Since, you know, his company is responsible for preserving many things that people wish they could delete. Well, maybe "If You Have Something That You Don't Want Anyone To Know, Maybe You Shouldn't Be Doing It In The First Place"

Both sides have a point here (content creators deserve to be compensated, or at least not not-compensated, vs. youtube helped expose media to people who would never have seen/heard some content before).

IMHO, I'd like to think that youtube made reasonable decisions in the past (take down full movies, tv shows). I certainly don't have the data, but I would hope that youtube helped popularized and spread videos that would never have done so otherwise (e.g., numa numa, rickroll).

People should only have the right to earn one's profits in voluntary exchange. The reason for this is very pragmatic.

The free market will not work without artists starving on the street, or taking a part time job to support their art career. Failure in enterprises and dreams is critical to the free market's ability to allocate resource.

The failure of firms quite often become signal to the rest of the market on what not to do. With every failure of a speculation, a business idea, a poor execution, lead further to correct information about consumer's preference and perhaps, the future.

However, the future is very uncertain. Consumers' preference are fickle. Sometime unforeseeable natural events happen. For that reason, speculation, and thus entrepreneurship is a constant activity. Our economic system is a dynamic one, and thus, cannot have an equilibrium that is so often at heart of economic models.

For the reason of satisfying consumer preferences, we must ignore people who insists and demand compensation for their work without giving people a reason to buy.

If that mean breaking the law and ignoring copyright, so be it. If it means that the music industry shrink to 10% of its former size, so be it. If that mean more musicians working at restaurants, so be it.

Why should they make people fork money over something that they would not buy without copyright and government intervention?

It's a very optimistic view that people would compensate artists if it was a purely optional choice (not saying that it doesn't happen, but it requires a certain mix of artistic work, artist, and audience to make it happen).

That said, it's not entirely the fault of the audience that they are now receiving works of "art" for free. The fact that technology has progressed to the point where duplication of content has become trivial cannot be ignored (whether or not it's right doesn't really change things). It's partially up to the content creators to seek compensation from the audience in new ways. Youtube, I think, is trying to enable this path, whether or not it's successful has yet to be seen.

By no means do I think that people deserve compensation, but I do think that piracy has had an impact on content creators' livelihood.

I would argue that pirates are market failure caused by government policies and intervention. They fill in the missing void of the distribution system.

In a world without copyright law, publishing houses would learn very quick on how to starve these legal pirates very quick.

This is exactly what happens to American publishers selling British books in the 19th century, as there were no copyright treaty with Britain back then. They would flood the market with cheap books, destroying much of the profit potential that could be garnered by legally pirating the books.

This is good for Americans, because they can raise their literacy rate with the help of cheap books. The British authors also make money, sometime more than they do in their own country. Their business models consist of auctioning or selling the manuscript to the highest bidder.

Even now, Americans publishers can make quite a bit money selling public domain books, often government book like the 9/11 commission report.

Even so, I don't really care either way if a copyright-free world cause less books to appear, or more books to appears. If I want more books, I either download them or buy them. I see no reason to fret over what is ultimately a business model or entrepreneurship problem.

Can't really see how we would do without something like copyright.

Reality check: you can't finance or organize an album or single launch across 30+ countries using a patronage system. It just won't work. To claim patronage is the solution to the woes of the music and publishing industries is naive, I'm afraid.

i.e. "Me, me, me, and screw everyone else."

It's almost comical that you wax poetic about the capitalist system, and then in the next sentence blithely assert that art must necessarily exist outside of it! Especially given that the two have fruitfully coexisted for some four hundred years. Oh, but I guess the interweb changes everything, doesn't it?

> Our economic system is a dynamic one, and thus, cannot have an equilibrium that is so often at heart of economic models.

Our economic system is a dynamic one? Well done, Sherlock! To say that dynamic systems can't lead to equilibria ('so often at heart of economic models' -- I chuckled when I read that little pearl of wisdom) is patently wrong and frankly asinine.

> For the reason of satisfying consumer preferences, we must ignore people who insists and demand compensation for their work without giving people a reason to buy.

And I think we should ignore people whose prose and logic are reminiscent of Manuel from Faulty Towers. Remember that the 'reason to buy' -- as opposed to stealing -- in the physical domain is the fear of being locked up. Getting stuff for free, in case you haven't noticed, will usually 'satisfy consumer preferences'!

> Why should they make people fork money over something that they would not buy without copyright and government intervention?

