" for some time, usually 30 days, and make multiple attempts to contact you before auctioning your stuff. Generally speaking, in the U.S. most states have lien laws that dictate how and for how long a company must attempt to contact you before they can auction.

Youtube could do something similar, by providing you 30 days to download your content.

exactly! I see no excuse for YouTube not to allow this, as long as videos haven't been flagged for e.g. sexual abuse (where YouTube itself would be liable for continuing to store it.) I think the only reason they don't do it is because they don't have to and they don't care.

instituting a 30-day retention period to exporting content would be really good for users. shame we can't pass tech laws in the US.

Those are mostly staged. In reality all they find is spiders and bits of cardboard boxes.

That's currently legal, so you just replaced "YouTube" with "storage company" but didn't actually answer the question.

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