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Must Read Guest Post by @kerrymuzzey: YouTube’s Latest Deceptive Tactic
August 14, 2019
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[We’re thrilled to have a chance to publish an important Twitter thread by composer Kerry Muzzey that crystalizes a number of phenomena: How Kerry caught YouTube using Content ID as a tool to extend the period of time that they can profit from infringement (or the “piracy profit window”), how draining it is for indies to chase YouTube (the “ennui of learned helplessness”), and how the cost of chasing YouTube reduces (or erases) any income from the video monopolist (the “Great Streaming Disappointment”). Kerry also provides a timely illustration of both why we need copyright small claims and one reason Google is sending in their proxies to fight it. We appreciate Kerry giving us permission to post his thread and for being “here for the long haul”.]
I’m an indie guy. I would love to just spend my time making more music, pitching, demo’ing for jobs. But like all indies, I have to make a choice—do I let YouTube and others just rip me off or do I try to stop it despite the burdens.
Here’s a new YouTube tactic that I first thought was a mistake when it happened recently, but they tried it again today, so now I think it’s pretty much just “the new stall tactic.”
I recently found a bunch of unlicensed uses of my music on a Chinese broadcaster’s channel: these were TV shows where my tunes were used as underscore and then the series were put on YouTube and monetized.
It took a couple years for Content ID to locate these uses and during that time both YouTube and the broadcaster were able to co-monetize a couple million views of these shows.
When I caught on to what was happening, I did my takedowns through the Content ID dashboard (meaning that YouTube itself located the uses and presented them to me in my Content ID dashboard) but they didn’t process my takedowns, which was weird.
I emailed YouTube Copyright (there are no names and no direct contacts at Copyright/Legal & you can’t get a name or direct contact person). “YouTube Copyright” said they needed confirmation of the titles of my works because there was something wrong with my metadata with these particular titles in Content ID.
Spoiler alert: there was nothing wrong with my metadata: these same works have been active just fine for 6.5 years now, and suddenly when I have claims against a massive China broadcaster YouTube finds there’s a problem with the accuracy of my titles & my metadata when they never have before??
Back to my claim—the Music Department at YouTube confirmed that my metadata was fine and accurate after all, and deferred to YouTube Copyright. I sent YT Copyright my copyright registrations for the works in question, reaffirmed that my metadata was fine and reaffirmed the accuracy of my claims: 24 hours later those infringing videos finally came down.
I thought this was a one-off thing: a glitch. Until this morning when I got a batch of the same emails from YouTube Copyright saying that there was a problem with my titles and metadata relating to the particular songs that I had struck on another Chinese broadcaster yesterday: videos that have a collective 4,000,000 heavily-monetized views on them from a different one of China’s largest broadcasters.
But there’s nothing wrong with my metadata or my titles. These works have been just fine since Feb 2013. So suddenly, 6 years later, there’s a problem with these songs…on the same day when I catch a huge TV network in China having used my music in their shows that were then put on YouTube and co-monetized by YouTube for 2.5 years to the tune of 4,000,000 views, with forced pre-roll ads, forced intermittent ad breaks, bannering, and video-adjacent page advertising, all on a channel in China that has 3,500,000 subscribers and more than 400,000,000 channel views on it.
I just replied to all of their “problem w/title+metadata” emails with my copyright registrations attached and a re-affirmation of my claims and asked them to lay off the stall tactics and just process my takedowns. Which is NOT gonna go over well with this heavily-monetized channel in China and they’ll probably falsely counter-notify on everything because that’s what usually happens with China.
But you know what? YouTube has a China problem. And they know it. And they look the other way because they can make a ton of money on those infringing videos.
The asterisk here, and the “watch this space” moment is something I’ve long suspected and now feel like must be true: YouTube says that it has the same detection thresholds for music in Content ID worldwide, but I don’t believe it.
I think that my continuing discovery of my music in these ex-US programs, years after the fact and only after millions of monetized views have happened, is building up a body of proof towards that theory.
And if that’s the case – YouTube has a problem. What happens if YouTube tightens detection thresholds in big ad-sales territories like China with major broadcasters for the purpose of avoiding detection so as to increase ability to monetize what they know is content with 100% unlicensed music? Then YouTube is violating the DMCA and eventually they’re gonna get busted.
So if you’re a tech person or journalist who’s interested in this sort of thing, here’s the question I would pose directly to YouTube the next time you talk to one of their execs: Does YouTube set different music detection thresholds based on territory, channel subscribership and degree of monetization on a channel?
