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Comment by conartist6 | Hacker News Reader

Won't be available to anyone terminated for copyright stuff.

Woooow what a huge dick move.

That's the one massively imbalanced power dynamic that I hear people really fear losing their livelihood to for no good reason, and they're leaving it there to terrorize and ruin livelihoods for future generations.

I put up a video of a funeral service for my grandma and like 5 minutes later I was getting threatening legalese mail about my channel by cancelled forever because some record label has a recording of a thousand year old hymn and they don't give a shit about threatening people with no legal basis at all

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Trusting your livelihood to platforms like YouTube already puts you in an incredibly precarious position, even if you are playing by the rules. The Adocalypse comes to mind, as do random algorithm changes and flawed automation leading to videos getting demonetized. It's no wonder most of the creators I follow are hedging their bets on paid promotions and crowd funding platforms (which all have the same problems). I couldn't imagine the stress in relying on all that to pay off a mortgage.

Given how vague their "eligibility criteria" are and how they consider on- and off-platform behavior, I'm not sure that's such a great loss.

The whole thing reads like institutionalized selective enforcement.

Oh man I had a similar experience and realized how horrible it was. I put up a recording of me teaching my kids some Carnatic music. (The "twinkle twinkle little star" equivalent songs were like 800 years old). And I got takedowns almost immediately. Wtf. Luckily I was working at Goog at the time so I was able to actually find the "form" to explain how bs this was and was able to get those takedowns taken down! But then I tried to find an external way of doing it and it was easier to drive rusted nails through my eyeballs!

> The whole thing reads like institutionalized selective enforcement.

The State forced their hands here. Comply and let certain favored creators back, or else they might find themselves subject to political prosecution.

They didn't force anything, they gave them a choice, and Google consciously and actively chose to make this decision.

AP News chooses to still call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of Mexico; a different choice from the outlets that no longer do. The New York Times, NBC News, the Hill and CNN chose to rather have their Pentagon access revoked; a different choice than the one made by New York Post, One America News Network, Breitbart News Network, HuffPost News and others.

It's important to keep repeating this. Companies, organizations and individuals all have choices. Not every one of them makes the same choice given the same situation - in fact, they make opposite choices.

Your second example of a choice is a consequence of a choice. Those companies chose not to comply with new reporting rules which resulted in having their Pentagon access revoked. This is an important distinction when given "choices" that aren't really choices but mandates.

As far as how this YouTube scenario is different, people can host their content elsewhere, but there's only one Pentagon in the US.

Unfortunately they have a virtual monopoly on ugc video streaming. Without competitive pressure highly centralized services become the playfield of government forces.

A monopolistic entity enforces opaque and arbitrary rules with little to no ability to appeal.

In less strange times this would merit the hammer coming down, but in 2025...

That's hilarious it's so strange to see copyright arguments in 2025 when every tech company that mingles in AI just doesn't give a fuck? Why should I care?

> Why should I care?

AI training is fair use. For pirating books, they probably calculate that the fine will be lower than their profits.

Assuming you're putting videos on YouTube, you should care because they have leverage over you and can ban you.

You seem to imply some kind of moral terms or reasons based on principles but that's not how corporations work. And either way they will get a pass because their stuff is extremely valuable for intelligence agencies and the military.

>AI training is fair use.

You say that so confidently as if it's not the subject of a heated controversial debate this very moment.

There was a ruling.

But I'm generally disinterested in the US style of these debates where it's all about twisting words and creatively interpreting old laws. In functioning countries they just adopt new and clear laws.

> AI training is fair use

Piracy is fair use.

There’s a word for that, hypocrisy.

Last heard on Gamers Nexus. A multi-million subscriber channel that got hit with a copyright strike by (I think it was) Bloomberg and falsely claimed. They had no legal ground and YouTube cracked down on them. Ef YouTube and ef their blog post.

The whole thing is a weird mea culpa.

YouTube: We fucked up. A little.

And I love how they're framing it as a "Second Chance". Like, you fucked up but we're going to be big and compassionate just this once.

The cynical me suspects that this instead is a more sweeping plan to cover for their coming re-listing of all the hate-filled, extremist channels that they had delisted in the past.

> The cynical me suspects that this instead is a more sweeping plan to cover for their coming re-listing of all the hate-filled, extremist channels that they had delisted in the past.

That's exactly what this is. And they're probably going to be pushed to delist LGBT content under some vague upcoming project 2025 indecency regulation by the FCC.

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