posting to undo moderation. I aimed for funny but mistakenly released on overrated. ugh.

You're a ridiculous, abject moron. Undeniably an ad-hominem, but since it's obviously true I'm ok with it =]

For the record, the ad-hominem in question was calling Marlin's integrity, intent, and legitimacy into question as your justification for calling his position and opinion unviable and of no value. Either you can't see that, hence you're a moron, or you can but you choose to argue and troll away regardless... hence you're a moron.

Nice way to interpret his intent into something base can prop your ad hominem upon.

There's nothing wrong with establishing an argument that claims you work in a particular field and therefore are accustomed to making educated choices about stuff related to that field.

If someone calls themselves a chef or a foodie, it may not make them right when they say how long you should boil pasta, but it means their opinion about it IS based on care, thought, and knowledge about the subject at hand. If someone random says "boil spaghetti for 20 minutes" then you may be more apt to consider their opinion as out of hand than someone who presents "credentials".

If slashdot wasn't such a fucking non-stop pissing-contest people might not feel the need to present "papers please" when offering their thoughtful opinions about stuff.

From what I've read, you'd be wrong about that. Link your source or I have to call misinformation / FUD on that one.

bingo

most on point comment in the debate ever

Let's not forget that's the hubris and presumptuousness that is required to assume that a video is worthless except for the copyrighted audio track within.
At the very least, Google's Content-ID system should split the revenue sharing 50-50 between the Content ID owner the owner of the video. Neither could exist without the other.

While a record company may claim that no one would watch the video were it not for the soundtrack (and this does happen a lot on YouTube, where people just upload a song and add a photo of the album cover or something), the reverse is just as often true: people watch a video for the video and in the process learn about a song, or are further exposed to it (and that's the point of radio, after all. the more you get exposed to a song the more likely you are to end up wanting to buy it).

This. The Content-ID thing. A travesty.

At the very least there should be an accountable human behind any DMCA takedown request (which even then would be terribly flawed for all the other arguments pointed out by others).

Yeah, that was unclear... I meant to say that Google fights authority for a lot of things, but not this, because in this case, they have a stake in not fighting it. So it's foolhardy to look at Google and think they are a champion for just causes, which is how they first looked to most people in the earlier days.

I didn't sign the contract. I was just doing a favor. The point of the post is to show how the principle of the system is flawed and stacked against the common person, which is what YouTube was originally all about.

Now it's all big content on there that drives the show. Common person content is only still allowed there as a way to make it seem like it's still the same youtube and maintain it's original attraction. Lies. As soon as any such content actually garners enough eyeballs on a regular basis, a bigger content company buys them out.

I honestly thought of doing something along those lines. But we're talking pennies barely worth small claims court here (going by what Google normally pays out for YT revenue sharing). And at the end of the day, such a suit might even end up dismissed with a simple "well, you should have read the fine print and not posted the video" or some such, because it's true, my company doesn't own the audio content, my friend does and he has a contract with the publishing company so I assume they would argue they are protecting his rights by adding his music to the database. Best case scenario we'd get some fraction of the revenue sharing, the publishing company gets another fraction and my friend gets nothing because it's not enough to undo the by operational costs.

Alas, I have too many other things to worry about and no good lawyer friends. Its not worth it so I just live with that chip on my shoulder but move on.

Sorry, to clarify: our friend has even spoken with the publishing company. They say they have no control over it. Google just automatically flags content that includes songs that are in the database as being owned by different publishers. Short of paying to get lawyers involved, and everyone loses except the lawyers if that happens, there is no way to alter this automated madness!

Google fights authority for lots of things. In this case, they happily worked on non-trivial content-tracking and content-scanning code and subsequently handed over the keys to the YouTube kingdom to the MAFIAA.

Why? Because Big Content is now also distributed on YouTube. Google gets a piece of that action. That wouldn't have happened if Google hadn't agreed to clamp down on even the most borderline and questionable copyright claims possible.

Here's an example: my company wrote, directed, filmed, and edited a music video for a lesser known artist who is a friend. We did it pro bono because he is a friend. We posted the video to YouTube and he started using it successfully to promote himself and get more appearances. He's not making any money, but he is increasing his exposure and the hope is someday it will help him get somewhere. In the meantime, the video is garnering views on YouTube and we had it set to monetize. Our aim was to offset our investment even in the most minor way possible. The medium sized publishing company that he used to distribute his track turns out is owned by a bigger publishing company. That bigger company claimed they owned the copyright on the video. Google happily revoked our right to monetize it and gave us the option to take it down or let the bigger company monetize it. There's no one you can actually talk to at Google to dispute these things and it's all automated and played according to rules designed solely to favor the big content companies that revenue share with Google for hosting their commercial YouTube channels.

Since the publishing company didn't enter into any contract with us to produce a video, we don't stand a chance to get any money. We can take down the video and thus hurt our friend, or we can demand he pay us, which also hurts him, or we can leave it there and the publishing company, which didn't spend a SINGLE DIME to either write, record or produce the track (they just distribute it, and their reward is a cut of the sales), and which didn't spend a SINGLE DIME to write, record, or produce the video... just gets to sit back and monetize the video. It's peanuts to them. Shit, it's peanuts to us and wouldn't undo the time and money we put into the video. BUT IT'S THE FUCKING PRINCIPLE!

All thanks to Google buying YouTube and then not only not fighting the fight it should have fought, but actually working intentionally to hand it all over to the bad guys.

I never noticed a problem before Google. Even if it were, video is cacheable and buffer-able and I'd prefer to wait if it's the condition for unencumbered content

I think this would have happened regardless. Possibly it would have been YouTube's revenue model... to upload or consume HD, you have to pay in some way.

I think this would have been similar to the HD situation and would have happened regardless.

Meh. I don't care much about live streaming. Regardless, the average Joe isn't doing this, it's mostly people with deeper pockets.

Revenue sharing is only right. You shouldn't credit Google for making money off the content and then sharing some of that revenue with the people that upload it. Because if they didn't, there would be torches and pitchforks headed toward Mountain View. What does suck, though, is their implementation. Upload original content that happens to have some copyrighted song in the background and you don't get a penny. Sorry, but that's just wrong, wrong, wrong.

YouTube was great until Google acquired them. Every "enhancement" and change they make drags it down further.

Of course, without Google, YouTube might not still be around otoh. But the point of YouTube was to decentralize video sharing and take it out of the hands of corporate media giants. Instead, the giants are increasing their stranglehold on YouTube and making it unfeasible for any old Joe to get a tiny kickback for content they upload, as well as crowding out all other competing content.

Meanwhile, Google mandates that people use YouTube with their real name and make it exceedingly difficult to manage multiple accounts.

Fuck em.

Just wait, til the cops start uploading all their footage to a central server for the NSA to add to its collection so they can start cataloging every social interaction that cops see while on their beat. Someone who's face matches a potential subject of interest in a database will get flagged when they show up on the footage and the NSA will then start tracking them based on geolocation data in the footage.