Get them on the record. Record their answer, write it down, put it in your article, publish it. Eventually someone has to hold their feet to the fire. Step 1 is getting them to go on-the-record with their lies or their admission of gaming the system for the sake of ad revenue.
I’m an indie guy and would love to just spend my time making more music. But until YouTube stops making it OK for giant corporations to steal my stuff and co-monetize it with YouTube itself, I’m stuck in this muck.
Here for the long haul, – Kerry
Guest Post by @poedavid: “Dance Like Nobody’s Paying?” Spotify isn’t
July 15, 2019
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[We’re thrilled to welcome David Poe to MTP!]
by David Poe
Spotify’s disastrous “dance like nobody’s paying” ad campaign has now been demolished in the national press, garnering negative coverage in Newsweek, Billboard, NME, Hypebot, and more. Sometimes big corporations slip up and show us what they really think of us, and this was one of those times.
But what’s Spotify’s plan? Here, Variety’s Patrick McGuire suggests Spotify’s intent is to divide listeners and musicmakers:
Similar to the way many people bite into a cheeseburger with no consideration for the cow and farm of its origin, campaigns like Spotify’s widens the growing divide between listeners and creators. Audiences intellectually understand that music doesn’t magically materialize out of nothingness for the exclusive purpose of entertaining them, but as music continues its irreversible transition to all things digital, listeners are becoming less aware and interested in how artists create, record, produce, and share music. With a 2017 Nielsen Music report showing that, on average, Americans now spend over 32 hours a week listening to music, it’s clear that music is hugely important in the lives of listeners — just not in ways that provide meaningful visibility and support to musicians.
Ever heard that song “Put another nickel in / In the Nickelodeon”? It’s from 1950 (written by Stephen Weiss & Bernie Baum.)
Everyone loves streaming. But more than half a century later, most streaming services contend that a song isn’t worth a penny. I respectfully disagree.
Because a song isn’t really a song until someone listens to it, no musicmaker should be faulted for utilizing all available platforms. But streaming in 2019 forces music makers and fans into the middle of a moral hazard. Music enthusiasts should be able to listen to streaming music without having to compromise their scruples, or that of their favorite bands.
Despite the lack of transparency in the music industry, The Trichordist has managed to cobble together an annual Streaming Price Bible. It is the most credible summary I’ve found on what each streaming service pays, which may impact where Spotify listeners choose to put their dough-re-mi:
How Bad Is it for Music Makers?
You can easily see from the chart what each service pays for recordings. At about $0.003 per stream, Spotify pays little but has the greatest market share. At about $0.0002 per stream, Google/YouTube is even worse.
Very different companies. Their commonality: free music, which has made them rich from ad revenue and data scraping, but mostly from their stock price increasing at the expense of musicmakers.
Let’s put this in context. To earn a monthly US minimum wage, an artist on Spotify would need 380,000 streams by some estimates.
To make the same monthly salary as the average Spotify employee, a songwriter would need 288,000,000 streams.
Frozen Mechanicals
For reference, the statutory rate for a song on a CD or download is 9.1 cents — 4.1 cents more than ye olde Nickelodeon of the 1950s.
You might say that’s better than the old days—but it isn’t as good as it looks, because the song rate was frozen for 68 years before it began gradually increasing … only to be frozen again in 2009, where it will stay until 2022.
Clearly, streaming has all but replaced CDs and downloads, but without replacing revenue from songs to musicmakers.
Money is being made from streaming if you look at it on an industry-wide basis. But—due to the hyper efficient market share distribution of the “big pool” revenue share accounting instead of a user-centric model (or the “ethical pool,”) individual music makers are far worse off. More than ever, streaming revenue is not paid to music makers who don’t share in the big advances or Spotify stock.
You Can’t Compete With Free
The vast majority of Spotify users are in the “free tier”. By offering free access, Spotify artificially distorts the streaming market and disallows competition amongst streaming companies. As musicians have learned the hard way, you can’t compete with free.
Spotify likes to say it’s artist-friendly, a tool for music discovery.
Guilty of chronic copyright infringement, Spotify was founded by a former pirate. It’s a corporate ethos built on theft. The Music Modernization Act essentially gave Spotify a new safe harbor, but its tactics haven’t changed.
There’s additional shadiness here: allegations of gender discrimination and equal pay violation, expensive, state-subsidized offices, executive bonuses, corporate lobbyists, a dicey DPO and of course, the “fake artist” scandal.
