[HN Gopher] U.S. indicts two men for running a $20M YouTube cont...
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U.S. indicts two men for running a $20M YouTube content ID scam
Author : ivank
Score : 295 points
Date : 2021-12-03 12:42 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (torrentfreak.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (torrentfreak.com)
| 1cvmask wrote:
| I am happy that this story made it to the main page. I submitted
| it earlier here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29427272
|
| My main concern is when you try to automate all the human
| intelligence is eliminated and can lead to both identity theft
| and money based fraud. Then you the innocent have to prove
| yourself against the fraudsters. Easy when you have a big
| megaphone on say Twitter but very hard for the individual.
|
| How many times have we seen automated troublesome issues resolved
| here on HN when someone from the company is luckily reading a
| post of a victim.
| LanceH wrote:
| > Then you the innocent have to prove yourself against the
| fraudsters.
|
| All too often you are referred to the fraudsters to resolve the
| problem.
| throwaway47292 wrote:
| Can't we make illegal to not be able to contact human support?
|
| It would put a hard cap on growth as well, not sure if this is
| horrible. maybe instead of having one giant youtube or facebook
| we will have thousands, maybe millions, of small ones.
|
| Or is this just the luddite in me talking?
| amelius wrote:
| How would you ever discover content worth watching?
| fer wrote:
| Introducing: Hypertext
|
| Joking aside, it's not like automatic content suggestions are
| perfect, they tend to lock you into whatever you consumed
| lately, ultimately causing things like Elsagate[0]
|
| For music or films I rarely use recommendations any more and
| go back to the old school thing of reading reviews from
| people who know the material and can compare and draw non
| obvious parallels with other artists and works.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsagate
| moron4hire wrote:
| How did we ever discover content worth watching?
| ok_dad wrote:
| In California, if a landlord improperly withholds someone's
| deposit after moving out, they can be sued for 3x the original
| amount. Perhaps there should be a time frame that is applied to
| fixing issues for improperly attributed claims like these in
| the article and require the company to pay back 3x what was
| lost due to the improper claim. For example, say you put up an
| original work, or one you have the rights to, and YouTube takes
| it down due to a faulty or fraudulent content ID, then they or
| the claimant (who will be one of the 3rd party entities that
| attest to having ownership or license to the work) will have to
| pay that user 3x the revenue lost from the instant the blocking
| was placed.
| degenerate wrote:
| I got my eBay account "permanently suspended" the other day. I
| was traveling for Thanksgiving and they had a $10 off $10 promo
| if you login to the app for the first time. I used the app from
| the Airport wifi to purchase two books for my friend I was
| visiting. Upon landing, I had received an email about my
| "permanent suspension" and if I had any questions, to contact
| eBay support.
|
| I thought, OK, I tripped up their IP security rules. I'll just
| call them and get it sorted out. Except... you can't call eBay
| anymore. Their phone lines are a recording that tell you to
| login first. When I login, all the support options for my now
| suspended account are missing. There's no messaging, phone,
| text, chat, or email options provided to me. Only an endless
| loop of support articles.
|
| Cross-checking this against my friend's account, he has all the
| options available and I do not. So in essence, they've shut me
| out from all communication and I can't ever get this account
| recovered. Many big companies moved to this communication model
| during covid, and it's extremely disheartening when something
| goes very wrong like this. If this is the new normal, we need
| to make it illegal.
| jrowley wrote:
| Have you considered sending them a pig fetus? Maybe they
| would respond?
|
| For those who don't get the joke:
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/15/ex-ebay-employees-sent-
| blood...
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I got my EA account permanently suspended. Not just
| permanently suspended, but 3 times in the same day. Without
| even having EA's launcher installed. Or having my computer
| turned on.
| degenerate wrote:
| Likely someone stole the account, then tried purchasing
| multiple games with stolen CCs. At least EA support can be
| contacted without logging in! You may have the ability to
| get this reversed.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| That's an idea but I couldn't find any indication that
| anyone else logged into it at all. Also it specifically
| said I banned for playing Apex Legends, which is a free
| game.
|
| I'm just really impressed they banned the same account 3
| times in a day. That implies that I somehow circumvented
| the ban twice, without even knowing about the first two
| times.
| kingcharles wrote:
| As a 25 year eBay user it's sad to see how shitty it has
| become.
| me_me_me wrote:
| Welcome to YT human support, you are #1865272937 in the queue.
| Please be patient.
| gambiting wrote:
| Tbf YT has human customer support, and it's very easy and
| quick to reach them. I've had to do it several times due to
| issues with my payment for YT Premium, and the experience was
| pretty good every time. But yeah, I'm also sure they won't
| help you with anything other than payment problems.
| toolz wrote:
| I would suggest unenforceable laws are not only ineffective but
| have a net negative consequence on society.
|
| Maybe this is enforceable, but I'm certainly nowhere near
| clever enough to imagine how it could be enforced and given the
| state of things like drug and human trafficking I'm not
| convinced a politician will be clever enough either.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| It's simple if you actually want to do it in good faith and
| not try to find every possible excuse not to do it: any
| citizen encountering issue and being unable to reach human
| support can make a complaint to a government agency who will
| attempt to reach human support using reasonable means that
| the citizen would've done (and documenting the process as
| evidence). If _they_ can 't get through it the company is
| sued for a certain amount of money proportional to its
| revenue as a deterrent.
| acd10j wrote:
| This lawsuit should also have Youtube as party. They should be
| massively fined not preventing this kind of scams, although any
| sane individual can spot this from distance.
| myself248 wrote:
| Bingo. The chance that NONE of the affected creators tried to
| appeal this for FOUR YEARS is effectively zero.
|
| YouTube's negligence rises to a new level here. They should be
| culpable as well.
| eatonphil wrote:
| This article has some more detail on some of the artists and
| songs they stole royalty from.
|
| https://www.marketwatch.com/story/two-charged-with-stealing-...
| OneTimePetes wrote:
| Another symptom of a monopol.
|
| If peertube or the likes was a full blown alternative, people
| would just quit youtube over this, putting the squeeze on google
| to clean up its act.
| acdha wrote:
| It's not that simple: YouTube has a huge natural lock-in
| because videos use lots of bandwidth and Google's advertisers
| are willing to pay for that.
|
| Peer to peer systems struggle to offer a competitive a
| competitive experience because few people are able/willing to
| volunteer significant bandwidth or take on the personal
| liability for serving content which is copyrighted or otherwise
| illegal. They'll work okay for a hugely popular video but fall
| off the cliff for the long-tail of niche interests and there
| aren't enough people who care about it enough to make "YouTube
| but slower and less reliable" work in general.
| coldacid wrote:
| Yeah. Essentially, YouTube is all but a natural monopoly
| given today's legal and technical environment. Unfortunately,
| it doesn't get the oversight that natural monopolies are
| supposed to have to prevent abuses like these.
| acdha wrote:
| That's my take as well: regulation and liability for errors
| are the most realistic way to fix this. Even if ISPs were
| required to offer symmetric bandwidth I don't see anywhere
| near enough people even being interested in serving other
| people's content to make P2P work, which makes me feel old
| for remembering how cool the BitTorrent launch seemed
| before I understood the social aspects of the problem.
| fibbberMEN wrote:
| There was a community project like this years ago where they
| submitted tens of thousands of 10 second clips and random beats
| they made just to get back at all the record companies claiming
| they own 10 second sound samples. I guess it's unsurprising the
| lawsuit goes after the small guys and not the big companies that
| have been doing it forever.
| imglorp wrote:
| Maybe worthy of its own post but there's another kind of overt
| scammer on Youtube. It goes like this:
|
| They find some technically hip, well known content and create a
| new channel with a very similar name as the originator. Create an
| exciting full screen ad for a crypto currency faucet scam, with
| price charts and crawls. "Live" stream the original content inset
| into the ad.
|
| Here's one example:
| https://cryptoplayboys.blogspot.com/2021/11/spacex-scam-live...
|
| Even if you report these things, they don't get removed very
| quickly. They're getting tons of views so why would YT care? The
| original content holder would care about being associated with
| them and should sue for defamation though.
| donmcronald wrote:
| That's clever, but won't most of the live stream viewers still
| be viewing on a legitimate platform? I'm guessing that framed
| stream doesn't actually have too many viewers.
