It's funny how google pretends the music on YouTube isn't straight up piracy and everyone just goes along with it

Most people have extremely weird ideas of what’s considered piracy and what isn’t. Downloading a video game rom is piracy, but if you pay money to some Chinese retailer for an SD card containing the roms, that’s somehow not piracy. Exploiting the free trial on a streaming site by using prepaid visa cards is somehow not piracy either. Torrenting an album is piracy, but listening to a bootleg on YouTube isn’t.

YouTube noticed this at some point and is now happy to let everyone know how much pirated music is available on their site. One of their main points for shilling YouTube premium is how their music catalogue is way better than Spotify. Of course the piracy site has more. That’s always how it works. Spotify actually has to license the music on their platform and is subject to copyright law. They can’t just get the Neil Young discography from soulseek one day and wait until his estate notices, facing no repercussions whatsoever aside from agreeing to a takedown request. Imagine if Pirate Bay or Napster were considered completely above-board businesses just because they took down torrents if explicitly requested by the copyright holders.

Not that I’m complaining especially when a lot of the music on youtube isn’t publicly accessible anywhere else. It’s just been extremely strange to see this go from an “open secret” to something they’re shouting from the rooftops and face no repercussions for. In the future I want everything to be like that and I’d rather keep youtube how it is than see them get the punishment that by all rights they should be getting. It’s just so strange that this is the position things have ended up in.

Note: The following text is intentional abuse of the tagginator bot. Fuck you.

SnuggleSnail,

YouTube and Spotify are paying license fees to be allowed to play music on their platform.

jayrhacker,

I worked for one of the YouTube founders once, killed me when he explained how they benchmarked all the Copyright detection software available at the time and then picked the worst one to use for their licensing system.

NoneYa,

That’s fucking genius. I love it.

Aatube,
@Aatube@kbin.social avatar

Is this real?

FutileRecipe,

They posted it on the Internet, so it has to be.

jadelord,

Tagline for Lemmy (every social media in existence)

JackbyDev,

I only use the best lie detectors

jayrhacker,

You think someone would just do that? Just go on the internet and lie?

Son_of_dad,

I wanna know who is paying YouTube to allow those stupid fake movies trailers. I wish YouTube had a block channel option.

MidRomney,

There is a block channel option. I use it all the time.

webhead, (edited )
@webhead@lemmy.world avatar

All I’m aware of is the don’t recommend channel option. I still get stupid fucking channels (like emergency awesome) when I search. Am I missing the option somewhere?

bruhduh, (edited )
@bruhduh@lemmy.world avatar

I mean… It’s been like that through all humanity history, if big guy says black is white, then black is white it is, remember school if you want to examples of that, also another examples can be found in politics of all countries throughout history

Facebones,

I caught a petty larceny charge and couldn’t find work for like 7-8 years (turns out petty larceny is considered “relevant” by basically everyone) after missing a $5 pair of sunglasses at self checkout on a $1-200 purchase, because the LP person lied when the judge said he saw no intent and told him “I watched him remove the tag and that’s intent if I ever saw it.”

Mind you, this is AFTER she provided a picture of the “stolen merchandise” with the tag still attached - Doesn’t matter because LP is considered a “professional witness” so if they say the sky is neon green, legally the sky is neon green. 🙄

seaturtle,

So they lied in court and got away with it? Sheesh.

Facebones,

Yep. Doesn’t matter that she contradicted her own evidence. She’s a “Professional Witness” so her word overrule ms anything else.

The way it was explained to me, “as a loss prevention employee she has no stakes in whether you get charges or not” but idk I imagine if you’re an LP person who doesn’t get any convictions you probably won’t have a job long. 🤷

seaturtle,

“no stakes” my ass.

WarmApplePieShrek,

They’re powerful. You’re not. Facts don’t matter. Power matters. In piracy, we have the power.

JokeDeity,

China has the right ideas on copyright. I don’t give two shits if someone steals my music from YouTube, I make it for the joy of making it.

