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Your (b) there means that people can upload all the licensed songs they want and no money goes to the artist and the artist has no choice in this except to agree to (a). (A) is a binding 5 year contract that forces her to release music on youtube as soon as it is done and cannot sign any other exclusive release deals on any music. Both choices remove all "choice" from the artist in regards to their own work. Imagine if github did the same to you with any code on their site, every programmer would leave for a new site the same day.

This is incorrect. The artist can still have their music removed from YouTube when third parties upload it without permission. The option that's being lost is for the artist to leave the infringer's video up and slap ads on it. The replacement for this option is to join the new subscription-based, ad-free monetization program.

That is not the only option lost (though you are right, you can chose a and remove everything).

The artist is indeed loosing the choice to just monetize the content he wants, and he indeed loses the ability to monetize content on youtube without being bound to release on Youtube first/at the same time. nosequels gist is correct: the artist has now less choice than before.

> nosequels gist is correct: the artist has now less choice than before

I don't think that's a fair summary of the original comment, which also asserted that the artist is losing the choice to enforce their copyright unless they join the new program.

Ah, now I get how you meant that. Still, that is less choice than before in general. One could before let his music be tagged and was not obliged to do anything with Youtube. Now, to have the same as before, they are trying to bind artists with a 5 year contract and release obligations. That is pretty evidently less choice, and (probably) still having the option to not get paid but remove music from fans does not make up for that.

Indeed, artists lose a choice (and get a new choice in its place). But that's a big backpedal from "YOUTUBE is EVIL".

No, this is also incorrect. Artists can still upload and monetize to their own channel just like every other YouTube creator.

That is not the same monetization as using ContentID to add ads to all other videos with the music. That ability would be lost when an artist is not accepting the new terms.

Right, but they aren't losing the ability to monetize the content they want, as the parent comment suggests. They are restricted from ContrntID, but they can still upload and monetize video.

Personally I don't really like these changes, but let's not be disingenuous.

Are you sure? IIRC from her article, she was saying that the only way for her to keep removing stuff from YT would be to issue DMCA complains for each and every video (which is obviously impossible).

Can you quote the part you're referring to?

It's actually from the HN comment thread. I don't know if it's true or not.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8937187

It's not.

Um, last I heard, unless you pay them, Github requires you to make any code you upload open-source and publicly available. In many ways that's even more far-reaching than what YouTube is asking, but that hasn't stopped programmers from flocking to them in droves.

That does, however, suggest to me an option (c) that Google isn't offering: Musicians pay Google to run Content Id on their behalf to simplify the takedown process. While I'm sure there are some win-wins they're missing by not offering that (possibly including Zoë Keating), I really can't fault them for that. I expect the PR and legal complications would dwarf the storm that's already here.

Um, last I heard, unless you pay them, Github requires you to make any code you upload open-source and publicly available.

Publicly available yes, open source no. You're free to choose whatever license you want:

You're under no obligation to choose a license. It's your right not to include one with your code or project, but please be aware of the implications. Generally speaking, the absence of a license means that the default copyright laws apply. This means that you retain all rights to your source code and that nobody else may reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from your work.

The requirement used to be open-source and publicly available

It is now only publicly available

All github require for their free users is that they're OK code is made viewable to the world. Nothing about github requires open source and you're free to chose any license you want.

By your analogy, any code you put on bitbucket would also have to be uploaded to github at the same time.

Yeah that was not a good comparison; the problem here is that the contract applies to all music released by the artist for 5 years, not just what is uploaded to Youtube. This is vastly, vastly more restrictive than Github. Not even close.

If Github did this, they would lose everyone overnight.

Problem: the lack of:

(c) monetize some, but not all, content.

Not everyone wants to be all-in or all-out. Maybe she wants her best work monetized, but has additional content she wants available for free. Ad-stamped content can be really annoying and turn people off from watching/listening when there isn't sufficient desire for the content to put up with it. Free content, unladen of ads, can help draw in followers who become willing to pay. Kinda like throwing a low-cost concert for free in hopes people who otherwise wouldn't come will, facing low/no friction, come and enjoy the free content enough to buy CDs and pay for a more sophisticated concert.

Plenty of times I've stumbled across an unknown musician playing for free, I've stopped & listened for a while when I'd have not paid to, and then bought the CD. Google wants to slather ads on the "free" performance just so the performer can offer a paid CD.

Google is demanding all-in or all-out on mixed-demand content...and is demanding adherence to those terms & decisions for 5 years, which can be a very long time for a performer.

There is a (c) as you describe it, OP just neglected to mention it. The third option is to just monetize videos uploaded to the official channel. They can continue uploading only specific songs they want to monetize on their channel.

I thought that if Keating didn't agree to (b), her channel would be removed?

That was the initial threat; later the rep mentioned a "work around" where her channel would not be removed.

I think the main complaint is that option (a), which is the option most artists would choose, also includes:

you can't release any music without also putting it on YouTube at the same time

Which is a pretty draconian clause.

To play devil's advocate, though, why should Google provide access to the network they have and the value it provides, while making it easy to dilute the value content creators provide?

In other words, from Google's point of view, Zoe Keating provides content for Google, for Google's benefit, not her benefit, or the benefit of her fans. In exchange, she doesn't have to run her own multimillion dollar content server. Recognizing the business they're in (advertising driven by user-provided content) doesn't seem 'draconian,' and there are other options available. If she can't accept alternatives then perhaps it proves that she needs Google a lot more than they need her.

Well, they do have that right, but Zoe also has the right to expose those terms to public scrutiny. Google and other monetization networks tend to promote the fact that buy paying them you're also supporting the artists, and if that's a lie, end users are rightly going to be pissed.

If Youtube wants to make people choose between two options, that is Youtube's choice. That doesn't mean those two options are the only possible ones though. They could have gone with a new contract that was much like what they have today, with slightly modified terms. Instead they are throwing their weight around to force musicians into unfavorable terms. That's what the scandal is.

There is another option...share some of the money users paid to get rid of ads with the artist. But that's just crazy talk.

I don't really care about the choices offered by YouTube here, but at this point you can have a scandal without them. The fact that they're lying to journalists and making such an ass of themselves in the PR department is interesting on its own now.