Yeah, I agree with sparkx. There's just no way that Youtube staffers can keep up with the amount of people uploading materials that they don't own the copyright to. Uploading of illegal videos will have to continue if Youtube intends to continue making business--after all, I have a feeling that much of Youtube's audience comes from illegal video viewers.

Most of the non-copyrighted content on there is just a bunch of crap that no one is interested in viewing. So, technically, Youtube gains business from having illegal, copyrighted content on their site--they gain traffic. Without it, most of their traffic is gone. That's a pretty good reason for Youtube to not fight extra hard against this whole copyright ordeal unless someone brings it right in their face.


Frankly, I think it does affect sales. I know many friends of mine who have watched numerous animes on Youtube that would've caused them a good amount of cash to buy. And I also know that (1) they will never buy the animes as long as they can get them for free and (2) they never learned about the titles from Youtube, so the music videos there don't really count as advertising. Now, perhaps if they were absolutely fanatical about a series they'd go and buy it, but that has never happened. They all prefer nabbing things for free than spending money (especially since it is very costly).

And looking at most of the music videos, they almost all suck as advertisements. They're more likely to direct an audience away from a certain show than direct them toward it. The few gems in the music video section is hidden by the overflowing amount of trash. [sigh]

Ahh I agree with you about how it's often the copyright holder's responsibility to take things off the web. But I find it that when the copyright holder does report the stolen material to the site owner, in this case YouTube, then it is removed pretty quickly.

But, honestly, I think that most of the copyright owners wouldn't be bothered.

Yep.

Better off spending your time on productive things rather than destructive things if you want to make money.

i think you argument is stupid how is putting a commercial on youtube going to harm the company? or a nusic video? we can watch music videos on tv. they play music on the radio. the only truly good things on youtube i find are illegal. i mean i don't want to watch a bunch of 12 year old girls at a sleepover lin syncing to britney spears and thinking tha they're all that or a buynch of little boys sininging foreign song such as dragostea din te and think that they are suddenly internet superstars youtube is like a library it's usefull harmless and nobody really cares if the useres break the rules. besides youtube has millions of dollars aswell as millions of people who have their own smalkl fortunes backing them if you tried to get the site shut down then it would be very very very very very very hard because so many people approve of it and there is the argument thata most people use it fairly. and if you tried to shut down the users who were using it illegally then it would be pointless. why? beacause people on the internet can create new accounts and if they're ip banned there is always proxies and library computers. people will always be stupid deal with it.

Youtubeand google are getting suede by Viacom

It doesn't surprise me at all. Copyright laws are still laws and subject to penalties when they are broken.

Back to my previous post. Copyright law is law.

Why is it that people feel that they have the right to do what they want with music and videos?

I personally don't think HARM in terms of reputation is the problem. But financial harm ... absolutely. It's hard enough for creators of music and video to make it unless you're HUGE.

If you were a musician, selling music, and making your living from it, would you want people ripping you off and copying it for your friends and posting it all over the net?

Think about it.

For every song that is played on the radio the band makes royalties. When it is downloaded legally (such as itunes) the band makes a royalty.

When it is purchased in a store, the band makes a royalty.

I have no idea what you do for a living. But if you owned a McDonalds, would you want people coming in and just helping themselves to the food? Really it amounts to the same thing. But with digital products it is so easy to copy.

If you buy a book would you photocopy it for all your friends? No. Because it takes a lot of time, and you have to pay for each page you copy.

When you post something illegal on YouTube it costs you ZERO.

I'd like to see the copyright owners starting to go after the posters too. Attitudes have to change!

I'd rather see an official source confirming that.

Either way, there's not stopping it. Before youtube, copyrighted material was spreaded through Peer2Peer, and whatnot. Youtube just made it a lot easier. Apparently, they also seem to rely on the community effect, if something is offensive, or not appropriate, it'll be flagged and moderated.
But for me, non-American, watching shows such as Prison Break, Lost, Heroes, or any kind of anime, I'd either have to order online until some set of DVDs comes out. Or P2P. Or torrents. I'm not bothered by the fact that it's on youtube. Moreover, youtube isn't much of a source for that kind of material anyway, these days. You can find more of that on dailymotion, veoh, stage6, etc... And honestly, I don't see a destructive thing about, not at all. In fact, before I decide to spend the little money a college student like me has, on a DVD, I'd rather go see it on whichever site to see if I like it.

Shows like Heroes even caught up with the trend, and instead of fighting it, it went along with it and made its shows, after airing, available in a similar format. Initiatives like this make me want to support the creators of the show even more to continue with their efforts into supporting their fan base, rather than "selling out" and going "Microsoft" on sites like youtube and unleashing an army of lawyers and threats.

Are you asking for me to prove that copyright laws are actual laws? Geez!

I have books on the subject and took two years of it a school.

What kind of proof would you like?

This post has been edited by ginginca: Apr 24 2007, 11:30 PM

hahahahahahaha.. yes there are alot of stuffs in youtube now. the effects is already listed above and almost all of the reasons given are true and correct.

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1. Posting on youtube wont harm the owner

a. true: for new bands or if the material is purely used as a promotional video. you dont ask payments for promotional videos do you? no cash no royalty.

b. false: if the video is so ugly because the recording method is terrible, more likely the non mature viewer will think that the real full video sucks. another reason is royalty, the tv stations who broadcast them pays money to the owner of the material.

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2. the owner of the material have the task to pinpoint and ask for removal of the illegal contents.

a. true: it was almost the materials owner's responsibility to identify which one is illegal and which ones are not. i have seen a lot of websites that have contents coming directly to copyrigthed materials but the owner did not bother to sue them. reason is that the website is about a fan website and push more attention as a free advertisement for the video material.

This means that not all contents are marked by the owner as illegal. youtube surely knows the obvious ones that can be tagged as illegal but how about the non obvious ones. one more thing is that it is verutually impossible to scan all videos since there are thousands being added each day. scanning them will be pointless since it will take you perhaps 2-3 years to or more to view each video one by one for a certain day. what about the video that will come the next day? by reviewing the video sent today, you will be months delayed in reviewing all the videos that will be sent tommorow.

b. false: if the site declares that it prohibits such activity, then it needs to provide enough personnel to ensure that it was being dealt with accordingly and review board can cope with the amount of new videos being sent.


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This can be really long, since both arguments are partially correct and none is fully wrong beyond reasonable doubts.

The big question is that, "Can you stop watching videos on youtube?"