ErwinLottemann,

i guess you also have a different job that you rely on for food and shelter?

JokeDeity,

I have a different job, but it hardly affords me food and shelter. If I didn’t live with two other people I’d be homeless and I never have enough to eat properly.

WarmApplePieShrek,

We need socialism now.

CrayonRosary, (edited )

You’re missing some key facts:

  1. A lot of music on YouTube is fully licensed and uploaded by the owners or Google themselves. Like VEVO music, for instance.
  2. Google runs a content match algorithm on all uploads to detect music and movies. If you upload more than four seconds of a song, Google will detect it and transfer all monitization of that upload to the rights holder. This is why music documentaries like Trash Theory only have frustratingly short clips of the music they are talking about, and why channels like Techmoan, which documents weird music formats and playback devices, can also only share extremely short clips.

The rights holders are getting any and all money on music uploaded to YouTube, and your entire premise is flawed.

mctoasterson,

And there are notorious “blockers” - publishers and bands who copyright strike and remove all third party videos using their music. Reference Rick Beatos various videos and rants on this topic.

brax,

That’s the thing that drives me fucking nuts. Use 10 seconds of a song in your 10 minute video, and they get all the money for your work. They should get whatever the percent of your video is that their song occupies at best. If you’re talking/acting over top of their music, then you’re splitting that percentage in half.

seaturtle,

Do they still do takedowns for videos based on that content IDing if the video isn’t even monetized in the first place?

Like, I know youtubers who try to make money hate this, but what about youtubers who aren’t in it for the money but just want to throw content on the platform? Can stuff like AMVs actually stay up?

Because, frankly, I’ve found that it’s been pretty easy to dodge YouTube ads, by means of uBlock Origin.

lud,

If I recall correctly, the copyright holders can decide what they want to happen automatically.

The automatic options are something like:

  • Disable all ads.
  • Enable ads (if disabled) and take all (?) money.
  • Mute/remove the infringing content.

They can also do stuff like issue copyright strikes but I believe that those have to be done manually since they can be so destructive to creators.

Tom Scott made a really good video about how copyright works in general and how it works on YouTube, I highly recommend it. youtu.be/1Jwo5qc78QU

KonekoSalem,

They don’t take it down often. But non-monetized videos will get set as monetized, ads will be added, and the profits go to the Copyright holder.

NuXCOM_90Percent,

I would also add that google very much understands the implications of streaming music.

This is speculated to be why you can’t get Youtube Premium without Youtube Music (in most countries?). Because all the license holders would lose their minds if they weren’t getting a cut (and apparently the ad revenue from music videos isn’t enough).

Adalast,

His logic chain may have been flawed for his argument, but his premise is not wrong. YouTube providing a distribution platform for any type of music video means that content holders are putting music on there and suffering the same rules as anyone else. To the best of my knowledge, Google does not pay any additional license fees to content owners should they elect to upload a music video to the platform. The owner makes ad revenue just like all other creators. This effectively circumvents the costly licensing agreements that the likes of Spotify and Pandora have to enter into.

trafficnab,

I don’t know if they’re still there but it used to be if you looked at the description of any officially uploaded music on youtube, there’d be a laundry list of music rights groups for like a dozen countries/areas

Google doesn’t just get blanket rights to stream a song, they have to license the rights to play that particular song separately for each individual country where they want to stream it

Magnus,

No idea if you have ever uploaded to youtube but I can’t upload audio of my dick slapping my ankle without Disney or universal claiming royalties.

bionicjoey,

Tbf Walt Disney himself invented the sound of a dick slapping an ankle

Canadian_Cabinet,

It was the last thing he did before being frozen

Lifebandit666,

Let it go

Kolanaki, (edited )
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

Lets go of dick

Dick slaps ankle

Buffalobuffalo, (edited )

Buying an SD card full of Roms is piracy, that’s why you have to buy it from Chinese companies and not walk down to the Walmart.