Spotify’s ongoing lobbying campaign against artist rights continues despite the unanimous passage of the Music Modernization Act in Congress last year (and the jury is out on the MMA and Spotify’s safe harbor). Shocker—Spotify apparently reneged on agreements it made to accept the Copyright Royalty Board’s mandated increase in songwriter pay. Another bonehead move that was publicly rebuked by songwriters from Spotify’s “secret geniuses” charm offensive, including Nile Rodgers and Babyface.
Spotify was joined by Amazon, Google, and Pandora in “suing songwriters” to appeal the Copyright Royalty Board’s ruling that increased the paltry streaming mechanical rate, which Spotify lawyer Christopher Sprigman argued against in court.
Apple Music does not have a free tier and yet was the only major streaming service that did not challenge the new royalty (44% more, which means 0.004 instead of 0.003, which is still bullshit.)
This may be because Apple recognizes that music helped save its ass from financial ruin 20 years ago. Math is not my strong suit, but numbers indicate music (via the iPod, a now-obsolete door stop) generated nearly half of Apple’s accumulated wealth not to mention introducing a new audience to Apple’s other awesome products.
Or it could just be that Apple understands creators and may actually like us. There’s a thought. We were early adopters—Macs have been in every recording studio and creative department for decades.
Apple Music’s intent to increase artist pay to a penny per side is its best yet, but now long overdue. Which is a shame, because a trillion dollar market cap company could afford to redistribute some wealth. If Apple offered a fair alternative, most would run screaming from the competition.
The Generational Problem
There are many who are more expert than me, some quoted in this post. I’d rather be staring into space strumming guitar and writing a song than here discussing music and money.
But I’m concerned for the next generation of artists, especially the musical innovators. Here’s why:
There used to exist a sort of musical middle class. Artists in all mediums expected financial struggle but there was the possibility of making a living and even growing as an independent artist. That might include a record deal or selling CDs at a gig in order to make it to the next town.
Songwriters could get an album cut and get by or even do well if the album sold (Jody Gerson has a great explanation of this.) Musicians of quality could see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Streaming has “disrupted” all of that.
Light’s out.
Bands’ streaming access may—may—help build an audience that may somehow convince talent buyers to book gigs that route your tour, which is awesome. But sustaining a career is still cost-prohibitive for many.
Thus the Top 40 is full of the children of the affluent.
Not children of millionaires: Stevie. Dylan. John & Paul. Aretha.
Those of us who have been making music for awhile will remember the optimistic, 1990s-era “monetize the back end” argument: bands on the road can make up income lost to streaming by selling merch.
I tour, too. I wish the best to every band who does so.
But not every musician can travel … or got into music to sell a fuckin hat.
Another common sense rebuttal to “shut up and tour:” INCOME FROM LIVE SHOWS WAS NEVER MEANT TO REPLACE THAT OF MUSIC SALES — plus both have investment costs and overhead to produce.
Gas costs what gas costs.
Mics cost what mics cost.
Streaming doesn’t pay what music costs.
Sorry to yell. Just sick of this lie that to make up for streaming losses all recording artists, especially senior citizens, should tour forever. Or the assumption they are all rolling in dough! Tell that to the punk rock drummer, alto player, the cellist, the songwriter.
Note: It’s almost impossible to buy a new car or laptop that plays a CD. Low income streaming has effectively replaced higher income physical sales.
So if streaming is to be the primary method of music distribution — if not the only one — then pay artists fairly. Or it really will be lights out, if not for the huge artists who regularly celebrate stupidity then for the ones whose songs you want played at your funeral.
Without musicmakers, Spotify has nothing. When Spotify says “dance like nobody’s paying,” it’s because they don’t.
Given support from listeners and lawmakers, this era of economic injustice via streaming may one day be a footnote. Fans should not be paying for music they don’t listen to which is what has been happening and is a hallmark of streaming gentrification.
Now, listeners must demand fair pay for musicians they claim to love, whether it is higher streaming royalties or a user-centric royalty allocation—or both.
Must Read by @davidclowery: Google Doxx: Google Funded Groups in 2017 Illegal Doxxing of FCC Chairman — The Trichordist
July 13, 2019
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Editors note #1 – Over the last year, this blog has been reporting on Google’s apparent use of proxies in an attempt to intimidate members of the EU parliament into voting against the proposed EU Copyright Directive. The Copyright Directive requires social media platforms above a certain size to do more to counter copyright infringement […]
via Google Doxx: Google Funded Groups in 2017 Illegal Doxxing of FCC Chairman — The Trichordist
The Ennui of Learned Helplessness: Article 13 and the Five Lies in YouTube’s Content ID
March 29, 2019
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According to Wired (“Don’t believe the hype: Article 13 is great news for YouTube“), YouTube is positioned to be a big winner due to the Article 13 requirement for “upload filters”. If you’re keeping your brackets for “Most Googlely Journalist” in the post-Article 13 March Madness spin, Wired gets the three point play on this post–there are no upload filters in Article 13, so not quite sure what Wired is getting at here. But I digress.
