Yatsufusa 2024-09-08 04:27:58

From what little I understand about the process, you just tell YouTube something along the lines of "That claim is BS." and then the ball is in the other legal party's field. Either they send lawyers or give up.

While I would _love_ to pin this problem on YouTube, they are not at fault for a change. Thieves and scammers are everywhere. There was even an occurrence recently _here_on_NG_ where a user in his 60s tried to scam a 16 year old out of his money over getting reported for uploading AI generated tracks. Wild stuff... Insane stuff like that can happen everywhere.

Antananarivos 2024-09-08 15:58:44

no way people have the balls to take credit for someone else's song that's almost 20 years old

Yatsufusa 2024-09-10 13:47:04

@Antananarivos A lot of that kind of "legal" business is automated nowadays - even in law firms/solicitor's offices that are operating above board. No human being clicked that button and filled in those fields. Even if they say "This is totally our client's work.", that will still be their automation dealing with it.
Even in legitimate cases, it takes quite a while until somebody will actually read all the replies for such a case and then decide who to hand it to. Up to that point, that stuff is basically intern-work. There's no actual lawyer in a suit dealing with any of this until quite a bit later.

In the case of scammers, they usually push their luck and make stuff up without paying any attention. It's the whole "Nigerian Prince"-principle: The only ones to fall for it would have to be gullible or easily scared, so they will aim for those.

The letters will sound very intimidating, will include unreasonably short time limits and will make unreasonable demands of signing what is basically a full confession - allowing them to (legally) do (almost) everything they want, even if they are in the wrong.

'At no point' in this whole process will morals play a part. To them, "It's just business..."

Antananarivos 2024-09-10 14:48:15

@Yatsufusa so is it pretty much automated theft? So does some group/person automate filing claims and eventually get some benefit from them?

Yatsufusa 2024-09-11 03:28:47

@Antananarivos I think your phrasing is a bit simplified, but in a nutshell: "Yes, it is automated theft."

At the first few hurdles there is _no_ legal fallout. And 'anybody' who can create an account can click that button. There isn't really any barrier to entry. 'YouTube' doesn't care 'who' they have to give the Ad revenue to. Even better: As long as such a situation is unresolved, they get to 'keep' that money.
That being said this is a neglectable sum for them. They "probably" did not make the system intentionally shit and super-abusable. They just see no need to improve that one because there would be no benefit for their company (a subsidiary of Google) and the number of people inconvenienced is neglectable.

In general, the big sites treat artists as "content creators" that are absolutely depending on the "free" hosting service they provide. People who were involved with running any kind of free hosting services "to do better than those *checks this post's age-rating...* butts" will always tell the same story: We were not prepared for the amount of abuse that goes on, people were constantly complaining about slow servers, nobody wanted to donate, only shady advertisers were interested, the number of rapidly uploaded files was in no relation to the slow trickle of registering users... These operations take many years until they can stand on their own two feet - which means you'd need _obscene_ amounts of money. I mean: Even YouTube eventually gave up and sold to Google.
And then Google kept the crappy YouTube-UI and killed Google Video - which was a whole lot more usable at the time... (But to be fair: The most interesting stuff they hosted had been pirated Hollywood movies and anime. The site had very little appeal to artists.)

What can I say? The past wasn't too bright. The presents isn't great either. The future... Well... As long as we allow "the ones on top" to do what they please and dick 'each other' over instead (like the 'automated theft'-guys) the present will 'be' the future.

This has been @Yatsufusa, broadcasting to you live from hell. ;) I genuinely hope you get to enjoy your respective evenings, everyone. Take care.

Antananarivos 2024-09-11 10:54:00

@Yatsufusa I guess that makes more sense, people get away with this automated theft as the hosting services/ companies that are in charge or have the power to get involved choose not to get involved (or really take their time) as it isn't worth the effort to help a negligible amount of people.
To summarise, are these issues not common/significant enough to make the effort to resolve these issues pay off, so they do the bare minimum to avoid serious problems?

From what I've seen, YouTube doesn't care enough to deal with smaller content creators' problems because what will they do if they're just ignored, only bothering with significant people as they can actually do stuff or call them out.

Yatsufusa 2024-09-11 11:24:15

@Antananarivos From where I'm sitting, _no_ problem is to small to ignore them - although they should be addressed in order of severity. ;)

From the point of view of big companies, the only problems worth addressing are those which are directly or indirectly income-related ('their' income). They will deal with legal disputes 'as far as the law dictates they do' and the rest is between those legal parties. Companies are sociopaths. They do not "care" about people.
'If' people kick up a lot of dust and a topic gets some press ("Where's the fair use?"), YouTube/Google/facebook/Twitter/other big companies might put a bandaid on a gaping flesh wound - or they just wait it out.
"What are those people gonna do? 'Not' watch their favorite content creators anymore? *Pff!* I think not..."

YouTube effectively runs on a fat but biased algorithm that tells the users what they should watch and around 10 or so really big content creators. One of which is a racist gamer. One other is a channel parents put on to run endlessly for children under the age of 4. They make a lot of money from cooperating with YouTube. They are "very unlikely" to complain. Part of that is the threat that they have built up an extremely specialized way to make a living and never branched out farther than Twitch (which does not work for all formats and has poor presentation and archival). As soon as YouTubers were to say "Okay, we are moving to ChillWeedVideos.com." most of their followers will say "A pity... Hey, who can recommend me a cool alternative that's still on YouTube?" and a new content creator from the ranks of the lesser channels fills the niche.
And it's hard to capitalize on "was famous for something on the internet that they no longer do 'in that form'"... For comparison: Imagine a big Hollywood actor having to man the window at Burger King or working at a supermarket. Once you reach a certain level of fame/infamy, going back to a regular job might prove difficult. And now imagine having kids on top of that...
How much would 'you' be willing to risk if you were that well-off and at the same time that dependent?

Antananarivos 2024-09-11 11:46:35

@Yatsufusa yes, i agree no issue is too small, but for large companies it doesn't matter as long as they have their money.
makes sense that larger creators would rather not threaten their income in any way and would rather not make any issues or changes, as YouTube could easily just demonetise a channel if they had a "reason" to.

I guess that companies are happy as long as they have their money, that it's content creators stay quiet/obedient to not risk losing their income, and that any disputes aren't really managed as YouTube, or any other company, still get revenue despite some disputes.

EmpericalStriker 2024-09-12 03:00:37

In case you need a pick me up, when I noticed a song had randomly disappeared from my playlist, my attempts to find out why caused me to discover your other music, which I now listen to a lot (Especially your brainwaves album). I likely would not have spotted them if it wasn't for this fiasco, and I can't imagine I am the only one in such a case.

Thanks for your good music, and I look forward to listening to Isolation again once this is all over!