Comment by higherpurpose | Hacker News Reader

Comment by higherpurpose | Hacker News Reader

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It's interesting to look back from a historical point of view and realize that Youtube would've probably been closed down eventually just like Grooveshark, had Google not bought it and put its very best lawyers on the case.

Now look what Youtube has become. Can anyone imagine the world now without Youtube or a Youtube-like service?

Who knows what the world could've been if Grooveshark was also acquired by a big company and won its lawsuits. Maybe it would've turned into a major free audio-book platform, or a major podcast platform, or a major indie music artist platform (like how many new artists became popular on Youtube first).

The studios really are innovation killers in their quest to only be paid through the old business models. They only change when they have no choice but to accept the change (like when losing lawsuits against certain companies which they try to shut down). Then they act as if they encouraged that sort of innovation in the first place when they testify in Congress for new copyright laws.

Anyone still remember Turntable.fm? Yeah, they killed that one, too, and I remember it was seen as a highly innovative service.

The problem is that small producers loose out. Unless you are very lucky, its almost impossible to make money. Worse still Google are pernicious in their licensing deals.

I would postulate that Google is actually worse for small producers than your traditional record company. At least you could change record company and still distribute material.

If you upload to youtube, you loose exclusive licensing rights. worse still because they own the platform as well, you have no choice but to upload to youtube.

> If you upload to youtube, you loose exclusive licensing rights

Can you explain more? If a small producer uploads to youtube, they cannot upload to any other platform (eg iTunes)?

Say for example that you shot video A, you upload to youtube, everything is grand.

However time goes on, and you become successful, and google starts a netflix competitor, because you have granted google a non exclusive license to syndicate your content as you see fit, you don't get to charge more for your media being used to sell a premium service.

Google has the right to federate and syndicate on your behalf. Say you want to create a collection of videos on android in a folio app type thing, charging $1. There is nothing stopping someone else creating a playlist of the same content undercutting your product. Even worse, there is nothing to stop google using your copyright at the original rate, despite charging $1 a play.

The problem comes to negotiation, you can't unless you delete your content, and therefore your revenue stream. You have to play by their rules. You have two choices, take the pennies they throw at you, refuse to take the pennies, but google does what it wants anyway(as they already have a license), or delete the content. There are no other options.

> There is nothing stopping someone else creating a playlist of the same content undercutting your product.

You can turn of embed and syndicate permissions, preventing mobile, web and TV access. You can even unlist the video. Some combination of these would certainly stop anyone other than Google from creating a premium service with your videos.

> Say you want to create a collection of videos on android in a folio app type thing, charging $1.

But if your goal is "folio app type thing", there is no need to use YouTube at all. The whole purpose of YouTube is give your videos exposure and have them mix on a common platform. If you want to hide them, just self-host.

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