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.

#ADHD #BOSTON #NYC #OpenSource #FOSS #SelfHosted #Soccer #3dprinting #Memes #GodotEngine #Unity #UnrealEngine

  • @[email protected]
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    52 years ago

    I believe their copyright claim system is set up so that any ad revenue for a song goes to the copyright holder, and they can have the video taken down if that isn’t enough. It’s why YouTubers are so careful not to use too much of a copyrighted song in their videos.

  • @[email protected]
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    42 years ago

    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.

  • amio
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    242 years ago

    Well, this is certainly one of the takes of all time.

  • @[email protected]
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    2 years ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      172 years ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]
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        62 years ago

        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.

        • @[email protected]OP
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          2 years ago

          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.

          • @[email protected]
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            22 years ago

            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?

        • @[email protected]
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          152 years ago

          Legally speaking it’s piracy and copyright infringement.

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

      • Aatube
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        182 years ago

        Your family may be hydrophobiacs.

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

  • BolexForSoup
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    2 years ago

    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

    Literally never seen this argument, not even once. Guarantee you it’s a very small minority just assuaging some vague guilt (which is BS anyway because it’s still not your ROMs).

    People do it primarily because it’s convenient. Downloading and testing hundreds if not thousand of roms - not to mention replacing all the bad ones - would take potentially days of work. Or you can spend like $10-$50 and be done with it.

  • @[email protected]
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    12 years ago

    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?

  • Venia Silente
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    12 years ago

    What’s your beef with the tagginator bot? It’s certainly better than the reddit repost bots, right?

  • @[email protected]
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    12 years ago

    As long as they get to profit from it and not you, then it’s not piracy for them. If a record label wanted to sue Google, they would have a hell of a time.

  • @[email protected]
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    52 years ago

    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?

    • @[email protected]
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      32 years ago

      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.

    • edric
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      22 years ago

      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.

    • @[email protected]
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      152 years ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]
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        22 years ago

        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.

    • @[email protected]
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      22 years ago

      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.

    • Hillock
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      32 years ago

      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.

  • @[email protected]
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    892 years ago

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

    • jayrhacker
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      522 years ago

      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.

    • @[email protected]
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      32 years ago

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

        • @[email protected]
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          2 years ago

          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?

  • Aatube
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    272 years ago

    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_
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      192 years ago

      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
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        52 years ago

        Yeah, that’s what I meant by “got ContentID’d”.

        • Cyv_
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          12 years ago

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

    • Nyfure
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      62 years ago

      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
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        22 years ago

        acquiring things or features which usually cost money

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

        • Nyfure
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          2 years ago

          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
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            22 years ago
            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.
  • JokeDeity
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    82 years ago

    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.

      • JokeDeity
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        12 years ago

        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.