Wired tells us:
[Article 13’s upload filters are] likely to be disruptive, for YouTube as for everyone else. There will be mistakes, disgruntled creators and meme-posters, protests against this or that algorithmic decision. But if anyone is going to eventually benefit from this, in the long run, that is YouTube.
Leaving aside the fact that Alphabet, YouTube’s owner, would probably have enough money to invest in licensing agreements with media companies and music labels – YouTube is uniquely positioned to capitalise on the internet’s sudden need for copyright filters. The platform itself has been using a type of copyright filter, its home-brewed Content ID, for over a decade. The algorithm compares newly uploaded footage against a database of registered videos, and demonetises (or takes down) any post containing matching content [which is also not quite right–it allows the user of Content ID to elect to block or monetize, with heavy pressure to monetize and not block].
While there have been instances of manipulation and egregious mistakes, Alphabet has invested more than $100 million in Content ID’s development, and the technology is already used by more than 9,000 broadcasters, movie studios, and music producers globally. [And there it is–we’ll come back to that] A vast number of other companies – virtually, every single platform and website that does not want to fall foul of Article 13 – could soon swell the ranks of Content ID’s users. Rather than an existential threat, Article 13 could wind up being a fillip to YouTube’s finances.
First, let’s dispense with an implication of that last assertion–that YouTube would profit from ContentID by licensing Content ID to third parties. There is absolutely no evidence that YouTube would do anything remotely like that, and even if they did, Google would likely still control who gets to put their works into ContentID in the first place. Wired doesn’t actually say this, but a reader might get that implication.
What is more clear is that Wired asserts YouTube would have a competitive advantage over other, smaller perhaps, platforms–not like they already do as the result of Google’s illegal favoring of its own products for which it is being fined billions in Europe. This due to the nonexistent “upload filters” that are not in the Copyright Directive (aka Article 13) but that the tech press keeps asserting are really there in one of the great gaslighting exercises of all time.
Remember–ContentID has a lot more to do with preserving YouTube’s US-based DMCA safe harbor and getting licenses for premium content (with higher advertising revenue, i.e., CPMs) than it does with some desire to do the right thing. That sentiment arguably does not exist at Google, YouTube, Facebook or any other Silicon Valley company with the notable exception of Apple.
Wired blows past the two key facts it its own story. First, the number of participants in ContentID: “the technology is already used by more than 9,000 broadcasters, movie studios, and music producers globally”.
This statistic comes from YouTube itself:
But strangely according to a 2016 story in the New York Times:
YouTube says that about 8,000 companies and organizations have access to Content ID and that independents may get access through affiliated companies and industry groups.
That’s right–the number of users of ContentID has increased–worldwide–by 1,000 in four years. Any idea how many new videos were uploaded to YouTube in that time? We may not have that exact number, but we do know this again according to YouTube’s own statistics:
That’s billion with a B. So just rough justice, don’t you think that if there are that many videos being viewed on YouTube there would be more than 9,000 worldwide users of ContentID?
The other relevant fact is that Wired breathlessly repeats that YouTube spent $100,000,000 on developing Content ID. According to Wikipedia (which I tend to believe in this case because it’s their benefactor Google), ContentID cost $60 million to develop by 2016 and as of 2018 Google had spent $100 million on the system.
Allow me to posit that $100 million for a system that can handle the volume on YouTube is chump change. One reason that it cost so little is that it is working for purpose–it is not intended to catch everything, it is only intended to catch works by the people who sign YouTube’s chump deal or people who are “important” (in the best traditions of YouTube’s founders).
Remember this line from the 2016 NYT story? “[I]ndependents may get access [to ContentID] through affiliated companies and industry groups.”
So you mean that some artists are more equal than others?
Exactly.
YouTube’s theory according to the NYT is that independent artists (such as five time Grammy-winner Maria Schneider who graced our pages with her groundbreaking essay on YouTube’s sleaze) are not harmed by YouTube’s “catch me if you can” DMCA shakedown because Content ID is widely available. The implication being if those pesky artists would just use the tools YouTube provides, there would be peace in the valley with sunshine, gum drops and puppy dog tails for everyone with happiness among the subjects of the Unicorn Kings.