Because a) it's unethical not too, and b) if people don't do it (i.e. if property rights aren't respected) then markets cease to function. Do you not agree would be unethical to steal a purse from a stall in Portobello Market? Do you not also agree that policemen, the agents which 'give [you] a reason to buy', as opposed to just grabbing the stuff and running, are a form of 'government intervention'?

You assume a pro-market, libertarian mantle, but the truth is that you are a fraud who uses such lofty talk in much the same way that New Agers use quantum physics to make vacuous points about the inter-connectedness of everyone and everything. Markets rely on the respect of property. That is no less true in the physical domain than in the intellectual one.

Eh? I'm positing why you might think a system which has worked for centuries should suddenly be obsolete. You're the one who made the claim, so why don't you enlighten me?

> Prove it instead of saying it is.

Stop being so lazy and google 'dynamic system equilibrium'.

> Is copying stealing?

No. Did I say it was? No.

> Is depriving someone of potential profits stealing?

No, but that doesn't make it ok.

> Unethical on what ground?

Unethical because:

a) the artist hasn't consented to it; b) you are enjoying the fruits of the artist's labour without compensating him/her; c) you contribute to his/her economic deprivation.

Of course, since you 'don't even care if artists starve to death on the street' as a direct result of your illegal activities, a discussion of ethics is pointless: you clearly have none.

The fact that you have not physically removed the original is irrelevant. If I plagiarize someone's work, the original is still there. Does that mean plagiarism is an ethical activity?

> I am not depriving anyone of anything, except their potential profits.

Except that 'potential profits' are, in many cases, the only means to livelihood for content creators (in anticipation of the 'go tour' defense: consider Steely Dan, a studio-only band). So the 'anything', is, in fact, everything.

> Yes, we must imagine that copyright are really property rights

As I mentioned before, 'real' property rights are just as artificial as intellectual property rights. All 'rights' are inventions of man. Do you deny this? Or do you and your 'die-hard anarcho-capitalist' nutter pals at mises.org believe your particular selection of fundamental rights were handed down on a tablet by Moses?

> We must also imagine that copyright laws and patents laws are not really a form of economic intervention with abritary rules.

Any law of any sort is an 'intervention', insofar as it alters the natural, hobbesian state of affairs. But to claim that copyright law is arbitrary is just silly. Copyright law has developed slowly over centuries, adapting to new technologies in a coherent fashion. It is, moreover, absolutely predictable in its application, and serves a very real economic purpose, namely to bring artistic and scientific output under the umbrella of capitalism -- allowing said activity to be monetized and exchanged for other goods and services. One would have thought that a 'die-hard .. capitalist' would have found this rather useful and elegant.

> Do you want my friends over at the mises.org forum and the #mises channel at freenode to come over to show you how many hard-core libertarians despise these kind of laws?

If it leads to an improvement in your spelling, grammar, and logic, then why not? And yes, I'd certainly be interested in reading anti-IP articles by libertarians. Seriously.

> You know, maybe I really do think copyright and patent are not property right.

Now it's my turn not to 'even care' -- I really don't care what you, or any of your nutter pals, think are the 'true' property rights. Your philosophical deliberations on IRC are of no importance to me. What matters is that if you are filesharing, you are breaking the law. And we, the community of musicians and other content creators, are going to ensure you're punished for that. If you think we're wrong about that, then you're free to lobby your politicians. But I rather suspect you're going to have to do better than your lame-ass 'copying is not stealing' and 'copyright law is arbitrary intervention' arguments.

In the legal sense, I would agree that YouTube's founders may be in trouble. However, the statement (like a lot of the rest of the article) sounds qualitative, and I take issue with that. The underlying problem is that copyright law doesn't work and YouTube's founders know it. They didn't have respect for stupid legislation and therefore pushed it as far as they could without getting in trouble.

I think it's imperative that lawsuits such as this aren't seen as a search for right or wrong. It's two giant corporations arguing about dollars and cents, so typical ethical standards we use when dealing with humans do not apply.

That is a true injustice when you look at the plight of EMI, which has brought us Coldplay, Pink Floyd, the Beatles (to name only a few), and which is close to going into administration. EMI actually gave back money (however imperfectly) to the people who were responsible for creating the music and associated content -- the artists, the producers, the mixing engineers, the mastering engineers, the graphic artists, etc. Tell me what the fuck has YouTube or Google done for any of these people?

