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Comment by nosequel | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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