The clear implication is that “independents” have nothing to complain about because they can get “access” to ContentID through “affiliated companies and industry groups”. “Affiliated” in this case means affiliated with YouTube (laughably called “partners”), and that means that the “companies and industry groups” have signed a ContentID license agreement which is essentially a nonnegotiable form contract imposed by Google.
Because Google wants to have the rights to use their IP all tied down.
Ahem.
This is another reason why Wired should not write to the Google press release.
So let’s start with what YouTube actually says about who gets ContentID:
And what are the “specific criteria” that copyright owners have to meet for their “substantial body of original material”?
So that quote from YouTube’s website arguably explains why there’s only 9,000 entities that have access to Content ID on a worldwide basis across all copyright categories (assuming that’s even true).
There’s at least five lies underlying Content ID, all of which you’d miss if you didn’t have the inside baseball insight into the unnecessarily complex Content ID system–and as we know, complexity almost always hides fraud.
Lie #1: Show Me Where I Signed Your Social Contract
The first point is why should artists be required to even deal with Content ID or YouTube at all? If an artist never consented to being on the site in the first place, why should Google be able to just exploit their work without consent? Why shouldn’t Google have to have a contract with the artists to exploit their IP? You know, the way you have to be approved and have a license to use Content ID. This is a core property rights concept underlying the new Copyright Directive in Europe–we hope that the US follows suit with DMCA reform.
There is tremendous cost associated with engaging with YouTube at all whether you qualify for Content ID or you don’t. In fact, as the Trichordist’s Streaming Price Bible demonstrates, YouTube’s royalties are so crappy that it’s entirely possible that the total cost of doing business with YouTube exceeds any royalties you could make–because the cost of dealing with YouTube varies directly with the size of your catalog.
So why shouldn’t artists be able to just say no and keep all of their music (or other work product) off of YouTube? Every penny spent trying to block unauthorized videos is a penny spent for YouTube’s benefit. And why is it we have to pay for this?
The truth is that it is not at all apparent that declining the opportunity to license YouTube wouldn’t actually be more profitable than dealing with the incredibly screwed up Content ID and CMS system.
So let’s not assume that Content ID and notice and shakedown are the only possible outcomes here.
Lie #2: Using Content ID Is Not Free
Even though Google doesn’t charge for Content ID, using the system is hardly free, especially for “independents”. In order to get “access” to Content ID, an independent artist needs to contract with a claiming company–and pay that company anywhere from 20% to 50% of their YouTube revenue.
And let’s be clear–claiming companies exist to fix YouTube’s mistakes imposed on the world due to YouTube’s legacy and highly inefficient DMCA notice and shakedown business. Every penny spent by an artist through giving a claiming company a revenue share is a penny spent for YouTube’s benefit by an artist capitulating to the notice and shakedown onslaught.
So saying that “independents” have “access” to Content ID through a claiming company “affiliated” with YouTube is a grotesque oversimplification. There are claiming companies that operate at the more lucrative end of the YouTube doing channel management and MCN or near-MCN business for which they may operate their own in-house advertising sales staff.
The claiming companies in reach of “independents” necessarily have to take a larger share of a smaller revenue stream in order to operate. And here’s what they don’t do:
Block.
Why do they only monetize? Because that’s what a revenue share means–revenue. Using Content ID to just block videos (especially UGC) would only be available for a fee (since there’s no revenue if you block everything). Independent artists can’t afford to pay a fee to block on YouTube so they typically will capitulate and monetize.
And who benefits from that? YouTube.
Why would blocking require a fee for service? If an artist just wants to bail out altogether, then that artist would set the automated controls of CMS to block worldwide. In order to make that blocking meaningful, there would need to be a lot of manual care and feeding to account for UGC leakage through the very porous Content ID.
That would include techniques like pitch bending to use the curious speed controls on the YouTube player which seem to have one purpose–defeating Content ID.
This is what’s called a royal pain in the trade, so anyone doing that work would have to be paid for the hours and hours and hours it would take to accomplish it. Since the artist can’t afford to pay someone else to do that work, the artist would need to do it in all their spare time. Which of course will not be very effective or may not happen at all.
I call this the ennui of learned helplessness.
Lie #3: Artists Cannot Access Content ID
By using the word “access” when it comes to Content ID, YouTube is equivocating yet again. If you are an independent artist and your distributor has a CMS account (and that’s a small group), do you have access to Content ID?