| ricardo81 wrote:
| I think in these cases, this kind of setup can be largely
| automated since there isn't really any unique/quality content
| that'd take a person time to create - and getting smaller
| view counts over many channels perhaps mitigates the risk of
| having the channel removed
|
| I've seen similar with sport highlights searches, screenshots
| and automated commentary scraped from a news source. They
| don't get many views but there's hundreds of them,
| particularly for sport behind paywalls. No one wants to see
| them but they turn up in searches at the right time.
|
| Must be demotivating for content creators to be continually
| dealing with this kind of thing.
| avian wrote:
| Publish literally anything textual on the web and a moment
| later you'll find a dozen websites copying your content, raking
| in ad money, identity protected by Cloudflare and conveniently
| ranking high on Google.
|
| Complain and people will all be "Freedom of speech! Go get a
| court order, it's not Google's or Cloudflare's place to censor
| content and/or decide what's copyright infrigement.".
|
| Why is the YouTube drama any different from that? Is it because
| the creators are well known and have a platform and a following
| they can complain to?
| xwolfi wrote:
| The weird thing is who pays for all these ads and who take
| compulsive buy decision based on them ?
|
| If we could someone boycott every company we see in these ads
| maybe they d stop?
|
| I really dont think we should pay royalties in excess of cost
| of production + margin for future investment, and that
| copyright is an abuse itself after a few years of existence
| (hell I dont get paid a share of every revenue my work is
| contributing to and Im fine, I just create every day and if I
| dont like it Ill cut hair or clean dishes)
| dpifke wrote:
| I find it incredible that if I search for [spacex] on YouTube
| during a launch, the official livestream doesn't appear in the
| first 20 results. Instead, it's all scams like what you
| described.
|
| I wonder at what point Google's competence at search dropped to
| the point that they can't return the channel named "SpaceX" in
| response to my query.
| Const-me wrote:
| I think their competence is fine, and the service works
| exactly as designed. The main problem is, Google is both
| publisher, search indexer, and advertisement network. Worse,
| it's a near monopoly on all 3 of these markets.
|
| When you search for SpaceX, Google has a choice.
|
| They can optimize for search quality by taking you to their
| official channel which has no ads. Doing that only causes
| them expenses. Bandwidth and compute are very cheap at their
| scale, but not free.
|
| Or they can take you to these heavily monetized third-parties
| with the same content. Because these copy-cats are monetized
| through the same google, google is taking a non-trivial cut
| from every advertisement dollar spent while people watching
| these videos.
| Guest19023892 wrote:
| During the Pixel 6 event last month I searched on YouTube for
| the live stream that would be starting in a few minutes and
| clicked the first result. The result had a Pixel 6 thumbnail,
| the live icon, Google in the channel name, the Google logo as
| the avatar, and around 30k viewers. I was a bit surprised
| someone was already talking on the stage and thought I tuned
| in late.
|
| Well, after watching for 5 or 10 minutes, they kept talking
| about Pixel 5s, and then I realized it was a fake account
| streaming the event from the previous year.
|
| I went back to YouTube search and tried a variety of queries
| for fun, such as "pixel 6 event", "pixel live", "pixel 6
| stream", "pixel phone", and they all featured this fake
| stream as the first result. It continued to grow and was over
| 50k viewers. Further down the list was another stream with
| the same thumbnail, same avatar, and a similar channel name,
| and that happened to be the real one. It had around 120k
| viewers, so not much better than the fake channel.
|
| After about 30 minutes or half way through the event, the
| fake stream was finally removed from the results.
| kuu wrote:
| That could be some "name squatting" / "cyber squatting":
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersquatting
| imglorp wrote:
| Yes, it's a combination of name squatting, defamation,
| copyright, AND faucet scam. (bingo?)
|
| YT should act on any one of these but they don't.
| tjpnz wrote:
| >They find some technically hip, well known content and create
| a new channel with a very similar name as the originator.
| Create an exciting full screen ad for a crypto currency faucet
| scam, with price charts and crawls. "Live" stream the original
| content inset into the ad.
|
| There's guaranteed to be several running after every Falcon
| 9/Starship launch, sometimes they'll attract almost as many
| viewers as the real livestream - very likely to be bots. What's
| even worse is that YouTube are recommending these, and with the
| removal of dislike counts it becomes even harder for the
| layperson to know if what they're watching is legitimate.
|
| With the exception of copyrighted content it seems like YouTube
| find it acceptable to offer criminals a multiple hour head
| start on their mods, allowing them to stream any damn thing
| they like.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Those criminals and their potential victims (plus potential
| bots) "engage" with the platform. Until Google becomes liable
| for facilitating those scams, Google loses nothing and
| actually benefits from those scammers being there as they
| contribute to various engagement metrics. The same is true
| for any other engagement-driven company.
| paulpauper wrote:
| I am sure google would remove terrorism or child
| exploitation videos real fast, because they are compelled
| by law to do so. scam videos?..not so much.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _They 're getting tons of views so why would YT care?_
|
| You don't want your brand to be synonymous with scams. When
| that happens, you won't get any money from views - if people
| "know" the videos are scams, they won't watch. They'll assume
| all videos are scams and won't watch any original content. I'm
| sure the folks at Google can figure out at what point they need
| to take action. What amount of bad PR, percentage of views on
| scam content, percentage of content that is just scams, etc.
|
| ...Or maybe they aren't taking the long view on this.
| hamiltonians wrote:
| these YouTube crypto scammers make so much money. About $30-50
| million/month
|
| https://scaminvestigations.substack.com/p/crypto-giveaway-sc...
|
| to put it another way, that is about 2-3x times the revenue of
| the $20-million dollar YouTube copyright scam but compressed
| into just a few weeks to a month instead of 5 years.
| alx__ wrote:
| I don't understand how so many people are willingly sending
| bitcoin. I could see a few folks that don't get how scams
| work. But millions daily?
| rmu09 wrote:
| I'm not a US citizen and not a lawyer either, but shouldn't it be
| possible (for a US american copyright holder) to sue youtube
| and/or those that claim the copyright in small claims court?
| AFAIK you would not need a lawyer and at the same time create a
| very big hassle for the companies involved.
| eloff wrote:
| This kind of scam is enabled by the way Youtube, Facebook, and
| others offer no way to contact an actual human for help (or if
| you find a way, you get a useless canned response.) People who
| realize something is wrong have no forum to air their concerns.
| INTPenis wrote:
| I know it's awful and true, BUT, can you blame them?
|
| Think about the infrastructure required to allow direct human
| contact for someone like Google, Youtube or Facebook.
|
| Just a regular ISP in my country of Sweden needs an entire call
| centre to handle the calls it gets from customers.
|
| Now scale that up to the levels of Google.
|
| I can totally see why they've made the decision to avoid
| consumer contact. Their consumers are the entire internet.
|
| I know this is controversial but one solution would be to break
| their monopoly up so that smaller companies could handle
| consumer contact.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I think it only seems like it would be crazy because we've
| allowed companies to get away with not doing it.
|
| Go back, pre-internet, and Bell Telephone surely had a
| sophisticated and expensive tech-support, customer-support
| department. They managed.
|
| I think we've just come to begrudgingly accept that
| outsourcing, automating everything is okay. It's okay now to
| let the customer find your support phone number, navigate
| your phone tree, spend 30 minutes or more in a phone queue
| for, in the end, no real help.
|
| Doesn't mean we have to excuse it.
| creato wrote:
| > Go back, pre-internet, and Bell Telephone surely had a
| sophisticated and expensive tech-support, customer-support
| department. They managed.
|
| Those services were a lot more expensive to their users as
| well. If everyone paid $xx/mo to YouTube I'm sure the
| customer support would be a lot better. But then most
| people wouldn't be users in the first place.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "Think about the infrastructure required to allow direct
| human contact for someone like Google, Youtube or Facebook."
|
| So they have an unfair advantage over competition by avoiding
| the cost of customer support? Am I meant to feel sorry for
| them?
| intricatedetail wrote:
| It shouldn't be an excuse. The system is not fit for purpose.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| If even a regular ISP can afford a call center so can Google
| with its economies of scale.
| BohdanAnderson wrote:
| I think an ISP is a bad example. The relationship between the
| user (content creators) and Youtube very different than that
| of a consumer.
