this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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Most people have extremely weird ideas of what's considered piracy and what isn't. Downloading a video game rom is piracy, but if you pay money to some Chinese retailer for an SD card containing the roms, that's somehow not piracy. Exploiting the free trial on a streaming site by using prepaid visa cards is somehow not piracy either. Torrenting an album is piracy, but listening to a bootleg on YouTube isn't.

YouTube noticed this at some point and is now happy to let everyone know how much pirated music is available on their site. One of their main points for shilling YouTube premium is how their music catalogue is way better than Spotify. Of course the piracy site has more. That's always how it works. Spotify actually has to license the music on their platform and is subject to copyright law. They can't just get the Neil Young discography from soulseek one day and wait until his estate notices, facing no repercussions whatsoever aside from agreeing to a takedown request. Imagine if Pirate Bay or Napster were considered completely above-board businesses just because they took down torrents if explicitly requested by the copyright holders.

Not that I'm complaining especially when a lot of the music on youtube isn't publicly accessible anywhere else. It's just been extremely strange to see this go from an "open secret" to something they're shouting from the rooftops and face no repercussions for. In the future I want everything to be like that and I'd rather keep youtube how it is than see them get the punishment that by all rights they should be getting. It's just so strange that this is the position things have ended up in.

Note: The following text is intentional abuse of the tagginator bot. Fuck you.

#ADHD #BOSTON #NYC #OpenSource #FOSS #SelfHosted #Soccer #3dprinting #Memes #GodotEngine #Unity #UnrealEngine

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

No idea if you have ever uploaded to youtube but I can't upload audio of my dick slapping my ankle without Disney or universal claiming royalties.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Tbf Walt Disney himself invented the sound of a dick slapping an ankle

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

It was the last thing he did before being frozen

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

You're missing some key facts:

  1. A lot of music on YouTube is fully licensed and uploaded by the owners or Google themselves. Like VEVO music, for instance.
  2. Google runs a content match algorithm on all uploads to detect music and movies. If you upload more than four seconds of a song, Google will detect it and transfer all monitization of that upload to the rights holder. This is why music documentaries like Trash Theory only have frustratingly short clips of the music they are talking about, and why channels like Techmoan, which documents weird music formats and playback devices, can also only share extremely short clips.

The rights holders are getting any and all money on music uploaded to YouTube, and your entire premise is flawed.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

Well, the gigantic pile of low-end audio I ripped using yt-dlp begs to differ. Half a million tracks so far. Perfect for my OpenSwim headphones. Tiny mp3s to maximize my 4GB of storage, and shit quality to match what I'm getting from bone conductors (which are, for no compelling reason, compatible with FLAC).

I swim a lot, and have a lot of free disk space, so I promise this makes sense.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

I would also add that google very much understands the implications of streaming music.

This is speculated to be why you can't get Youtube Premium without Youtube Music (in most countries?). Because all the license holders would lose their minds if they weren't getting a cut (and apparently the ad revenue from music videos isn't enough).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

I can't speak for other countries, but in Italy YouTube pays a lot of money to the Italian copyright holders company for all the potentially pirated videos uploaded by its users.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Wtf is the tagginator bot?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Not sure, but I think its purpose is to get get these posts appear in meta search engine results (SEO).

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

AFAIK it's for discovery on Mastodon via hashtag.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (2 children)

afaik... as far as i know... hm...

afaik these acronyms are getting more insane asap fr fr

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

ASAP was first used in the US military in the 1950s, and AFAIK originated on usenet and has been used since the 80s. If you are 35 or under, both of these acronyms have existed since before you were born fr fr.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

AFAIK is a very established and widely recognized acronym with decades of history. Just saying.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Thats the spirit!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Aren't most songs on YouTube uploaded by the artists themselves?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

No, certainly not most. Some, for sure, but tons of albums are uploaded by some random dude.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

The music on YouTube isn't any more piracy than unblocked Spotify. YouTube's "official" music uploads (these that are a square with a blurred background behind the square) are acquired by paying DistroKid or record labels. Unofficial uploaders usually aren't monetized, either bc they didn't enable it、are niche、or got ContentID'd by YouTube. Those few that are monetized(e.g. Si𝚕vaGunner and Gi𝚕vaSunner (i.e. not Si𝙸vaGunner or Gi𝙸vaSunner)) usually get DMCA'd eventually.

Downloading from YouTube is piracy though, though like OP says some don't think so for some reason.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Buying an SD card full of Roms is piracy, that’s why you have to buy it from Chinese companies and not walk down to the Walmart.

YouTube has agreements with the record companies to pay them for money generated through music uploaded to YouTube. For music where they don’t have an agreement the DMCA means that the uploaded need to verify they have the copyright to thing they upload. Otherwise no social media or file hosting sites could exist.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago (2 children)

With the SD what you're talking about is reality but I meant it in terms of normies perceptions. I watched some retro handheld reviews on YouTube and it started surfacing videos about SD cards of retro roms you can buy. There's always people pointing out that you can just download the same rompack from archive.org, and there are people replying who say that's piracy. I couldn't make something like that up if I tried. Here's another one specifically about YouTube. If you torrent a song, that's bad. But if you use a YouTube to mp3 website that's different. My family sees it that way.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Is pirating old snes and genesis roms really piracy if there's no other way to get it?

Roms are the reason half those games are still around and not dead media. The popularity of roms is why Nintendo made the throw back, video game companies roll up all the time, very few have longevity and even if those most would've been fine just letting the old games die in obscurity.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

In the eyes of the law it's piracy. But to me if something is not being sold, it might as well be public domain. And there's literally no difference between buying a second hand mario 3 cartridge and pirating the rom in terms of money the creators get. That's way more ridiculous to me than the youtube thing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Oh doncha know manufacturers are already working on that.

The whole subscription economy grift. They're gonna say you own the basic version arguing against the 'if you can't modify it you never really own it' crowd, until they've spent enough money to bribe those in power to fashion their win for them, then they're gonna turn around and say we never really own anything and make reselling illegal.

Reselling takes care of itself if you simply stop offering physical media...which, idk...seems to be the trend of the last 15 years, don't cha think?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Legally speaking it's piracy and copyright infringement.

Unofficially, it's a moral obligation to download and seed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Your family may be hydrophobiacs.

(because a torrent is a water stream! get it? hehehehehehehh)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I was under the assumption that Youtube had to pay artists for their music being on there? Is that not what is happening?

And if not, how has Youtube not been cease and desisted/sued into absolute oblivion?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago

YouTube pays the uploader, who double promises that they totally have the the right to the song.