No. At best, you can tell your distributor what you do and do not want monetized. They will only devote so much time to you, however, and they won’t do the manual claiming on UGC, etc., at least not until you get some pretty significant traction on YouTube (meaning over 5,000 views or so on a particular video).
Your distributor will not allow you to get your hands on their CMS or Content ID dashboards. There’s a good reason for this, which is that the way Google licenses Content ID there’s a good chance that the distributor (such as Tunecore or CD Baby) could never get enough seats for its particular CMS license to allow all the distributed artists to have individual access, and there’s no view in Content ID that would show one artist’s tracks without showing that user all the other artist’s tracks handled by that distributor.
Why? Because YouTube doesn’t design the system for “independents”.
Lie #4: Independent Songwriters are SOL
Notice YouTube never talks about independent songwriters having “access” to Content ID. The closest that an independent songwriter comes to getting access to Content ID is if they opted into the HFA YouTube license connected to the out of court settlement of the class action against YouTube that was a companion case to Viacom v. YouTube (and which wasn’t certified as a class, but is often referred to as a class action by people wishing to avoid using the legal term “putative”).
So ask independent songwriters who opted in to the HFA license how that “access” is working out for them.
Lie #5: Content ID Is Another Nondisplay Use of Other People’s Stuff
Google has made a subspecialty of acquiring data for one use and actually using it for other purposes–undisclosed purposes.
Remember “GOOG-411”? This Google product was the “free” Google directory assistance (very similar to Google Voice). Former Googler (and former Yahoo!er) Marissa Meyer told Info World years ago that GOOG-411 was not intended to be what it appeared to be:
You may have heard about our [directory assistance] 1-800-GOOG-411 service. Whether or not free 411 is a profitable business unto itself is yet to be seen. I myself am somewhat skeptical. The reason we really did it is because we need to build a great speech-to-text model … that we can use for all kinds of different things, including video search.
The speech recognition experts that we have say: If you want us to build a really robust speech model, we need a lot of phonemes, which is a syllable as spoken by a particular voice with a particular intonation. So we need a lot of people talking, saying things so that we can ultimately train off of that. … So 1-800-GOOG-411 is about that: Getting a bunch of different speech samples so that when you call up or we’re trying to get the voice out of video [such as from YouTube], we can do it with high accuracy.
That’s right–Google told you the product was doing one thing, but in actual fact it was always intended to be something entirely different. The real action was in the background where users couldn’t see it. If Marissa Meyer hadn’t let it slip in an interview, you might never have known.
If you have a Content ID contract, check out this language in paragraph 2:
By providing Reference Files, you grant Google a non-exclusive, royalty-free, limited license to (a) store, copy (including the right to make temporary cache and storage copies), modify or reformat, excerpt, analyze, use to create algorithms and binary representations, create ID Files and otherwise use those Reference Files, the ID Files and the associated metadata in connection with the System…
And there it is: “otherwise use”. Pretty broad grant of rights, eh? You could say that “in connection with the System” is limiting, but how would you ever know what “in connection with” means?
Remember Google Books? Ever heard of “corpus machine translation“? Google uses the scans of the tens of millions of books it stole from authors in the background to improve its translation algorithms. If the authors had brought their case about that, do you think the court would have been so quick to find this obviously massively commercial application a fair use?
Bevo ≠ Unicorn King
Once again, YouTube has scammed their way past artist objections such as those in Maria Schneider’s post and Irving Azoff’s open letter. I think this is partly because the whole Content ID system is such inside baseball–once you accept the idea that requiring artists to use these legacy DMCA tools is even acceptable, which I don’t. Reporters just don’t know what questions to ask.
Now they do.
(Some of this post previously appeared on MTP in other posts.)
“Purchased Protest” Bombshell: Germany’s FAZ News Uncovers The Seamy Underbelly of Google’s Article 13 Lobbying
March 16, 2019
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The usual suspects got caught again. And you can’t have the usual suspects without Keyser Söze.
Constantin van Lijnden writing in the top German paper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has uncovered the financial link between YouTubers in the paid service of Google to “protest” in favor of the multinational monopolist’s interests in the European Copyright Directive (aka “Article 13”).
