Why I Am Sad About The YouTube
Youtube kind of changed my life in a way, so I’ve been pretty grateful for it over the past year and a bit, and still am, though more reluctantly now. It remains my number one source of blog traffic and musical exposure. Which is annoying at this particular ‘juncture’ because I’d really like to go the way I did with Myspace and boycott those m—–f—ers.
I’m just very sad for my friend and very angry at Google. Youtube (Google) is screwing people over who don’t, by any means, deserve to be getting screwed over. My pal Doron (a long time Youtube performer of wonderful music), just got screwed royally.
I’m aware that Google getting their asses sued left and right by the copyright police, but I’m also aware that Google have the power to fight back, unlike we little people. I’m also aware that those other bastards don’t go around pretending they’re not bastards and spouting some ‘motto’ like, “Don’t Be Evil.” It’s sure nice to know that “Don’t Be Evil” doesn’t extend to not passing the brunt of your legal problems (unecessarily) down to your users.
Sure, they now have to make people take down copyrighted material in order to cover their own asses — sucky, but fair enough. That, however absolutely does not excuse them permanently deleting entire accounts over (in many cases unintended, in many cases questionable) copyright infringements when they can easily just suspend the accounts until the problem videos are taken down. That’d be the “un-evil” thing to do.
But I’ve figured out what they really mean by “Don’t Be Evil”. They don’t mean they won’t be evil (if that were the case, their slogan would read more like, “Hey, We’re Not Evil.”). No, they’re telling you not to be evil …(do as they say, not as they do)… for example, don’t use their services in the ways they were really set up to be used (I mean come on), and which made them super-ridiculously successful in the first place.
But this is all pointless ranting (though it sure feels good). They’re Google, they can do whatever they want now that they’re the big internet monopoly-monster, at least to us non-billionaires they can.
GETTING TO THE POINT — Please check out Doron’s brief video about all this (under his new account, of course): Why Cougarman7 (Doron Diamond) Disappeared. Also, check out his other videos because they’re great! I’ve featured his guitar tutorials here many times. He’s one of the best I know doing this sort of thing, plus he’s a delighful person!
If you’re a former subscriber of his (I know our subscriberships overlapped quite a bit), please resubscribe. Because that’s the most tragic thing of all, losing connection with all the fans he’s deservedly earned over the nearly 2 years he’s been posting videos. The videos themselves, he can re-upload, but all the wonderful comments he’s recieved over the years are gone and his fanbase could take a long time to rebuild. Don’t let that happen. Show him you’re a tiger. Show him you care.
[And a note to fellow Youtube posters: You might want to back up your account. From what I’m hearing and reading, it’s becoming quite common practice at Youtube to delete accounts without warning for even minor infringements (as in Doron’s case). What I’m doing is archiving all my important Youtube pages using Furl (which is a bookmarking site like del.icio.us, but with an archiving feature so you’re actually saving the full content of the webpage, not just the URL). If you have a lot of subscribers that you don’t want to lose touch with, you may want to save them and look into a Contact Management System (not to be confused with Content Management System, though those are good too), particularly if you’re a band/musician. I’ve been meaning to do this for some time, but Doron’s misfortune (unfortunately) pushes it to the top of the list.