| jimhefferon wrote:
| So, this business does things that take away people's rights,
| but it is OK because otherwise their cost of business would
| be too high?
| djbusby wrote:
| Exactly! Won't someone please think of the helpless
| capitalist!!
| notyourday wrote:
| > I know it's awful and true, BUT, can you blame them?
|
| Yes, I can.
|
| Youtube knowingly traffics and sells stolen goods and
| services. Youtube's officers and directors know it. The key
| words there is knowingly. Arrest Youtube CEO as a head of a
| criminal enterprise. Bust her door pre-dawn and drag her out
| into the slammer. There's zero difference in how we should
| deal with Incs be that Mafia, Inc. or Youtube, Inc.
|
| The mere prospect of that will quickly solve all the
| technical problems. It is all about motivation. Youtube's
| executives currently are not motivated to solve the problem.
| The government needs to provide the motivation.
| Neil44 wrote:
| Just because it's hard doesn't mean they should get away with
| not doing it. Google 2020 revenues were 181 Billion, you can
| build a VERY big call centre with that.
| Orionos wrote:
| I'm failing to understand your logic. Google could put a call
| center in every country to handle local user's requests
| could'nt they ?
|
| Your ISP can afford to do so...
|
| But yes, as they have a monopoly, they can afford not putting
| any call center anywhere.
| ratww wrote:
| Yep. And it doesn't even have to be a call center, manual
| verification would be enough.
| [deleted]
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Google makes billions of dollars. They can easily afford to
| hire tens of thousands of call center employees.
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| The underlying assumption with all these criticisms is that
| human contact would be better. But is this really true?
|
| Humans can be bribed, manipulated, or lied to. This
| introduces a whole set of new problems. It just turns
| "YouTube algo removed my channel because I got report bombed"
| to "A YouTube employees removed my channel after they were
| social engineered".
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Contact with a knowledgeable human is better than no
| contact is I think what people are arguing, yes.
| adrr wrote:
| At scale you have more options. You can subcontract out your
| call center like all the big companies. These companies use
| these subcontracted callcenters like
| https://www.helpware.com/. They don't want to spend the
| money.
| fault1 wrote:
| They can always contract it out, and in some cases they do.
| For example Meta has (used to have?) large deals with
| Accenture to handle a lot of the interaction internationally.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Understanding and respecting that (I made a similar case
| within the past day:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29421420), there's still
| the rejoinder:
|
| If you can't provide a service safely, equitably, and
| predictably at a given scale, maybe the answer is "don't do
| that".
| tyingq wrote:
| They all have the ability to control that funnel though. In
| this case, they could allow channel owners that have been
| demonetized to open a ticket. Or allow artist representatives
| that already have "special" YouTube accounts to complain,
| etc.
| bottled_poe wrote:
| I hope you are being sarcastic. These companies were
| fortunate to be ahead of the curve in automating content
| delivery but, despite their best efforts, have failed in
| automating service delivery. Human connection should be
| mandatory in running a modern business. If you want to deal
| with humans, you should be required to reciprocate.
| Arrath wrote:
| > I know this is controversial but one solution would be to
| break their monopoly up so that smaller companies could
| handle consumer contact.
|
| I think I lean in this direction, too. Customer service
| should go hand-in-hand with having customers in the first
| place. If you have grown so outrageously large that you have
| no feasible way to plumbing some of your astronomical profits
| to servicing those who facilitate your profits, then maybe
| you have grown too big.
| exabrial wrote:
| They could absolutely do it and they have more than enough
| money to do it. They just don't want to because it'd cut into
| profits.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Also, relying on algos to detect spam instead of using humans,
| means that scammers are able to run their scams much longer.
| travoc wrote:
| Is there a word for this new world where we find ourselves
| without the ability to appeal our problems to human
| rationality, where instead we are continually subjected to the
| whims of automated systems that no human fully understands?
| loceng wrote:
| Criminal [for the parties facilitating it by allowing it],
| comes to mind as a naming option.
| quercusa wrote:
| Harlan Ellison described it in _I Have No Mouth, and I Must
| Scream_.
| routerl wrote:
| Kafkaesque.
|
| Maybe cyber-kafkaesque, but that feels redundant, since the
| only difference is that it is being done by computers, rather
| than thoughtless people.
| nullc wrote:
| computational-Kafkarcy -- the difference is in the scale
| and efficiency. Millions of people can be abused at once at
| practically no cost.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| "new" haha. Check out the trial by franz kafka
| kansface wrote:
| Check out The Trial or The Castle for examples of old world
| systems that existed outside of the grace of human
| rationality, indifferent to justice and human suffering
| alike.
| rchaud wrote:
| How about:
|
| "You get what you pay for"
| hindsightbias wrote:
| It's interesting how people expect all sorts of protections
| for services they pay nothing to.
|
| Get a record label or agent if you want or need
| "protection"
| goblin89 wrote:
| The situation with almost-no-appeal big tech platforms
| reminds me of an article titled "the human-built world is not
| build for humans"[0].
|
| Related phenomenons keep coming up (cities for cars,
| ecosystems of tokens and identities dependent on remembering
| secret passkeys, and so on). Desires to profit and to not
| have to trust each other keeps motivating humans' attempts to
| devise environments that are hostile to humans themselves.
|
| [0] https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/the-human-
| built-w...
| me_me_me wrote:
| Its the same when trying to get mortgage when you are not on
| fixed salary income.
|
| "Computer says no", "But on average over last 5 years I make
| 5x what you need me to earn", "Sorry, but computer says no"
| boringg wrote:
| Oh yah the mortgage thing is hilarious in that you would
| think banks were smarter than they are (spoiler alert: they
| arent). Really demoralizing to see how mechanic a bank is,
| also means that you can understand how risk accrues
| secretly in a bank due to them being so mechanical.
| soperj wrote:
| Is this really new? This is pretty much exactly what Kafka
| writes.
| travoc wrote:
| It's new in the sense that it suddenly afflicts my family
| on an almost daily basis.
| tlb wrote:
| It's a strong assumption that humans are more rational than
| machines. Certainly typical customer service reps get
| bamboozled frequently, such as with SIM-swap scams. Even
| supposedly highly rational professionals like judges are
| often wrong. You might find that overall, human failures are
| worse than code-as-policy failures.
| gpderetta wrote:
| Well, the amount of damage an incompetent human can deal is
| much more limited than an incompetent but very efficient
| machine.
| routerl wrote:
| Machines aren't rational at all. That is, they do not
| respond to reasons.
|
| Machine behaviour is only ever _caused_ (i.e. syntactic),
| not reasoned.
|
| When a human follows a rule, for example as part of a
| bureaucracy, then our behaviour is merely caused. But we
| can also be given reasons to _not_ follow the given rule.
|
| This is precisely why "I was just following orders" is not
| a valid defence; even soldiers are expected to use their
| reasoning to disobey illegal orders.
| sharperguy wrote:
| Customer service
| derekjdanserl wrote:
| Capitalism
| dd36 wrote:
| Unregulated.
| Jach wrote:
| Ah yes, the free market system known as copyright.
| conanbatt wrote:
| I don't think the URSS had a Customer XP department. Or the
| government in general for that matter.
| acta_non_verba wrote:
| I don't know how helpful a deliberate misunderstanding of
| the current economic model is to this conversation.
|
| Capitalism doesn't forbid sensible regulation, it just
| hasn't happened as politicians don't really understand the
| space.
|
| China, which runs a completely different economic system
| has similar issues.
| JackFr wrote:
| Capitalism means different things to different people and
| in different contexts.
|
| Separation of ownership from management. Tradeable claims
| on the firm. Legal personhood of the firm. Private
| property. Free trade between countries. Market determined
| prices.
|
| But it's lazy and wrong to use it as a synonym for greed.
| Despite Gordon Gecko, greed is not good. Just seeing
| something we consider bad and saying "Capitalism" is a
| pose and not an argument.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| Capitalism is anti regulation by nature.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Human nature is anti-regulation by nature.
|
| Communism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Karachay
|
| Totalitarianism: There were several regulatory oversight
| failures in Germany during their stint with Fascism
| jklinger410 wrote:
| That's crazy considering how much more regulation humans
| have had than any other observable creature.