In his story filed today “Gekaufter Protest?” or “Purchased Protest?”, van Lijnden’s reporting has turned up what appears to be proof positive that Google’s interference lobbying has sunk to new depths of depravity (translation courtesy of Google Translate, courtesy of Google Books):
According to research by this newspaper, several German Youtubers have been offered money by an interest group that appears under the name “Create Refresh” to position themselves in videos against Article 13 of the copyright reform, which is particularly relevant for the video platform. “I am writing for financial support available to content creators who want to protest against Article 13. Be it a video, memes or graphics – we are open to suggestions, “says Mirko Drotschmann, who trades on Youtube as “mrwissen2go “and has about 900,000 subscribers.
Similar offers have been received by the Clixoom Science & Fiction channels (over 500,000 subscribers), Pietsmiet (more than 2.3 million subscribers) and Jana Riva (around 50,000 subscribers). The latter were promised €2,000 for a critical opinion on Article 13. All four emphasize the finding that they have not responded to the offer and have wondered very much about it, as such attempts to collect money would otherwise be almost non-existent and money would be offered only for the promotion of products.
Google’s interference lobbying should come as no surprise. As MTP readers will recall, German Member of the European Parliament Helga Truepel was threatened with interference lobbying by Google’s lawyers during a trade mission to Silicon Valley:
MTP readers will also recall the humiliating failure of the pro-Google lobbying effort to turn out any actual humans to protest in advance of prior votes. I warned at the time not to underestimate Google’s ability to deliver protesters–one only need remember how the homes of Germans who opted out of Google Street View were mysteriously egged by “protesters” all in one night who also hung signs on their target homes stating “Google is Cool”.
The opposition to Article 13 is organizing a protest for March 23 and claims to have a number of cities in Europe targeted, mostly in Poland and Germany (two countries where Google has invested heavily in their academic missionary outposts for a decade or more). The efforts may be aided by the general waive of protests about a host of social issues sweeping Europe, not to mention a large Brexit protest scheduled for March 23–coincidentally. It may be possible to create the impression that one protest is about another topic altogether, particularly if the propagandist shows pictures of a protest in a wide shot that has no readable protest signs in frame.
Still, the logistics of getting protesters from one stronghold to a weaker outpost at a particular date and time was striking challenge given the geography. Van Lijnden addresses how Google’s lobbyists rose to the challenge in the FAZ article:
[T]he protest is financially supported: Under the name of “EDRI” [the European Digital Rights lobby shop] numerous net political NGOs has offered…to bear the travel and hotel costs of people who want to lobby in personal talks with the deputies of the European Parliament. According to EDRI, a budget of €15,000 is available, two-thirds of which would be provided by the Open Society Foundation founded by George Soros and one third by the industry association “Copyright 4 Creativity”. [MTP readers will have seen that bunch before back in 2015.]
The latter is also one of the supporters of “Create Refresh” and is led by Caroline De Cock, also managing director of the Brussels-based lobbying company “N-square”. Its clients include Google which as a parent company of Youtube would be hit hard by the reform. Such indirect lines from Silicon Valley to the aggravation and whipping of the protest can also be drawn elsewhere, such as the “Center for Democracy and Technology”, which is also listed as a supporter of “Create Refresh” and “Save your internet” and led by Nuala O’Connor, the former lawyer of Google subsidiary DoubleClick.
We wrote about the N-Square group back in 2015:
While Google itself is not a member of Copyright 4 Creativity, the organization is run by a long-time Brussels lobbyist whose firm represents Google, and even a cursory look at the Copyright 4 Creativity materials reveals some of the same rhetoric we have heard for years from the Google-funded anti-artist crowd. This, of course, is how the astroturf game is played.
“Purchased Protest?” is extraordinarily brave reporting by FAZ given the level of hostility that Google has ginned up in Europe through its interference lobbying efforts rivaled only by Russian bot farmers and Cambridge Analytica–if not inspired by them. Ahem. Vlad would be proud.
This isn’t the first time that a major newspaper has caught Google and its YouTube subsidiary faking an Article 13 protest or stirring the contagion pot complete with bots and Russomania. And of course David Lowery and Volker Rieck have done important work in exposing the rot.
But it’s the first time that Google money has been linked to YouTube “creators” engaging in lobbying efforts to assist Google’s political goals, attacking Google’s political enemies and supporting Google’s political allies–all of which smacks of electioneering requiring compliance with Europe’s election transparency laws.
And of course there’s no one who knows more about where to find individuals likely to carry Google’s water, knowingly or unknowingly, than the one company in the world that knows what you’re thinking before you do. Unbridled snooping by the pervy Google data scientists produces unimaginable benefits when that information is turned to political profit.
