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Comment by scotty79 | Hacker News Reader

> but it's always hard to share the outrage in this situation

I'm not really sure what makes raging about this so hard for you. Current YouTube practice is equivalent to locking up a citizen for "thievery" and "reasons" without providing any evidence of such at any point.

And sure, few hundreds years ago this course of action would fly. But today we advanced a bit and demand that our justice is a bit more just. I don't see why we should demand less of the corporations. Or do we just accept their role as a pocket of feudalism in modern society? Accepting undemocratic small planned economies of corporations is one thing, accepting customers to be their serfs is another.

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How does this make sense when zero percent of uploaded youtube videos are owned by the creators?

It’s not like they are paintings loaned to an art gallery, where the gallery might have some obligations to preserve, return, etc.

From what I understand there’s no liability even if the board of directors decide to shut down Youthbe tomorrow and permanently delete every uploaded video.

> How does this make sense when zero percent of uploaded youtube videos are owned by the creators?

Says who and why should citizens of democratic countries listen to them? YouTube is a staple. If you reach this size, there are gonna be some rules. At least there should be.

> From what I understand there’s no liability even if the board of directors decide to shut down Youthbe tomorrow and permanently delete every uploaded video.

They are welcomed to do that. But deciding to refuse service on arbitrary grounds to one client is something they shouldn't be allowed to do. Otherwise why not ban people because they are Jewish or gay or just at random to sow fear? When you offer your services to the public then you shouldn't be allowed to refuse service to any member of the public without a very good and specific reason.

But even new legislation, assuming it can be rammed through Congress within your lifetime, can’t retroactively apply to uploaded videos which already were copied in fact…?

I thought the point was about how easily one can feel rage about this not if the situation can realistically be improved in any way.

How does this matter?

The prior comment wasn’t posted randomly in some arbitrary location.

It was in response to a specific comment in a specific location.

And I was refering to specific phrase of it.

Namely:

> but it's always hard to share the outrage in this situation

Okay… so how does it matter in relation to the prior two comments?

At this point I have no idea, so have a nice day. ;-)

> Current YouTube practice is equivalent to locking up a citizen for "thievery" and "reasons" without providing any evidence of such at any point.

No, it's not even that remotely, and to equate the two shows massive ignorance.

This is like a book publisher of its own accord (without the government forcing them to) deciding that they do not want to publish your book anymore. Unless you have an explicit and enforceable contract with them that says otherwise then they're well within their rights to stop publishing your book.

If you don't like it then don't use their platform, and if you're using YouTube to host things for your business then it would be a really good idea to have a backup host in place that you can direct users to.

Show me a book publisher comparable to YouTube. Quantity is quality. YouTube is more akin to a small country than a book publisher.

YouTube is also not locking you in a cell and physically depriving you of your freedom as opposed to the original analogy.

There's no book publisher as big as YouTube/Google but that doesn't break the analogy, and there are plenty of other places you can host video online.

Maybe locking up is wrong analogy. Rather YouTube is just torching everything you've built instead.

> There's no book publisher as big as YouTube/Google

There's nothing as big as YouTube/Google and that's why analogy breaks.

Your analogy with publishers works only if there's relevant competition and there's none. YouTube is analogue to state publisher and others are underground small printers who's main occupation is printing opposition leaflets. There's no competition between YouTube and those entities.

> but it's always hard to share the outrage in this situation

Clarification needed indeed: i did not meant "hard to share" because I don't feel empathy for the creator ; I meant "hard" in the sense that:

* I did not know beforehand anything about the creator,

* Neither the post, nor, surprisingly, the HN thread, gave much context about what the creator where accused of

* But the thread was full of outrage ; that I was, unfortunately, not entirely comfortable sharing.

But again, moot point - I completely agree that youtube automated moderation is a living advertisement for human moderation.

> But today we advanced a bit and demand that our justice is a bit more just.

Like you, I used to believe this. Recent events have me re-examining my assumptions.

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