| pydry wrote:
| >Capitalism doesn't forbid sensible regulation
|
| It doesnt forbid but it strongly inhibits. A system under
| which you are able to acquire vast resources then creates
| the ability to use those vast resources to sway the
| political process in your favor.
|
| Even when the regulations exist (e.g. antitrust)
| regulatory capture will inhibit their enforcement.
|
| It's surprising how many people consider this process to
| be somehow irrelevant or out of scope when you analyze
| how capitalism functions. It's a core feature.
| jd115 wrote:
| Life.
|
| Right?
|
| Is Life a bad word? No. It's a beautiful word. Does it
| contain the good, the bad and the ugly? Of course.
|
| Is Capitalism a bad word? No. It's a beautiful idea, and it
| works significantly better than anything else humans have
| ever been able to think of on a mass-scale. Does it contain
| the good the bad and the ugly? Sure.
| pydry wrote:
| Capitalism definitely has some of the best PR.
| LanceH wrote:
| Yea, all the other systems.
| [deleted]
| jklinger410 wrote:
| A capitalist society has told you that capitalism is good
| and you think you're so smart parroting this opinion
| around.
|
| It's getting very old.
| hackflip wrote:
| I don't think capitalism is good, I just think the
| alternatives are worse.
| 7sidedmarble wrote:
| Is it not a little pessimistic (and not to mention, very
| convenient for the ruling class) to believe that we've
| reached the peak process of resource allocation and
| community building in the western world of 2021? There is
| no possibility for an alternative to the current system
| that is slightly more equitable to slightly more people?
|
| I think that's why these statements sound like
| cheerleading for the status quo.
| mistermann wrote:
| It's like propaganda (Our most sacred institution) has
| killed people's imagination and hardened their hearts.
| finiteseries wrote:
| The twentieth century and its experiments in alternative
| resource allocation and community building are not
| propaganda, it happened.
|
| It wasn't live tweeted, but we do, actually, have
| records. Some people were even there!
| jd115 wrote:
| Yes, yes we were.. and it's the last place we want to
| find ourselves again.
| mistermann wrote:
| _propaganda: information, especially [but not
| exclusively; nuance abounds] of a biased or misleading
| nature, used to promote or publicize a particular
| political cause or point of view._
|
| This reminds me of this article currently on the front
| page:
|
| https://quillette.com/2021/11/29/the-universal-structure-
| of-...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29408567
|
| People think about and perceive reality in "stories"
| (processed heuristically), because that is how we
| communicate about it - in journalism, in conversations,
| on social media, almost everywhere (there are exceptions:
| software, hard sciences, etc [1]) - from the day we are
| born to the day we die. We don't really know any other
| form in daily practice, so we do not realize it - it is
| _the fabric of reality_. A (simplistic) alternative would
| be speaking to each other like ~autistic, emotionless,
| hyper-pedantic, object-oriented, robotic AI
| agents...which human beings tend to dislike, _strongly_.
|
| In this example, I've made an allegation (and made
| reference to _one example of_ a story that (allegedly)
| involved propaganda):
|
| >> It's like propaganda (Our most sacred institution) has
| killed people's imagination and hardened their hearts.
|
| Now, I am countered ("debunked" in modern day
| _increasingly popular_ subjective parlance, as opposed to
| "disproven" in objective parlance), by a ~story (which
| based on my experience, would "rank highly" among
| observers, perhaps due to its consistency with other
| stories: "records", "fact"-based journalism):
|
| > The twentieth century and its experiments in
| alternative resource allocation and community building
| are not propaganda, it happened.
|
| > It wasn't live tweeted, but we do, actually, have
| records. Some people were even there!
|
| In no way did I objectively/physically assert that the
| entirety of "The twentieth century and its experiments in
| alternative resource allocation and community building"
| _are propaganda_ or that _they did not happen_.
|
| In no way did I say that "the" (a rather cognitively
| magical word) events (the specifics of which we do not
| know (and do not realize we do not know), even completely
| leaving aside the infinitely complex underlying
| causality) of January 6 _did not happen_.
|
| However, to various agents/observers within this system
| that we live, _I did say these things_. It did not
| actually happen, but due to _the nature of_ reality [2],
| if they are perceived as happening (which can occur in
| many ways), _they then become Real (as opposed to True)_
| , and are then cognitively processed, stored, recovered
| (on demand), and perceived _as reality itself_. And if
| many agents agree upon a story, it then becomes "Truth"
| (and perceived as Truth), and then documented as
| _Objective History_.
|
| tl;dr: Plato's Allegory of the Cave may have some truth
| to it.
|
| [1] Interestingly, these domains tend to be _massively_
| more accomplished than the rest of reality. Whether the
| unusual way they deal in perception ( _extremely_
| simplified: objectively rather than subjectively) has
| anything to do with that, I will leave as an exercise to
| the reader.
|
| [2] Reality is a very interesting word. In Scientific
| Materialistic oriented cultures, it is typically
| perceived (recursively, as "reality") as consisting of
| physical objects, and events involving physical objects.
| Reality does indeed consist of these things, but that is
| but a slice of the entirety of it. However, ideas such
| this can be easily _debunked_ , because they "are"
| (another cognitively magical word) "woo woo" - and thus
| the local minima of Maya is maintained indefinitely.
|
| Ironically, this too is a story. Which story is more
| true, is also left as an exercise to the reader.
| povik wrote:
| I happen to come from that part of the world where
| something radically different has been tried out, and
| will also tell you capitalism is good (considering the
| alternatives).
| jd115 wrote:
| Quite the contrary. I have now lived half my life under a
| communist regime and half under a capitalist one. Let me
| be abundantly clear: I far prefer the latter. I like
| where it is, and I like where it's headed. I NEVER want
| to hear about communism ever again.
|
| Here's the main differences I see: 1.
| Capitalism is a social construct. It embraces human greed
| and builds upon it. That's why it works so well.
| 2. Communism is merely a short-term con scheme (granted,
| on a rather large scale). It embraces hypocrisy, pretends
| to shun greed, steals everyone's chips and runs, while
| making people build some idealistic nice stuff which all
| collapses to dust and misery the moment the top runs away
| with the money. 3. There is no 3. People like to
| wank about with all sorts of flowery ideas about
| capitalism minus the greed, but that's just communism
| really.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| 1. Communism is a social construct. It embraces human
| goodness and builds upon it. That's why it is ethical and
| good.
|
| 2. Capitalism is merely a short-term con scheme (granted,
| on a rather large scale.) It embraces hypocrisy,
| encourages greed, steals from the poor and gives to the
| rich, while making people build some idealistic idea of
| competitive fairness while burning the entire planet to
| shreds while the top run away with the resources and
| quality of life.
|
| 3. There is no 3. People like to pretend they understand
| world history and economics with all these false ideas
| that lack context of how capitalism is better, when it's
| just propaganda that hides the resources and military
| strategy that went behind the current layout of the world
| economy.
| scrose wrote:
| What country do you live in that has a purely capitalist
| system? I'm curious how that would work out.
|
| Even the USA has a lot of socialist policies that
| primarily benefit the wealthy(ie. Taxpayer funded
| mortgage deductions)
| InitialLastName wrote:
| As far as I can tell, nowhere has actually implemented
| either full-scale capitalism or full-scale communism in
| the last human lifetime. At its most extreme, there have
| been some planned-economy socialist states (selling
| themselves as a "stepping stone to communism") and some
| thoroughly regulated, state-subsidized free-market
| systems.
|
| I suppose there have also been some failed states that
| devolved power to a variety of local systems; maybe it's
| some of those that you have lived under?
|
| One of the sensible #3s you might be missing, by the way,
| could be something along the lines of "free markets with
| enough regulation to protect the commons and enough
| social spending to invest in the populace (encouraging
| future innovation and mobility) and enough of a safety
| net to limit desperation (to keep the pitchforks out of
| the ownership class's stomachs)"
| themaninthedark wrote:
| (With apologies to Churchill)
|
| Many forms of commerce have been tried, and will be tried
| in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that
| democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said
| that capitalism is the worst form of commerce except for
| all those other forms that have been tried from time to
| time.