Or if you look at the Spanish music industry, for which recorded music sales in 2010 where one sixth of the level in 2000. Filesharing, YouTube, etc., have effectively wiped that industry off the map. I lived two years in Madrid when I was a teenager (94-96), and I had the pleasure of listening to indigenous rock and indie music like Extremoduro, Ska-P, Seguridad Social. Spanish youths of today won't have that pleasure, thanks to filesharing and companies like YouTube -- to say nothing of the plight of Spanish musicians. Ten years ago, Spanish music accounted for dozens of entries in the Spanish top 50. Now, there are virtually none.

Let's be totally clear: YouTube didn't receive billions of dollars from Google for the cute homemade videos of cats or the like. It received that money for the illegal content it hosted. Granted, they created some value for the consumer in that they gave the user the control of the programming, but the value-creation component is a tiny sliver of the total value: what really happened is a transfer of wealth from content creators to middlemen like YouTube, who did nothing except host a few PHP and Flash scripts on some servers.

Again: copyright law doesn't work because of agents like YouTube continually acting to undermine it for personal enrichment. To the extent that we vigorously pursue persons like this (and I include private filesharers in this category, even though their form of profiteering takes a more subtle 'opportunity cost' form), the law will begin to work. Do you think there would be no theft in Portobello Market if there weren't bobbies on the beat -- simply because everyone acknowledged the law against theft is not 'stupid'?

> They didn't have respect for stupid legislation

To make a claim like that, without any qualification or explanation, is, well, stupid. Copyright law, of some form or other, has existed for some four hundred years -- it takes some chutzpah to write off the whole legal edifice as stupid.

Music videos and music, incidentally, were one of the content types which Hurley et al. passed a blind eye to, and they seem to do it to this day. The lawsuit details efforts by Viacom to have make YouTube (and Google) filter illegal content automatically -- Google and YouTube refused to filter unless this they entered one-sided licensing deals. In other words, they held a gun to their head, in effect saying: either make a deal on our terms, or we're going to pass a blind eye to piracy. I don't care what you say, this is unethical, and I applaud the mainstream media for finally calling this out.

And I hope they screw Hurley et al. to a wall.

In general, copyright protections are government-granted monopolies. This creates a number of economic inefficiencies. One example is distribution - instead of money and labor being spent to distribute recorded music and movies, all of this could be done for free over the Internet.

Of course, there must be mechanisms by which people who create content get compensated for their work. Copyright rarely works well in this regard (I think you said it did it "imperfectly"). The truth is most musicians make most of their money through touring, advertising deals, etc. Therefore, they would benefit from a wider distribution of their work, which copyright law impedes. There are people working on alternative models whose work you could read if you want to look for ways around these kinds of paradoxes. The big obstacle to implementing more progressive policies are the hugely powerful private content providers, so framing the issue as YouTube's billionaire owners versus the independent artist is disingenuous.

Regardless whether you agree with what I've said above, what cannot be denied is that individuals are still able to download all the pirated content they want very easily. Therefore, copyright law's greatest flaw is that it has been demonstrated not to work. Reforming or scrapping it would allow the market to adapt and move to a more sane model, which would benefit both the consumer and the content generator rather than the content "owner" and the content distributor.

All property rights secured by anything other than private physical force are 'government granted'. Can I hear some outrage over the government granted monopoly that allows me to sleep in my flat at night without fear that someone stronger than me (not difficult!) will come and kick me out? No, I didn't think so :)

> One example is distribution - instead of money and labor being spent to distribute recorded music and movies, all of this could be done for free over the Internet.

I log into Spotify or iTunes and download the music over the internet; zero physical distribution cost. I pay for the intellectual property -- where is the inefficiency?

Also, remember that distribution is only one aspect of the the music business. You're totally ignoring promotion, which requires both effort and money. Money which is only available if the intellectual property is monetizable, namely through copyright protections. There is no other way.

> The truth is most musicians make most of their money through touring, advertising deals, etc.

That is only true now precisely because of rampant piracy. It wasn't true in the 80s, when e.g. Michael Jackson sold 100MM+ copies of Thriller at $20 a pop. Or in the early noughties when Coldplay records would sell 25MM records -- their latest record sold 2MM copies. Touring and merchandise are really only lucrative for very few lucky and largely legacy acts -- pick up a copy of Music Week, look at the concert gross tables and see for yourself.

> There are people working on alternative models whose work you could read if you want to look for ways around these kinds of paradoxes.