YouTube has agreements with the record companies to pay them for money generated through music uploaded to YouTube. For music where they don’t have an agreement the DMCA means that the uploaded need to verify they have the copyright to thing they upload. Otherwise no social media or file hosting sites could exist.

clearleaf,

With the SD what you’re talking about is reality but I meant it in terms of normies perceptions. I watched some retro handheld reviews on YouTube and it started surfacing videos about SD cards of retro roms you can buy. There’s always people pointing out that you can just download the same rompack from archive.org, and there are people replying who say that’s piracy. I couldn’t make something like that up if I tried. Here’s another one specifically about YouTube. If you torrent a song, that’s bad. But if you use a YouTube to mp3 website that’s different. My family sees it that way.

Aatube,
@Aatube@kbin.social avatar

Your family may be hydrophobiacs.

(because a torrent is a water stream! get it? hehehehehehehh)

notonReddit,

deleted_by_moderator

    •
    SoylentBlake,

    Is pirating old snes and genesis roms really piracy if there’s no other way to get it?

    Roms are the reason half those games are still around and not dead media. The popularity of roms is why Nintendo made the throw back, video game companies roll up all the time, very few have longevity and even if those most would’ve been fine just letting the old games die in obscurity.

    Railcar8095,

    Legally speaking it’s piracy and copyright infringement.

    Unofficially, it’s a moral obligation to download and seed.

    clearleaf, (edited )

    In the eyes of the law it’s piracy. But to me if something is not being sold, it might as well be public domain. And there’s literally no difference between buying a second hand mario 3 cartridge and pirating the rom in terms of money the creators get. That’s way more ridiculous to me than the youtube thing.

    SoylentBlake,

    Oh doncha know manufacturers are already working on that.

    The whole subscription economy grift. They’re gonna say you own the basic version arguing against the ‘if you can’t modify it you never really own it’ crowd, until they’ve spent enough money to bribe those in power to fashion their win for them, then they’re gonna turn around and say we never really own anything and make reselling illegal.

    Reselling takes care of itself if you simply stop offering physical media…which, idk…seems to be the trend of the last 15 years, don’t cha think?

    Aatube,
    @Aatube@kbin.social avatar

    The music on YouTube isn't any more piracy than unblocked Spotify. YouTube's "official" music uploads (these that are a square with a blurred background behind the square) are acquired by paying DistroKid or record labels. Unofficial uploaders usually aren't monetized, either bc they didn't enable it、are niche、or got ContentID'd by YouTube. Those few that are monetized(e.g. Si𝚕vaGunner and Gi𝚕vaSunner (i.e. not Si𝙸vaGunner or Gi𝙸vaSunner)) usually get DMCA'd eventually.

    Downloading from YouTube is piracy though, though like OP says some don't think so for some reason.

    Cyv_,
    @Cyv_@kbin.social avatar

    And many non-official uploads are let stay because somebody sent them a dmca and they chose to keep the video up but let monetization pay out to the org that copyright claimed the content. So the ancient "song name (hd)" video from cheeselicker9000 isn't official but the record label likely gets paid for any ad revenue they make from it. Most labels just strike the non official stuff and upload their own nowadays though. I know when I did some youtube that was one of the options for a response, just letting the claimant take ad revenue and manage monetization.

    Aatube,
    @Aatube@kbin.social avatar

    Yeah, that's what I meant by "got ContentID'd".

    Cyv_,
    @Cyv_@kbin.social avatar

    Ah gotcha, I didn't know the term for that :)

    Astaroth, (edited )

    Why are you using Chinese enumeration commas?

    i.e. “、” instead of “,”

    Aatube,
    @Aatube@kbin.social avatar

    to separate the list from the regular comma

    ErwinLottemann,

    that’s what ‘-’ is for

    Aatube,
    @Aatube@kbin.social avatar

    how is the hyphen for that

    Nyfure,

    Downloading from youtube is piracy? How? If it was like a Youtube Red show, sure, but the normal videos everyone can see for free?

