Thanks For Your Hard Work - But WE Take the Royalties!

One of my GooTube friends discovered some interesting things today.

He checked his dashboard and found that many of his videos were FLAGGED. But not stopped. Verrry interesting. He had taken a few clips from Graham Norton's show, for example. Oh, he just happened to be amused by some flub, or ad-lib and thought he'd "share it."

Instead of getting a takedown and being thrown off GooTube, Norton's kindly people simply said, in essence, "Sure, thanks for your "hard work" in digitizing the clip, editing it, and floating it to YouTube. But since WE own, WE will monetize it!"

Clever? While it was kind of annoying, my friend figured, well, ok, it's their clip. They're entitled to the money.

Less amusing was ANOTHER situation he discovered.

Some assholes who control the estate of a long dead TV personality, shut down a video he upped that was from the 50's and DEFINITELY in public domain. While this doesn't happen a lot, there IS abuse and bullying from some arrogant and "over-reaching" rights owners.

In this case, the estate of the personality has a licensing division. What they want is, "Come, license a clip of our long dead and increasingly obscure TV star." Except where's their website? Does anyone know about it? And does anybody care??

(Did I mention this video had only a few thousand hits, which translates into about $10?? Wouldn't it have been better to monetize it on GooTube and put in a note that licensing was available for TV documentary or other commercial use??)

In this case the pricks could've ASKED for a takedown or monetization, but chose to file a complaint that could yield a strike and close down the whole GooTube channel. What PRICKS. And this, on a public domain item, too.

As these two examples prove, GooTube gives copyright owners two options: shutting down a video, or...PROFITING from it.

Let's say you're an off-key singer with a mouse-fart voice. You decide to sing a Taylor Swift song. Taylor can say, "OK, I won't break your pathetic heart. But I'm monetizing it, NOT YOU."

Same deal if the GooTube poster took Taylor's song and used it as background for a 3 minute home movie. Same deal if the GooTube poster wanted to pull a prank and show herself singing...but the voice is Taylor Swift. Same deal even if the GooTube poster admitted it was Taylor's voice. THE ARTIST GETS PAID.

The GooTube dashboard for the item in question would look like this:

Yes, aside from the obvious, this IS exactly how it looks like.

If you check your dashboard, you discover that there's been a complaint, YOU aren't getting money for your upload anymore, and SOMEONE ELSE IS. All the information is there.

And yes, Taylor's ominous production company is called BIG MACHINE, and she did write some stupid song or other with the Big Apple in the title.

If you were Taylor Swift's publishing company, would you SHUT DOWN a video or just shrug and take the money? If the usage is respectful, why not just take the money?

PS, it's ALL or NOTHING. There's no SHARING. Unlike the parodist who makes money on the lyrics while the original composer makes money on the music, you do NOT make 50% on your visuals while the musical copyright holder takes 50% on the soundtrack.

Here's another twist.

If the copyright holder says "I want all the money," the GooTube uploader can say FUCK OFF and just delete the video.

My friend saw that an audio track he'd uploaded, ripped from his obscure vinyl, was somehow owned by some equally obscure company. The company didn't issue it on mp3, didn't issue it on CD, and saw that he'd gotten less than 70 hits for it. They wanted monetization anyway!

He'd cleaned up the sound, added a photo of the artist, and was now told, "OK, thanks for your work, WE will take the money." He pulled the item instead. As in, "Fuck off, I don't need nice comments for preserving the work of a guy who died 20 years ago. YOU go ahead and take the time to up it and see how it feels to make five cents for what you did on spec."

Nice to have a choice.

What if Goofyshare and Megadump and Kickarse all had to MONETIZE and PAY the copyright owners? Instead of keeping all the profits for themselves, what if they had to pay the royalty rates of Spotify or iTunes? Too bad they are in the bootlegging business, and not the monetization business the way GooTube is.

Technology is making it very easy for greedhead corporations to match up audio or video footage on GooTube. Some could care less. Others are petty enough to go after people who are just fans, and who aren't making much (if anything) on the upload. The GooTube viewer has absolutely NO idea which videos are monetized and which aren't, and unless the video is clearly uploaded by the rights owner, no idea if Google payments are going to the copyright holder or simply the uploader.

Is it possible one day Ms. Cuntwell will be moaning that she's not even making a few pennies off her cover versions, and the actual songwriters are taking it all? She might cry, "Please send me Paypal tip money, GUYYYYYSSSS!!" That is, if she still has an account. All it takes is 3 bitchy songwriters filing against her and preferring takedown to monetization, and the bitch will be gone.