|
| But honestly, GGP replying with a one word answer
| "Capitalism" and to paraphrase your reply >"The system
| has brainwashed you" does no one here any good. Please
| expound on what system you would like to see implemented
| and why it would not have this problem. You will probably
| have to defend your ideas but that is what debate is for.
| 7sidedmarble wrote:
| >But honestly, GGP replying with a one word answer
| "Capitalism" and to paraphrase your reply >"The system
| has brainwashed you" does no one here any good. Please
| expound on what system you would like to see implemented
| and why it would not have this problem.
|
| Do you not see the double standard in this very post of
| yours? You're chastising him with 'please recommend what
| system we _should_ use then ' and at the same time
| claiming the advantage to capitalism is that it's an
| imperfect system, yet still better then anything else
| we've come up with.
|
| If you believe human beings have not thought of any
| better systems or ideas, then why would you ask him to
| produce one, other then you would just shut it down with
| that same argument? It just seems intellectually lazy. If
| you believe this then _no one_ could ever sway you. At
| that point don 't pretend to be interested in hearing
| alternatives, just say you've made up your mind.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _Please expound on what system you would like to see
| implemented and why it would not have this problem._
|
| While I agree simply saying "capitalism" and hand-waving
| at "brainwashing" are both not great conversation
| starters, your demands are equally unhelpful, no matter
| how nicely you phrase it.
|
| One does not require a solution to a problem in order to
| identify a problem.
| HPsquared wrote:
| "Computer says no"
| g_p wrote:
| Kafkaesque?
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| The 21st century.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Its kafkaesque, the established world for inconprehensible
| and cruel bureaucracy that destroys lives for no reason. The
| term predates internet.
| junon wrote:
| Broken.
| tibbetts wrote:
| Utopia of Rules - our culture thinks that if we just had the
| right set of rules and everyone fallowed them then everything
| would work well. This is a flawed belief, like other utopias.
| SapporoChris wrote:
| "Utopia of Rules - our culture thinks that if we just had
| the right set of rules and everyone fallowed them then
| everything would work well." I hate to be pedantic, but
| your typo fallowed is literally the opposite of your
| intended followed. https://www.wordnik.com/words/fallow
| adjective Characterized by inactivity.
|
| However, you have got my interest. What is the flaw in the
| reasoning?
| justinclift wrote:
| > What is the flaw in the reasoning?
|
| Because the world is a very wide and varied place, with
| far more range of human situations than a set of rules is
| able to adequately deal with. Probably ever.
| ufmace wrote:
| More so, any system of rules that was anywhere near
| complete enough to deal with every situation ever would
| be so huge and complex that no human could ever read and
| understand it all, and even searching it properly would
| be impossible. Which will certainly lead to parts of the
| rule system contradicting each other and actual cases
| following one or the other or something else entirely
| depending on what the person applying it to the case was
| able to find.
|
| And if some individual's ability to find things or not
| decides what happens, then we're right back where we
| started, at a rather arbitrary system vulnerable to
| corruption. In which case, why did we even bother making
| this huge incomprehensible set of rules?
|
| See for example the US Tax Code.
| ratww wrote:
| This is one of my major Hacker News pet peeves. People talk
| about _any_ law whatsoever and people immediately jump to
| "yeah but what about this crazy edge case" as if the legal
| system itself doesn't take those into account. They're
| probably throwing lots of babies away since bathwater won't
| ever be microbe-free.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| People immediately jump to "yeah but what about this
| crazy edge case" because they know the law will be
| applied to hundreds of millions of people and that crazy
| edge case will actually happen many times.
|
| And if you can't say ahead of time what a judge _should_
| do with that law against that edge case, you have a legal
| vulnerability. Something that will cause "hard cases
| make bad law." Something that will be abused by the rich
| and powerful and against the poor and vulnerable. You
| have a bad law.
|
| What you're advocating for is not thinking about the
| consequences of legislation before passing it.
| ratww wrote:
| Where am I advocating for anything? Please don't put
| words in my mouth. What I am complaining about is people
| immediately jumping to completely dismiss the discussed
| laws and even the need for them just because the posters
| assume they don't cover edge cases. This is done without
| understanding or even reading the laws themselves, nor
| the legal process that will be used to enforce them, nor
| how the individual legal systems of each countries work
| in regards to those edge cases. The ironic part is that
| in the last two or three cases where I saw it happen, the
| laws themselves already had the edge cases covered!
|
| And honestly, uninformed people talking about a law
| without doing an iota of research won't make a single
| difference in the world. Hacker News armchair amateur
| lawyers are not fighting for anyone, not even for
| themselves.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _[edit: the parent comment was edited so this comment
| applies to a previous version]_
|
| Constructive feedback: the first sentence isn't
| necessary. People will only see the anger and not the
| actual point. The second sentence stands on its own.
| ratww wrote:
| You're right. Sorry about that, but it angers me when
| people put words in my mouth.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > What I am complaining about is people immediately
| jumping to dismiss the discussed laws and even the need
| for them just because the posters assume they don't cover
| edge cases. This is done without understanding or even
| reading the laws themselves, nor the legal process that
| will be used to enforce them, nor how the legal system
| works in regards to those edge cases.
|
| This reads like "these dumdums can't possibly understand
| the law because only lawyers can understand the law and
| everyone else needs to shut up."
|
| How is that compatible with a democracy? Don't voters
| have to be able to understand what their legislators are
| doing on their behalf? Are we all just permanently
| screwed?
|
| It's not as if these criticisms don't come to fruition.
| People said DMCA 1201 would be a bad law from the
| beginning, and it still is. Sex workers objected to SESTA
| even though they were the ones it was supposed to
| protect, politicians passed it over their objection, and
| the bad things predicted to happen then happened. It is
| the calls to "reform" CDA 230 that seem to lack any
| understanding of the law, the reasons for it, or even
| what it does.
|
| The most common flaw in new legislation is the failure to
| account for unintended consequences from bad edge cases
| and perverse incentives. It is actually really hard to
| create a law without these things. The discussion of how
| to avoid them, or even _if_ they can be avoided
| sufficiently to cause the proposed law to be a net
| positive in the world, is really important.
|
| Here's another example. This year, the Supreme Court did
| some good in reining in the CFAA:
|
| https://www.lawfareblog.com/supreme-court-reins-cfaa-van-
| bur...
|
| This is your system working, right? But the CFAA was
| passed in _1986_. We lived under that uncertainty, and it
| caused much turmoil, for thirty five years. That 's bad.
| We should want for that not to happen.
| ratww wrote:
| _> This reads like "these dumdums can't possibly
| understand the law because only lawyers can understand
| the law and everyone else needs to shut up."_
|
| It's not. It's more "these [otherwise very intelligent
| people] can't possibly understand the law because they
| haven't bothered to read it, as they're merely reacting
| to the description of it by another poster" and just
| posted their first reaction to it on a HN post. This is
| visible when the answers to their posts is "yeah... the
| law covers that".
|
| People publicly criticising laws with informed articles
| (or even people repeating talking points from those) is
| very healthy, but VERY different from armchair commenters
| who use their own ignorance about a law as fodder for
| criticising it and for advocating for their own position
| (normally to dismiss the law altogether).
|
| We are clearly talking about two very different things
| here.
|
| Unlike you're implying, I also don't want to censor
| anything and I'm not advocating for anything. Discussion
| is healthy, uninformed discussion backing radical
| opinions is noise.
|
| _> Here 's another example. This year, the Supreme Court
| did some good in reining in the CFAA:_
|
| I also don't see how this has anything to do with what
| I'm saying. Maybe I wasn't clear in my first post, but
| I'm pretty sure I was in my second.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > We are clearly talking about two very different things
| here.
|
| I don't think you can separate them so easily. People
| make mistakes. They make assumptions. They lack
| information. That shouldn't make them ineligible to
| participate in the debate, because the debate is the
| process by which those mistakes and assumptions get
| corrected and people arrive at a consensus. If they just
| shut up, they'll still be wrong, but then no one will
| correct them, and no one with the same wrong assumptions
| will see the correction.
|
| And they're not always wrong.
| ratww wrote:
| Once again I ask you: where did I say it makes them
| ineligible? Why can't I criticise the behaviour?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| You're criticizing the wrong thing. Address the specific
| instance when they get it wrong, not the general idea of
| being concerned about edge cases, which in many cases
| actually are highly problematic.
