Not clear to me who wins and loses here. More restrictions that are hard to follow is generally bad - but Youtube isn’t a clear good guy here either. Biggest concern is it would end up restricting competititors instead.
Youtube and music licensing
Wow. Government may at time or not have good intentions but usually do not think things out.
I’ll give this a read
Youtube profits huge. To threaten artists who want to be paid is somewhat crass.
If the artist can have their stuff removed from Youtube, so they can put it somewhere else and be paid more for it, then no need for government regulation of the payments. They can negotiate their own terms, or band together with other artists / labels to do so as a group.
If they can’t, because youtube won’t take their content down or stop monetizing it without permission, that is copyright infringement - already illegal. Better enforcement mechanisms would be nice there though. And maybe some legal requirements that the platform disclose their profits on and views of the material in question when contacted by the owner.
This seems to be some mix of better protection and forced negotiation, with the potential for more legal risk to Youtube. And if they get the terms wrong, maybe it ends up blocking new competition who can’t afford to follow those terms as they get off the ground.
Then Google is responding with a threat. Both sides are attempting coercion of sorts, it is all a bit messy.
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You sound like an expert on the topic?
Any platform where anyone can upload content, which they can edit to de-phase AI, is utterly reliant on enforcement and, by definition, there are more content uploaders than people to check content. Monetizing uploaded content makes it inevitable, as it’s personally profitable, to find ways to bypass enforcement.
The only solution therefore is to basically kill the whole premise of Youtube. Or AI, which is expensive for Youtube in hardware and development.
A paid-for service will always struggle so long as Youtube exists.
A similar argument > decade ago from torrents and MP3 and CD ripping. Before that radio and casette recorders, back through time.
My own opinion is it more a matter the artist gets sufficient money to be able to eat, live, etc, so sufficient enforcement so sufficient income goes to the artist. Between a small deterence and goodwill of public to fund, no artist need starve. Excessive income is an issue, why does an artist need to become a millionaire?
I don’t upload any music to youtube, but if I wanted to edit an MP3 to bypass any AI scanning for known tracks, I could do it fairly easily. I don’t do it as it’s wrong, not because someone is smart enough to stop me.
AI can detect similar music, but it can do false positives, similar sounding.
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The topic is an intersection of fields - law, economics, AI, music, etc. I’ve just spent some time thinking about their intersection.
The article and proposed legislation appears focused on cases where the artist / label wants the material on Youtube for the revenue. Both sides are now lobbying politicians for their cut rather than negotiating with each other directly. My comment just mentioned a few alternatives to needing to do that. Radio play rights went through a similar process and are still a subject of some dispute despite being simpler. Mandatory licensing is messy.
Automated identification of content can be a problem at certain margins. But if most users who want to find a specific artist / song can do so, the video has been identified. Fooling the algorithms means not being seen much and is an edge case for payment questions.
For artists to be paid a sufficient wage to live, someone has to decide who qualifies as an artist to start with, what is a sufficient wage, and who is successful enough to continue being an artist. That is a deep and controversial rabbit hole.
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