    For me piracy begins with aquiring things or features which usually cost money to get whilst also taking into account if its obvious a thing should cost money in such an environment (thats also how our piracy laws are worded here).

    So our piracy laws also classify things as piracy if it was obvious the deal was too good to be true like Windows for 2$ on eBay or chinese ROM cards for 5$ with hundreds of games.

    Videos on youtube, including music, are a normal occurrence. A full blockbuster movie is usually not.

    Aatube,
    @Aatube@kbin.social avatar

    acquiring things or features which usually cost money

    YouTube's and Spotify's download features usually cost money

    Nyfure, (edited )

    If it would be hard to do and having to bypass DRM yes, but its actually similar to what the player already does.

    A court already ruled here that downloading youtube videos does not break the piracy laws by providing own means of downloading and saving the unprotected data.

    Of course that does not include allowing the download feature of the client itself.

    Aatube,
    @Aatube@kbin.social avatar
    1. It is actually a bit hard to do. yt-dlp had to bypass some anti-downloading speed limits or something, which is also why youtube-dl is so slow
    2. I'm not sure if that extends to official YouTube music uploads, since they are copyright protected. I also can't find the case you mentioned.
    luthis,

    I was under the assumption that Youtube had to pay artists for their music being on there? Is that not what is happening?

    And if not, how has Youtube not been cease and desisted/sued into absolute oblivion?

    eya,
    @eya@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    And if not, how has Youtube not been cease and desisted/sued into absolute oblivion?

    Because YouTube is owned by a trillion dollar conglomerate.

    Banzai51,
    @Banzai51@midwest.social avatar

    No, it’s because they are a trillion dollar conglomerate that PAYS.

    TAG,
    @TAG@lemmy.world avatar

    YouTube pays the uploader, who double promises that they totally have the the right to the song.

    Aatube,
    @Aatube@kbin.social avatar

    No. YouTube's "official" music uploads (these that are a square with a blurred background behind the square) are acquired by paying DistroKid or record labels. Unofficial uploaders usually aren't monetized, either bc they didn't enable it、are niche、or got ContentID'd by YouTube. Those few that are monetized(e.g. Si𝚕vaGunner and Gi𝚕vaSunner (i.e. not Si𝙸vaGunner or Gi𝙸vaSunner)) usually get DMCA'd eventually.

    clearleaf,

    Until it gets copyright claimed then it goes to some Indian company who triple promises they have complete custody of all Ozzy Osbourne IP.

    jaidyn999,

    When you upload a song, you indicate whether it has copyright and who owns it, Then, whenever its played they pay the copyright owner based on an audience size basis, similar to Spotify.

    If you don’t, the copyright owner informs Google, and they close that link.

    Even if you have music playing in the background of an instructional video, the copyright holders will go after you.

    jeena,
    @jeena@jemmy.jeena.net avatar

    I can tell you that there are more than a handful songs on there preformed live by my band and then someone uploaded it who was there and we are not getting paid anything. I will not go after them obviously because I don’t have the time nor money to do so.

    radix,
    @radix@lemmy.world avatar

    Big labels have a direct line to YouTube via ContentID. Indie artists have to do it the hard way.

    luthis,

    So does that mean albums ripped and uploaded to Youtube do result in royalties being paid to the artists?

    What about in the case where there are no ads?

    jeena,
    @jeena@jemmy.jeena.net avatar

    Isn’t that one of the points that OP is making?

    clearleaf, (edited )

    Yeah it’s kind of the entire point I was making. If I could only listen to the music on YouTube that’s been properly licensed and identified, then I wouldn’t use YouTube for music. In that situation it would just be another Spotify.

    Here’s an example of something that’s absolutely not supposed to be on youtube, which the IP owner goes to great lengths to enforce. But people keep reuploading every time it’s taken down. It’s literally a bootleg.

    youtu.be/xtukRSw6k1w?si=IpVSw7ErcaGSc32_

    luthis,

    Live music isn’t what I’m referring to though, it’s the ripped and uploaded albums

    Apollo2323,

    As the founder of the Pirate Bay said , Google is considered good guys because they are business guys.