| ratww wrote:
| Once again you are putting words into my mouth. I never
| said that worrying about edge cases is wrong, nor that
| discussing them was. The sport of claiming that they
| aren't handled when they actually are, however, is a pet
| peeve of mine. I hope you see the irony of claiming that
| someone having a pet peeve is incompatible with
| democracy.
| [deleted]
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _People immediately jump to "yeah but what about this
| crazy edge case" because they know the law will be
| applied to hundreds of millions of people and that crazy
| edge case will actually happen many times._
|
| And it shouldn't be too surprising that this happens on
| HN. Programming has taught me to specifically pay
| attention to edge cases and evaluate how likely they are
| and what kind of consequences may follow. This same
| pattern of thinking then gets applied to other things in
| life. Laws are one of the closest analogues to
| programming.
| [deleted]
| Goronmon wrote:
| _Utopia of Rules - our culture thinks that if we just had
| the right set of rules and everyone fallowed them then
| everything would work well. This is a flawed belief, like
| other utopias._
|
| I don't see what about ContentID is related to the "Utopia
| of Rules" issue. ContentID seems more like a problem
| related to issues of capitalism, where a corporation will
| make decisions to maximum profits at the expense of any
| human or social impacts. Alongside the inability to
| effectively reign in corporations who make such decisions.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > ContentID seems more like a problem related to issues
| of capitalism, where a corporation will make decisions to
| maximum profits at the expense of any human or social
| impacts.
|
| Capitalism is the thing where there is supposed to be
| vigorous free market competition and ContentID would have
| no power. Because even if 70% of the services were
| getting it wrong, anyone could switch to any of the other
| 30% with minimal friction, and then the original 70%
| would fix their shit or lose market share.
|
| Capitalism isn't a synonym for anarchy. It needs, for
| example, government enforcement of property rights. But
| it also needs _antitrust_. Constraints on vertical
| integration.
|
| The lack of effective antitrust enforcement has allowed
| markets to concentrate. Which removes competitive
| pressure, which allows incumbents to make rules that
| benefit them and their business partners at the expense
| of customers who now have high switching costs. Enabling
| the "Utopia of Rules."
| notreallyserio wrote:
| ContentID wasn't built because Google thought it would be
| a great service for end users. It was made in response to
| a lawsuit by, IIRC, Viacom. There's no practical way for
| a competitor to operate without their own version of
| ContentID as it is a function of copyright law and not
| market forces.
|
| Even so, I would bet the vast majority Google's customers
| that are aware of ContentID like ContentID and want it to
| spread everywhere, to all companies in all nations. I
| mean, how likely is it that Ford (a big customer) would
| move to UpstartVideo.biz because they don't automatically
| analyze uploaded videos?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > There's no practical way for a competitor to operate
| without their own version of ContentID as it is a
| function of copyright law and not market forces.
|
| Which part of copyright law is the ContentID part? It's
| not in DMCA 512 anywhere I can see.
|
| YouTube in particular had problems because in their early
| days they were, shall we say, not well-counseled on the
| copyright front, and were still getting sued over _that_.
| They were also trying to make nice with Hollywood to try
| to get them to license premium content.
|
| Many competing video services don't have anything like
| ContentID. But they also don't have priority search
| results on google.com, so content creators don't want to
| use them.
|
| And the "you're not the customer, you're the product"
| trope doesn't really apply -- in a competitive market,
| suppliers have a choice in who to sell through too. And
| Ford follows the eyeballs.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| > Which part of copyright law is the ContentID part? It's
| not in DMCA 512 anywhere I can see.
|
| It's a measure to avoid legal ramifications under the
| DMCA and other acts.
|
| > Many competing video services don't have anything like
| ContentID. But they also don't have priority search
| results on google.com, so content creators don't want to
| use them.
|
| It's only a matter of time that they'll fold due to lack
| of interest, fold due to lawsuits, or implement ContentID
| or similar. Or they'll restrict and moderate uploads
| manually which has exactly the same effect, or perhaps
| even worse (still erring on the side of legal caution).
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > It's a measure to avoid legal ramifications under the
| DMCA and other acts.
|
| Why would there be "legal ramifications" for someone
| complying with the ordinary DMCA notice and takedown
| process?
|
| > It's only a matter of time that they'll fold due to
| lack of interest, fold due to lawsuits, or implement
| ContentID or similar.
|
| It has been decades. They're still there.
|
| The lack of popularity is for the reason already
| mentioned. If your YouTube video gets on the first page
| of Google search results and the exact same video hosted
| on some other site doesn't, what are content creators
| going to use?
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| ContentID is less of a "Utopia of Rules" and more of a
| "Kingdom of dictates". Google dictates you are subject to
| ContentID if you want to participate in YouTube. If you
| don't want to be subject to that, leave the kingdom.
| dmos62 wrote:
| It's an automated bureaucracy (bureaucrazy). It's tyrannical,
| in that it has power over you and it's unjust and cruel in
| how it disregards you. You can lump those words together
| however you like. Tyrannical automated bureaucracy,
| autotyranny, bureautyranny. You could put the word tech or
| technological somewhere in there, but I don't think there's
| much technology in this form of oppression. After all,
| bureaucracy in itself is a technology (a tool).
|
| That's all from the point of view that this tyranny is
| external. I'd actually prefer to look at it as something
| we're subjecting ourselves to. We're half-knowingly turning
| our tools against us; painting ourselves into a corner;
| becoming increasingly entangled by our conflicting goals.
| We're not the victim, but the fool.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| > It's tyrannical, in that it has power over you and it's
| unjust and cruel in how it disregards you.
|
| Welcome to new bureaucracy, same as old bureaucracy.
| rPlayer6554 wrote:
| Bur-auto-cracy?
| thechao wrote:
| Bureaucomputation. (Byur-ah-computation?)
| [deleted]
| Humdeee wrote:
| In - internal issue
|
| Comp - computer/tech
|
| Pet - sub-human, regarded as secondary if at all
|
| Tence - (tense), as in past tense and you will be forgotten
| raisedbyninjas wrote:
| This implies that implementing a fair system is beyond
| their capabilities. I think profitable convenience is
| more apt to their design choices.
| robomartin wrote:
| > Is there a word for this new world where we find ourselves
| without the ability to appeal our problems to human
| rationality
|
| How about a term like "millennial business ethics"?
|
| Seriously.
|
| I know some will take this as an insult. I don't offer it in
| that way. Hear me out for a minute.
|
| The generation that grew up without the internet was just as
| sophisticated --if not more in some areas-- than millennials.
| I have news for you, we were doing pretty amazing things with
| computers and hardware in the 80's an 90's and very little of
| it was about tricking people to click on ads. Go back and
| look at AI books from that era and you will find pretty much
| everything being done today...we just didn't have the
| hardware and the speed.
|
| Excuse the digression. Growing up without the internet and
| with conventional brick-and-mortar, in-person businesses
| meant that person-to-person relationships were important.
| Nobody --nobody-- from my generation would seriously consider
| running a business where you absolutely ghost your customers
| and users. That's just unthinkable. That is not the way human
| beings related to each other in any pursuit.
|
| However, for a generation who's reality has been looking at a
| screen and clicking buttons far more so than engaging with
| other humans in person, the idea of not bothering with real
| person-to-person problem solving might just be perfectly
| logical and sensible. Why bother? You can do everything with
| buttons on a touchscreen. Except, you can't.
|
| To me this is a cultural problem. I have often imagine that
| some of the people who built these companies had the social
| skills and maturity of a brick. I know this isn't entirely
| accurate. Yet, how else does one explicitly make these
| choices? I can excuse social ineptitude as a sign of the
| time. The alternative would be to make such a choice while
| knowing just how harmful it could be. That is pure evil.
|
| They have built mechanisms where destroying someone's
| business overnight, with no path to having a proper person-
| to-person business discussion, is deemed normal and
| acceptable. Talk to people who's lives were turned upside-
| down by the likes of Amazon, Facebook and Google and you'll
| learn just how horrific this kind of thing can be on the
| receiving end of the algorithms.
|
| On this planet, today, if these three companies ban your from
| using their services, you do not exist. Period. Try running a
| business without using these channels (and their associated
| properties) for marketing and delivery and see how well you
| can do.
|
| I am not a big government guy at all, quite to the contrary.