With due respect, I think these people are producing nothing more than hot air. If they are so sure about their new eldorado business models, then let them put their money where their mouth is, and invest in creating Music Industry 2.0. I, for one, wouldn't invest a dime in such ventures.

> hugely powerful private content providers

I think you overestimate their power -- after all, we've had ten years of rampant piracy, haven't we? With all their power, they haven't been able to do anything to stop it. Meanwhile, in China, authorities have absolutely managed to control the dissemination of content and information, so it's clearly technically feasible. (Not that I'm advocating a China-style system of control and censorship, of course!)

> Therefore, copyright law's greatest flaw is that it has been demonstrated not to work.

The only reason it hasn't worked is because there hasn't been any enforcement! I would have thought that's the whole point of this article and this thread -- holding those that profiteer from flagrant violation of the law accountable. Holding the Chad Hurleys of the world accountable. Confiscating their ill-gotten gains would send a powerful message to those who would use a cavalier attitude to copyright holders in order to allow their site to grow and in turn make millions from it. In order for the law to be respected, it needs to be enforced. And in order for the law to be enforced requires political will. And this, sadly, has been in short supply, although the recent developments (e.g. Obama's endorsement of ACTA, Three-strikes rule in France, Lord Mandelson's Digital Millenium Copyright Act, etc.) are encouraging.

I apologize if I sound combative -- I talk like a content creator and you appear to talk like a consumer (it's similar to the hearing disputes between creditors and debtors -- they seem to talk past each other). However, I think in the long run, the content creators will prevail, because the simple truth is that we're right. Having your personal skin fully in it has a way of sharpening your wit and galvanizing your motivation, you see.

I doubt Google was buying content. It bought the ability to communicate to an established audience.

That is a true injustice when you look at the plight of EMI, which has brought us Coldplay, Pink Floyd, the Beatles (to name only a few), and which is close to going into administration.

EMI is not about what is justice. Music or any content is not dying because EMI are in trouble, EMI may well be in trouble because content is easier than ever to produce. EMI is not in trouble because of YouTube. It is so cheap now to produce a record that artists can do it in their bedroom. Even creating a record label is inexpensive. Numerous artists have made it big precisely because they put music together in their bedroom. There are independent and indie labels that done some really good business in the last 10 years. From where I sit the better distribution of music, however imperfect, has created more diversification in music.

Really I cannot understand why the record industry isn't making record profits with the ability to create, produce and distribute an album for next to nothing: compared to a time where studio time was scarce and manufacturing was pricey.

I know of artists that have used YouTube and other online media to get noticed, one may be signed to EMI recently.

One thing is for sure, there will be more choice for the music buyer of the future. Something that I think is wonderful.

There's money to be made in Music like there is in Photography. Reduced barriers of entry still cannot account for talent. So make Autotune available to all and let music get better.

An audience that was established, by YouTube founders own admission (did you read the article?), via the illegal content hosted there! And Google, by the way, was fully aware of this -- if you look at the depositions in the case you'll note reams of Google emails discussing this aspect of the purchase.

> EMI is not in trouble because of YouTube.

Well, not only because of YouTube (Kazaa, Napster, filesharers, etc. are also co-responsible), but YouTube is certainly a factor in the decline of recorded music sales, a decline which has had an undeniably pejorative impact on labels like EMI.

> It is so cheap now to produce a record that artists can do it in their bedroom. Even creating a record label is inexpensive.

Irrelevant -- it makes no difference if your album costs 50% or even 99% less to make if you can't monetize it by selling copies.

> Really I cannot understand why the record industry isn't making record profits with the ability to create

Allow me to enlighten you: because no one's buying records.

> I know of artists that have used YouTube and other online media to get noticed, one may be signed to EMI recently.

Of course, and to the extent that they submit their videos and content out of their own free volition, more power to them. My beef is with the a*sh&les that put music and other content on YouTube without permission. As for being signed to EMI -- as mentioned above, that may well very soon be counter-productive, notably if they enter administration.

> One thing is for sure, there will be more choice for the music buyer of the future. Something that I think is wonderful.

I totally agree. I'm a musician, and I really, genuinely, love music! Why else would I quit a rather lucrative career as a quant at a hedge fund in order to go into a business which is literally haemorrhaging (shameless plug: http://www.myspace.com/martindifeo). You can accuse me of many things, but you can't accuse me of being in music for the money :) That said, I'd like to earn a respectable income from my music-making activities, and I think I could do it if intellectual property rights were enforced. No, I'm not asking for government assistance other than upholding and enforcing already-existing law.