The first rate reporting in these bombshell revelations are all the more reason why the European law enforcement authorities need to open a criminal investigation into the whole mess. As van Lijnden concludes:
[Big Tech’s attempt] to buy critical voices in the channel that is relevant to the debate highlights the manipulative methods that have fueled or even generated parts of the protest.
Can I get an “amen”?
When it Comes to DC Lobbying, Google Outspends Big Tech Cohort–and the Peoples Republic of China
January 24, 2019
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As Susan Crawford tells us:
I was brought up and trained in the Internet Age by people who really believed that nation states were on the verge of crumbling…and we could geek around it. We could avoid it. These people were irrelevant.
It’s rather stark when you see it. We all know that Google is a government-level power and is enjoys a level of political influence on par with many countries, well ahead of its commercial rivals in the U.S.–and this doesn’t even count the tens of millions it spends buying academics and librarians or supporting the EFFs, Engines, R Streets and Fight for the Futures of the world.
Whether you take Big Tech as a group or individually, these companies–and especially Google–spend like they were countries.
Google’s lobbying spend compares favorably to South Korea’s spend in the U.S., which is the biggest foreign lobbyist according to Open Secrets:
And to the People’s Republic of China U.S. lobbying:
For Article 13 comparison, Germany and France came in at the end of the pack:
Germany Lobbying Spend 2017 and 2018
France Lobbying Spend 2017 and 2018
When you consider that all of the Big Tech lobbying spenders in the graph except Apple are also in the Internet Association and indirectly in the MIC Coalition, many things become clear. It means that Michael Beckerman, the head of the Internet Association who apparently has some modeling aspirations looking very Zoolanderesque, gets to buy nice things. But then as a wise man once said, brown shoes don’t make it.
MTP Podcast: Why Artists Should Care About Data Center Lobbying
January 18, 2019
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Show Notes
Today’s podcast is about the impact on climate of the massive data centers operated in states outside of California and New York by Google, Facebook, Amazon and others. I focus on Oregon and Nebraska, but there are many other locations. These massive building projects enable Google to exercise its lobbying muscle in states you wouldn’t expect and on the federal senators and representatives of those states on issues familiar with our old adversary: Artist rights, profit from human trafficking, drugs and brand sponsored piracy.
Are Data Centers The New Cornhusker Kickback and the Facebook Fakeout?
What’s Up With @SenSasse’s Vicious Little Amendment on pre-72?
Here Comes the Shiv: Sen. Sasse to Move to Strike the CLASSICS Act and Screw Pre-72 Artists
Carbon Clouds: Should Artists Ask Why Aren’t Google, Amazon and Facebook in the Green New Deal?
Greenpeace “Dirty Data” research. www.greenpeace.org/archive-interna…-greenpeace.pdf
Nature magazine sums it up (www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06610-y):
“Upload your latest holiday photos to Facebook, and there’s a chance they’ll end up stored in Prineville, Oregon, a small town where the firm has built three giant data centres and is planning two more. [Hello, Senator Wyden.] Inside these vast factories, bigger than aircraft carriers, tens of thousands of circuit boards are racked row upon row, stretching down windowless halls so long that staff ride through the corridors on scooters.
These huge buildings are the treasuries of the new industrial kings: the information traders. The five biggest global companies by market capitalization this year are currently Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Facebook, replacing titans such as Shell and ExxonMobil. Although information factories might not spew out black smoke or grind greasy cogs, they are not bereft of environmental impact. As demand for Internet and mobile-phone traffic skyrockets, the information industry could lead to an explosion in energy use.”
According to the National Resources Defense Council www.nrdc.org/resources/americas…ing-amounts-energy:
“Data centers are the backbone of the modern economy — from the server rooms that power small- to medium-sized organizations to the enterprise data centers that support American corporations and the server farms that run cloud computing services hosted by Amazon, Facebook, Google, and others. However, the explosion of digital content, big data, e-commerce, and Internet traffic is also making data centers one of the fastest-growing consumers of electricity in developed countries, and one of the key drivers in the construction of new power plants.
Google emits less than 8 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per day to serve an active Google user—defined as someone who performs 25 searches and watches 60 minutes of YouTube a day, has a Gmail account, and uses our other key services.”
In Google-speak “less than 8” usually means 7.9999999999. So let’s call it 8. As of 2016 there were 1 billion active gmail users. So rough justice, Google acknowledges that it emits about 8 billion grams of carbon dioxide daily, or 9,000 tons. And based on the characteristically tricky way Google framed the measurement, that doesn’t count the users who don’t have a gmail account, don’t use “our other key services” and may watch more than an hour a day of YouTube.Upload today,
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