| However, I have, for some time, felt that this particular
| issue is one that needs truly intrusive government
| intervention. Companies of this scale and importance should
| not be able to kill your business on any given Monday and
| just ghost you forever. That is just plain wrong. And evil.
| domador wrote:
| How about "autocratic", with an emphasis on "auto"?
| treeman79 wrote:
| This is the purpose of a court system.
| [deleted]
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I don't think this answers your question, but it was
| exemplified in the movie "Brazil", iirc.
| munificent wrote:
| Automatacracy.
| gostsamo wrote:
| Kafka's processing distopia.
| nono-no-no wrote:
| Dystopia
| domador wrote:
| DystopAI
| dangoor wrote:
| web3
| pokot0 wrote:
| 100% agree. They reap the benefits of the automation efficiency
| while not paying the costs of it. I think these companies
| should be considered directly responsible if they don't pay
| royalties to the rightful owners.
|
| This should include how the royalties are split when multiple
| properties are connected to the same Ad (ex: one video that
| contains a song and a commentary). Right now, for their
| convenience they only pay the stronger party (usually the song
| rights holder) and ignore the other party. I think they should
| be legally required to split the revenues fairly.
|
| Is it a hard problem to solve and risk a lawsuit hell? Sure,
| but they did solve way harder problems when they had the
| incentive to do so and certainly have the resources to solve
| this one. It's also rather easy to solve 90% of the problem and
| not being blatantly unfair, and I think 90% is way better than
| 0%.
| SR2Z wrote:
| To put this really bluntly, these companies would _prefer_
| that kind of system. Right now the problem is that they are
| held legally liable if they incorrectly reject a copyright
| complaint (which, by the way, can only be determined to be
| valid in court) but only run the risk of pissing off users if
| they accept a fraudulent one.
|
| The problem here is not convenience, it's that copyright was
| designed for an era when it was kind of hard to copy things.
| The DMCA was a good shim to make it feasible for Internet
| companies to even exist, but it's not enough to fix things in
| a world where literally every single bit of IP can be copied
| or downloaded in less than a day.
|
| If, for example, Congress required content owners to submit
| copies of their works to some centralized US copyright
| database as a condition for being eligible to receive damages
| from platforms, that would go a long way to fix things on its
| own. Expanding the explicit set of fair use exemptions and
| allowing them to matter outside of a court would also be a
| big help.
| bserge wrote:
| It's amazing considering they could hire a small army of good
| employees for ~$500/person in one of the many developing
| countries.
|
| Don't need an office, don't even need to bother with taxes if
| they don't want to, just remote hire and work.
| reactspa wrote:
| Silver Lining in this trend: The beginning of the end of Amazon
| may be at hand.
|
| The other day, I really really needed to get in touch with a
| human at Amazon to resolve an issue (Amazon issued me a refund,
| apparently in error). After an hour of researching how, I gave
| up.
|
| The last time I needed to get in touch with a human there was
| 15 years or so ago. I was able to send an email to an actual
| human there, who responded! And was able to resolve the issue
| after 3 or 4 emails back and forth.
|
| Now, all you get is a "Chat AI" who can't help you.
|
| It's the beginning of their end folks. And that's a good thing
| (Martha Stewart voice).
|
| (The other canary in the Amazon coal mine: their search engine
| results seem manipulated.)
| lil_dispaches wrote:
| At some point these companies have to be on the wrong side of
| negligence.
| noodlesUK wrote:
| Surely there is some case that could be brought against YouTube
| by an EU citizen or someone else in a country where automated
| decision making is limited without human review, no?
| [deleted]
| kevincox wrote:
| I don't know what the argument is though. You have agreed to
| this Content ID system and automatically distributing the ad
| revenue based on YouTube's discretion when you signed up.
|
| Note that the system also has advantages. As a publisher you
| are protected from lawsuits most of the time, the worst case
| outcome is that you don't get revenue from a video or that
| you get banned from YouTube.
|
| I'm not saying that the tradeoff is optimal for creators but
| I don't see how what YouTube is doing is illegal. Unless you
| try to assert that you were forced to accept the ToS because
| YouTube is effectively a monopoly. But I find that a really
| hard argument to make.
| Retric wrote:
| Contracts are limited in what they can enforce. A lesser
| known example is if you don't benefit in any way then you
| can't form a contract.
|
| Which for example brings up the obvious approach of to sue
| YouTube for copyright infringement as they don't have the
| rights to display your video if their not paying you. I
| expect you would lose that argument, but it might not be
| thrown out of court.
| kevincox wrote:
| But as I said there is some benefit for those posting to
| YouTube. So it seems like it could well be an enforceable
| contract.
| Retric wrote:
| That's one argument, but it's up to the courts to decide
| if it's true.
| Filligree wrote:
| The courts would point out that you're free to take the
| video down at any time.
| Retric wrote:
| Except you can't go back and take them down _before_
| Google decides not to pay you.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| That's irrelevant. There is a legal standard "Arbitrary
| and Capricious" , where the party makes a business
| decision out of spite, for no good reason and with no
| consideration for interests of others.
|
| Google is respobsible for decisions they make, it's their
| problem that they use faulty automation.
| mellavora wrote:
| The argument is that the GDPR requires companies to provide
| human review.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The GDPR is very poorly enforced and regulators have
| shown no desire to enforce it. At least in the UK, the
| process requires you to try and get in touch with the
| company to resolve it and give them 30 days to reply,
| providing evidence of your attempts (a bit difficult with
| online forms as opposed to emails - I guess you have to
| take screenshots of the contact form before you submit?),
| and if you still don't get a satisfactory response you
| can raise a complaint with the regulator where from my
| experience it just goes to a black hole where you're
| lucky to get a (useless) response in a few months.
| sofixa wrote:
| No. It just takes a lot of time to deal with all the
| transgressions.
|
| https://www.enforcementtracker.com/
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Disagreed. This link often gets posted as a counterpoint
| but look at the biggest issue with privacy currently:
| tracking consent forms. The regulation mandates that any
| non-essential tracking (as in not required to provide
| functionality or fulfil legal obligations) should be opt-
| in and it should be as easy to decline as it is to accept
| (aka you should provide both an accept and a decline
| button - hiding the decline option or making it difficult
| doesn't count). The majority of companies out there fail
| at that requirement, and it's been almost 4 years since
| the regulation went into effect and nothing has been done
| even though those cases should be very straightforward as
| the evidence is right there on their websites.
| MikeDelta wrote:
| Schrems' company Noyb is scanning websites and trying to
| force companies to do something about it (or potentially
| face the law).
|
| https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-aims-end-cookie-banner-terror-
| and-is...
| toss1 wrote:
| Exactly
|
| >>Over the years, countless YouTube users have complained that
| their videos have been claimed and monetized by entities that
| apparently have no right to do so but, fearful of what a
| complaint might do to the status of their accounts, many opted
| to withdraw from battles they feared they might lose.
|
| This fact and the aggressive-anti-support policies should setup
| Youtube for a class action suit.
|
| Merely to avoid the expense of actually sorting out who is the
| actual copyright owner, Alphabet (& others) setup a system that
| systematically enables this type of fraud against artists, and
| provides no way to resolve it, and so they happily pay millions
| to fraudsters like these instead of the actual owners.
|
| It'd be nice if the actual artists could get paid and if Google
| etc. could get the point that some things require actual
| support. Unlikely, but it'd be nice.
| landonxjames wrote:
| Benn Jordan (perhaps better know by his musical moniker The
| Flashbulb) put out a video today[0] about another scam in a
| somewhat similar vein, but this one perpetrated by a NYTimes
| reporter and specifically targeting musicians
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk872ERRVxA
| cpcallen wrote:
| I see this kind of thing happening all the time, facilitated by
| third parties.
|
| For example, a few months ago I found this funny video of some
| trombonists playing Bruchner in unusual situations[1] that had
| been uploaded on 14th September 2015 and noticed it had an
| obviously-bogus copyright claim for the music ("Song: Calling You
| (Live), Artist: FUN, Licensed to YouTube by (on behalf of FUN);
| Songtrust, Sony ATV Publishing, and 2 music rights societies"),
| with a link to where this bogus "song" had been uploaded[2].