    Aatube,
    @Aatube@kbin.social avatar

    See my comment. TL;DR yes they pay DistroKid or the labels.

    s38b35M5,
    @s38b35M5@lemmy.world avatar

    theverge.com/…/youtube-universal-music-group-sony…

    They pay rights holders, who supposedly pay artists.

    seaturtle,

    What with all the stories about the companies taking pretty hefty cuts for things, I’m gonna bet that the “supposedly” is doing some heavy lifting there, heh.

    s38b35M5,
    @s38b35M5@lemmy.world avatar

    Safe bet.

    Historically, even the “lottery winning” successful artists got such bad deals. The Beatles (famously, I thought, but I’m having trouble finding a source today…) received one penny for every dollar earned, but a fraction of that penny was held back for marketing, and another, and another…

    conciselyverbose,

    They have to pay for anything official.

    The rest is the "safe harbor" provision of the DMCA. Effectively, sites aren't liable for user generated content if they respond to official DMCA takedown requests in a timely manner. YouTube also goes beyond that to directly work with copyright holders to preemptively remove infringing content with content ID, which scans everything for violations, and their own tools to report infringement. They don't need to do that for the DMCA protection, but it's probably cheaper at their obscenely large scale.

    TootSweet,

    A lot of technologies started out as pirate technologies.

    Cable TV? The first people who started shoving TV over cables into people’s homes didn’t ask for permission. But now that’s such a normal thing that we can’t imagine it having been infringement at one point.

    Player piano rolls too. No permission was sought and its legality wasn’t figured out until they got sued. (And the courts decided that a royalty to the composers or rights holders was in order, and the courts set the going royalties rate in cents per roll, but they also decided the composers/rights holders couldn’t deny any player piano roll maker the right to make player piano rolls of their songs.)

    But then things shifted and now the courts are owned by Disney.

    seaturtle,

    Hell, Crunchyroll was a pirate site until it converted into not being one.

    SendMePhotos,

    Wtf is the tagginator bot?

    nutbutter,

    Not sure, but I think its purpose is to get get these posts appear in meta search engine results (SEO).

    noahimesaka1873,
    @noahimesaka1873@lemmy.funami.tech avatar

    AFAIK it’s for discovery on Mastodon via hashtag.

    Uiop,

    afaik… as far as i know… hm…

    afaik these acronyms are getting more insane asap fr fr

    TopRamenBinLaden, (edited )

    ASAP was first used in the US military in the 1950s, and AFAIK originated on usenet and has been used since the 80s. If you are 35 or under, both of these acronyms have existed since before you were born fr fr.

    Sanyanov, (edited )

    AFAIK is a very established and widely recognized acronym with decades of history. Just saying.

    SendMePhotos,

    IYKYK W/E IG. SMH.

    Uiop,

    Thats the spirit!

    MonkderZweite,

    Who cares? Google has a legal team for such things, i don’t.

    clearleaf,

    Who cares

    Me. We have a living breathing example of why public file sharing is a good thing that exposes music to new audiences and I want people to recognize that.

    Sterben,
    @Sterben@lemmy.world avatar

    Aren’t most songs on YouTube uploaded by the artists themselves?

    phx,

    There are a ton that have weird fucking usernames. I was confused at first why my Bluetooth was showing BobByJimSmith4345 as the “artist” after telling it to play a song, but yeah they’ll pretty much just look whatever up by name from YouTube and play it.

    AceFuzzLord,

    Probably, but at least with genres like vocaloid, you’ll find plenty of people taking songs/videos from sites like Bilibili or Niconico and they’ll either just straight up upload the video or will instead just slap on subtitles and upload without consent. There’s also a similar phenomenon with anime music as well, but that’s usually for just the music.

    Sterben, (edited )
    @Sterben@lemmy.world avatar

    If the original artist reports the pirated song, YouTube will most likely remove it.