Anyway, nuf said. Good luck, and may none of you (nor I) ever have to see this in realtime:
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7 Responses to “Why I Am Sad About The YouTube”
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Well my first response is directly related to a discussion I had with my friend last night at my kitchen table after dinner. Now we talked about a lot of things but one of the things that we talked about was you Brooke quitting facebook etc. and my point to my friend is not only is it a waste of time but more importantly you are selling your soul so to speak. And yes I know for the average human being it’s nice and all but really and truly for the people that control this world via money, they don’t give a shit. It’s all about the money. Now without being negative since this is be positive month, cougarman should change his name to avoid another issue, cougarman 7 to cougarman 8 is not so hard to figure out. And secondly what really needs to be done is for one of you clever folk to figure out a way to have a members only site where one has to sign in to see, the underground as my friend put it. I’m sure it already exists already. The only downfall is if you aren’t already connected there isn’t much chance you’ll discover the beauty inside since it isn’t available. Unless people rally together and personally email cool people to let them know of a site and how to get in. Weird eh. I find this decade of the internet exploding into all sorts of possibilities and I’m witnessing it, the thing is I’m starting to see also the new beginning in terms of that bs that Doron has just suffered. If only Neil Young new I’m sure he would say bullshit too. Arrggg …. just want to scream and yell out loud right now!! Anyway, it’s complicated, money that is. But what isn’t is what all you beautiful people contribute without recompense, your love for what you do, and that’s worth everything. And all those f–kers (uh oh negative coming with a counteracting positive) just want to use love to make money. And it can happen to almost anybody, except those that don’t lay down like Doron who is already beginning again. Damn, this is starting to sound like my site Brooke, like I’m taking over yours, pardon me, my meaning is not to as you know already, but just in case I’m saying so just to be sure. March on people, or die. Also last night I came up with this by accident while giving advice to a good friend, including myself as true advice whispers, “You can take it or you can leave it, but you can’t take it and leave it”.
Peace
Markus
knew instead of new
I feel for y’all, but I guess from a strictly strategic standpoint, you simply can’t rely on somebody else’s technology and distribution and then get mad when it doesn’t go your way. It’s their playground and their rules. Make a new playground. Make better rules.
Agreed. It’s a lesson, and a victim mentality does nobody any good. That’s why the advice to take better control of things, back things up in multiple places, etc…
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Of course don’t rely on Furl or any Contact Management majigg either. In fact last night I started a good old-fashioned contact list in this little thing called a notebook! It’s pretty advanced.
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Really I just wanted to help re-unite Doron with some of his subscribers. Didn’t mean to rant so much, but that was the mood I was in.
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Obviously, life could be a lot worse.
I’m thinking about getting an honest-to-god rolodex, actually! The internet is just a fad anyway…
My first reaction was along the lines of big elk’s. Apart from damage control, it’s more of a symbolic tragedy than a real one… and even to the degree that it’s “damage”, it’s good every now and then to weed out some “fans of convenience” (like my old livejournal peeps, damn their mud-gray hearts), and start with a stronger base, the few who were compelled to do a bit of hunting to find you again.
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That said, I don’t like being on my tippy toes… suppose I decide to turn the camera on and just babble for a bit. Maybe I’d like to leave my stereo on in the background because I like the mood it puts me in. Well, now I’m a little more inclined to worry about that.
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In my Keithtopia, fair use would be generally broadened to cover any case where you’re a.) doing something constructive (not just sitting around trading stuff), and b.) clearly not standing between the copyright holder and his usual source of revenue in any way.
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(Even in the case of “just sitting around and trading”, there are clearly cases where an artist simply chose not to include something in their catalog — the Pink Floyd BBC sessions, or unreleased but widely-distributed Barrett tracks like ‘Vegetable Man’ and ‘Scream Thy Last Scream’ for example — and the trading community in question is actually performing a service to culture/society by preserving these really interesting bits of musical history. Probably not for such noble reasons, but does it matter?)
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All that said, even if all the laws were just and fair (by my insufferably exacting and self-righteous standards), you couldn’t blame a company for worrying about what they might risk by leaving something up that’s going to attract legal action against them. At this point I would still think of them not so much as a tyrannical beast (yet), but rather as a pragmatic nanny who says we must restrain ourselves from broadcasting our “naughtiness” to the entire world. I’m sure it’s hard to strike a balance when so many people blatantly disregard the terms.
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Chim chim cher-ee.
doing songs - not the actual original versions of the songs by any means - fairly regularly get their accounts deleted and their content removed. Why? What’s the difference? Theories? Articles With …