|
| The "song" proved to be a video consisting of the original
| trombone video's soundtrack played twice, over an unrelated
| static image, that had been uploaded on 13th May 2021--six years
| after the video it was ripping off.
|
| There was enough information on the "song" video to find out that
| it had been supplied to YouTube by a company called TuneCore[3]
| who according to their website offer to "SELL YOUR MUSIC
| WORLDWIDE: Get your music on Spotify, iTunes/Apple Music, Tidal,
| Amazon Music, TikTok, Tencent & more".
|
| I contacted TuneCore in July to point out that their service was
| being abused, but got a semi-automated reply to the effect that
| unless it was _my_ copyright that was being infringed they
| weren't interested. I replied, and also responded to their
| automated did-Jira-help-you-today survey, in both cases pointing
| out that they were (however inadvertently) involved in fraudulent
| activity but (unsurprisingly) never heard back.
|
| I see now that the TuneCore 'song' video has been made private,
| but the original trombone video still carries the false copyright
| claim.
|
| So frustrating.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/rY0m2cLH1m8
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-577Wp8yBQ - now private
|
| [3] https://www.tunecore.com/
| ratww wrote:
| TuneCore has really gone to hell after it was sold. I know
| horror stories from musicians that used them years ago but
| since had to move away because of technical and support issues.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| What are some good alternatives? I've heard bad things about
| almost every company in this space.
| FjgdymdjttdjG wrote:
| I deleted 400 videos and closed my YouTube account in October
| because of this, or similar. These were not easy videos to
| produce: audio, video, photography, text in multiple languages,
| etc.
|
| Hundreds of hours went into that channel. It was the only one
| that had the _complete_ (!) recordings of early 20th century
| baritone Titta Ruffo, including the unpublished Edison cylinders,
| and I 'd put a ridiculous amount of my free time into it over
| about a decade.
|
| I may have had 10 down votes on 400 videos.
|
| Except for five or six of of more modern artists (1960s), all 400
| were 80, 90, 100+ year old audio recordings. It was an
| exceptional resource, and included many other artists besides.
|
| I just couldn't stand the scam-legal this-that thrown my way by
| untold numbers of "legal entities" whose ownership claims I
| couldn't possibly contest. I gave up, unable to balance, in my
| mind, outflows to criminals, even if it was just pennies.
|
| Part of me regrets deleting it. It was a one-of-a-kind resource,
| but the legal blerg was _eine komplette Scheisse_.
|
| YouTube, if you're listening, you're welcome to resurrect all of
| those videos and take whatever ownership you can muster. I
| certainly won't try anymore. I won't upload so much as a video of
| me drinking a cup of coffee because the coffee cup, the coffee in
| it, and probably the traffic noise playing in the background will
| be claimed as property of someone else.
|
| Yes, even property that's over a century old and in the public
| domain.
|
| The channel was registered to tittaruffooffurattit@gmail.com,
| also deleted. You have my permission to resurrect and take
| ownership if you can.
| londons_explore wrote:
| So how did this pair get away with it for 5 years?
|
| Surely it only takes a single false claim for someone to be able
| to take it to police as fraud? And it looks like these guys must
| have claimed hundreds of thousands of videos... And yet _none_ of
| them found a suitable way to get this addressed for four years?
|
| Seems like a pretty open and shut case too... Lots of paper
| trail...
| southerntofu wrote:
| That's what you get when entities get so big and powerful we
| users don't have a single recourse against them. The ContentID
| system being a fraud has been well-known in librist circles
| since whenever it was launched.
|
| It's a bit similar to how higher-ups in the police and secret
| services have run massive drug imports in France/USA for
| decades and everybody knew about it but it took many years for
| the competent authorities to react. When your entire society is
| based on obedience to a higher authority, we all become come to
| depend on the goodwill (or lack thereof) of that entity.
|
| Google is not exactly reputable when it comes to dealing with
| user complaints, and they have exactly 0 financial incentive to
| fix this huge problem.
| 123pie123 wrote:
| will the owners of the videos get any compensation back from
| the prosection or google?
|
| I doubt it
| pjc50 wrote:
| The police basically don't investigate difficult cases or
| "commercial disputes". You'd have to take Google to court, and
| who's going to run that risk?
| elliekelly wrote:
| Even trying to report identity theft to the police is a
| massive pain. They'll try to pawn it off on the police
| department where the fraudulent transaction occurred and that
| PD will tell you they don't have jurisdiction and it's really
| the PD where the victim is located who should investigate.
| Most police departments just don't have the technical
| knowledge to look into these things. They send you around in
| circles, and maybe to an FBI form that goes nowhere, and wait
| for you to give up.
| danlugo92 wrote:
| #BitcoinFixesThis
| dd36 wrote:
| We need private rights of action against companies that don't
| reasonably investigate claims of fraud a la FCRA. These private
| rights of action should have minimum statutory damages so
| individuals can find contingent counsel.
| _jayhack_ wrote:
| Since nobody has commented this yet - provably representing
| content rights is a great application for NFTs
| tantalor wrote:
| Eh not really. You still need a central authority to determine
| whether the rights claimed by the NFT are authentic or
| fraudulent. Might as well have a central database.
|
| Scenario: 2 users present an NFT claiming the rights to a song.
| Who wins?
| alteriority wrote:
| Isn't the entire point of an NFT the fact that two users
| can't simultaneously possess it? I don't know if NFTs are the
| ideal approach but that seems like the one critique that
| doesn't apply.
| tantalor wrote:
| For the NFT itself? yes. For the thing the NFT claims? no;
| that is up to some authority to decide whether to honor it.
|
| e.g., 2 users have NFT which claims "I own the Mona Lisa".
| Who is right?
| bsagdiyev wrote:
| No it isn't.
| caf wrote:
| Bet the artists still end up with fuck all.
| iKevinShah wrote:
| I used to be a creator (YT) in 2011 (channel created in 2011),
| granted I was young and inexperienced, I used certain copyrighted
| music / images initially and those particular videos were de-
| monetized. I feel my account was "flagged" internally for the
| lack of better word.
|
| But then, I learned of how to give credits and all, but once you
| are "marked" there's very little chance that you may get
| monetized (at least used to be that way, haven't checked now).
| Also, by default, your videos would be marked as "Has copyrighted
| contents" which might not always be true.
|
| The biggest pain point comes when you have to argue with the
| system / support. There were 2 videos where I did not use
| copyrighted material and credited royalty free track as per the
| requirement but there's no winning over them(even with facts).
|
| For an organization as big as the Big G, this automated system
| and lack of actual checks until someone with big following tweets
| at them is sad to see even in 2021.
| crtasm wrote:
| > how to give credits
|
| Am I misunderstanding you? Just giving credit in no way grants
| you the right to use the content / monitize the video.
| iKevinShah wrote:
| I am sorry by credits I meant attribution. I remember there
| was a certain channel on youtube which let you use the song
| provided you shared the source / original song (their yt link
| to the music)
| sschueller wrote:
| That line is thin, large studios have been using Content ID on
| things that are not under their copyright. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.eff.org/wp/unfiltered-how-youtubes-content-id-
| di...
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Your linked article is about _fair use_ issues, which I 'd
| argue is a much different problem, and much more of a gray
| area, than just outright falsely claiming you are the rights
| holder to stuff you don't own (and not paying out royalties
| after you collect).
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| tl;dr:
|
| "The pair falsely represented to YouTube and an intermediary
| company identified only by the initials A.R. that they were the
| owners of the music and were entitled to collect "royalty
| payments" from their use on YouTube. In some cases the defendants
| used forged documents claiming to be from artists declaring that
| the pair had the rights to monetize their music."
| mleo wrote:
| Hopefully there is some recourse to the actual copyright owners
| owed the lost 20 million directly from A.R. or YouTube.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| Since this is in my opinion YT fault they should pay and then
| pursue the money from the scammers on their own. Hopefully YT
| won't wiggle their way out of this.
| coldacid wrote:
| You know they will.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| There's a strong case to be made that YT:
|
| - Failed due diligence.
|
| - Made infringing performances of the work.
|
| - Misrepresented the authorship and/or ownership (moral
| rights).
|
| - Are liable for infringement.
|
| - And owe the true copyright owners both the lost revenue and
| an infringement penalty.
|
| This case could get quite interesting.
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