    If no one reports it, then YouTube is going to keep it.

    discostjohn,

    No, certainly not most. Some, for sure, but tons of albums are uploaded by some random dude.

    LemmyKnowsBest,

    What I don’t understand is that any Joe schmo can upload to YouTube a licensed copyrighted song from another artist and post the lyrics with it and call it karaoke, and they get no copyright strikes whatsoever,

    while one time I had a Phil Collins song playing in the background while bantering with my daughter, immediately after uploading it to YouTube they flagged & removed it for copyright infringement.

    Why did the karaoke Joe schmo get away with it but I can’t even accidentally have a song playing in the background while I’m bantering with my daughter?

    scytale,

    Because the music in Joe Schmo’s video gets claimed by the artist’s label/distributor, and they get paid for it. I experienced this first hand when I uploaded a music video of my song on my youtube channel and my distributor claimed it. I had to go and prove to them that I’m the very same person and owner of the music before they released the copyright claim on my video.

    Riven,
    @Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    Dude fucking same. I uploaded a 5 minute clip of my buds and I at a league of legends tournament we were participating at and it got striked because someone was playing a shitty song in the background for 30 seconds while we talked over it. Some minor who’s who artist. It was low quality audio too, they must have an amazing system to be able to pick it out from all the rest of the noise.

    Couldbealeotard,
    @Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world avatar

    Perhaps it’s being presented as fair use? Education via the documentation of the lyrics?

    It’s a bit of a stretch, but that’s all I’ve got.

    Nawor3565,

    They likely DO get a copyright claim. But a claim doesn’t necessarily mean that your video gets removed. YouTube gives the copyright claimer the choice for what to do with videos they claim, which can include removing them, leaving them visible but taking any profit made from ads on the video, splitting the ad revenue, or just leaving it alone.

    I do absolutely agree that removing a video for having a song in the background is bullshit. Just wanted to give an explanation for the inconsistency.

    IMongoose,

    Ya, YouTube follows copyright law as closely as it can or it would have been sued into oblivion. I have used a few copyright songs in videos and they usually don’t get outright blocked but the song creater counts those views towards revenue and if YouTube doesn’t have a song license for a country the video is blocked in that country. YouTube tells this to the uploader.

    Related, H3H3 had a huge lawsuit about fair use over video clips because YouTube would handle it the same way - leave the video up but transfer all revenue to the clip holder. H3H3 ended up winning that but the point is YouTube is extremely pro copyright, erring on the side of copyright holder in all cases until convinced otherwise.

    Hillock,

    YouTube doesn't have a say in this, it's up to the copyright holder of each individual song. YouTube just detects if a song is copyrighted or not then gives the owner the option what to do. The three common ones are

    • Disable the Video.
    • Claim Monetization of it.
    • Do nothing.

    So whoever holds the rights to Phil Collins song is the one responsible for your video being disabled. While whoever holds the rights to the song Joe Schmo decided to go with option 2 or 3.

    This process has mostly been automated. So it feels like YouTube is doing it but they are just following the orders of the copyright holder.

    The system is a bit overzealous in some cases and even fair use gets flagged.That's on YouTube. But to be fair, it's very hard to have an automated system detect the difference between fair use and not. YouTube should just implement a better way to dispute false copyright claims.

    originalucifer,
    @originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com avatar

    its a resource like any other. use it, abuse it... while you can. with the impending browser restrictions the world might change a bit. a tiny bit.

    jeena,
    @jeena@jemmy.jeena.net avatar

    Not if people would wake up and just use freaking Firefox which Google has not (that great of) control over. I feel it’s such a simple solution but somehow the Internet users collectively seem to have decided that they’d rather enjoy ads.

    1Fuji2Taka3Nasubi,

    Is my understanding correct that Youtube only cares about paying the music right holders? (Because those complains the loudest?) That is, if someone creates an AMV by combining audio and visuals from different sources and uploads it to Youtube, Youtube only gives the monetize profit to the song owner, but not the visuals rights owners?

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