The Absurd CRB Rates: Wage Stagnation Exposed Kafka Style

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.'”

Ronald Reagan

This week we all got a glimpse of what the government thinks we’re all worth compared to Silicon Valley:  Not much.  Run along little artists and be glad that Washington allows you to keep any of the value of your work.

How do we know this?  The Copyright Royalty Board handed down its decision on what music is worth for a variety of the compulsory license rates that benefit Pandora, Clear Channel (iHeart), the National Association of Broadcasters, and other multinational corporate members of the trillion dollar lobbying group known as the MIC Coalition.  The rates  only apply to services that are not “interactive” like Pandora and iHeart most prominently.

The rates were set in some relationship to Pandora’s direct deal with Merlin and iHeart’s deal with Warner Music–that’s the main reason the 2016 rates are so low.  Of course Merlin and Warner Music got other goodies like steering payola that nobody else gets (in fact, we’d be very surprised if any Merlin or Warner artist has any idea what the royalty rate is under either of these deals).

That must be why the CRB asked the Register of Copyright if the CRB could set two different rates, one for the indies that were part of Merlin and who got the non-cash goodies and steering payola and the other for everyone else.  It would be entirely logical that the Merlin and Warner rates would be lower and maybe a lot lower than the rate the CRB set for everyone else (because Merlin and Warner artists will still get paid under the direct steering payola deals but using those rates as a benchmark dragged down everyone else in the world).

Since the Register of Copyrights ruled that two rates are not permitted the CRB had a choice–refer the direct deals with Pandora and iHeart to the FCC for a ruling on whether steering payola is illegal, ignore the direct deals with Merlin and iHeart (which may be illegal contracts based on the steering payola pending a determination by the FCC in the payola waiver petition filed by members of the MIC Coalition) because the rates are not good benchmarks and set their own rates, or pretend that the steering payola rates should be applied to everyone else.  (Note that A2IM, AFM and SAG-AFTRA had a heart attack objecting to indie rates compared to other label rates, with at least A2IM probably knowing all along that this would drag everyone down toward the Merlin rates to which many of their members were parties.)

This is what’s become known as the “Chris Harrison special” (named for the former lawyer for DMX and Pandora, now at SiriusXM, who makes a career out of screwing artists and songwriters).  The trick is that the company does a deal for a low royalty rate plus non-cash goodies with big companies and then shoves the low royalty with NO non-cash goodies on everyone else.  We know he did this.  Billboard reported that he did this and that the same dance could happen with Web IV.  With all the brain power at Merlin and Warner, don’t you think that they could have seen this coming?  They got theirs and left us to fight over the scraps.

It’s actually pretty fair to say that these two deals totally screwed the entire music business.  Thanks Merlin and Warner.  Merry fucking dumbass Christmas to you, too.

We’ll have more to say about this, but let’s talk about the other bunch of fools, the Copyright Royalty Board.  Not only did they buy into the Chris Harrison bullshit, they also added some of their own–they indexed the royalty rate so that it only increases based on what is essentially increases in the rate of inflation applied to the Chris Harrison-era 2016 rate.

FOR FIVE YEARS!

Think about that–what that means is that the 2016 rate essentially stays the same for the full five years of the CRB decision.  This is called “wage stagnation”–a classic case of it in fact.  It’s one thing when wage stagnation happens in the market place.  This isn’t that.  This is government mandated wage stagnation for the benefit of Pandora, Clear Channel/iHeart, Google and the rest of the MIC Coalition.

Maybe the bully boys from Washington thought we should be happy that inflation doesn’t eat into our measly royalty rate?  Did they think there would be dancing in the streets that the government only put their boot on our necks and didn’t cut our guts out, too?

Or maybe they thought we’d be too dumb to notice that they are giving us a flat rate for five years regardless of the value of music.  It’s not implausible to believe that it was their intention to devalue music–at least if you’re not getting the non-cash goodies given to Merlin and Warner.

Here’s the language that applies to royalty rates after 2016 using the CPI (which doesn’t stand for “Create Pandora Income” but you wouldn’t know it):

(c) Annual royalty fee adjustment. The Copyright Royalty Judges shall adjust the royalty fees each year to reflect any changes occurring in the cost of living as determined by the most recent Consumer Price Index (for all consumers and for all items) (CPI-U) published by the Secretary of Labor before December 1 of the preceding year. The adjusted rate shall be rounded to the nearest fourth decimal place. The Judges shall publish notice of the adjusted fees in the Federal Register at least 25 days before January 1. The adjusted fees shall be effective on January 1.

This is just ridiculous.  Let’s leave aside whether the CPI arithmetic mean formula (the “Laspeyres formula”) used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics even makes sense applied to music, let’s leave aside the fact that the entire federal government starting with the Federal Reserve is doing everything humanly possible to keep inflation as low as possible for largely political reasons, and let’s leave aside the fact that the Federal Reserve (and other central banks) has been in lala land with quantitative easing and other indirect forms of printing money to keep the 99% economy from collapsing since 2008.

Let’s also leave aside that the “CPI-U” rate that the CRB chose for us is for urban consumers only and never has included an “expenditure category” for music, entertainment or even “leisure” activities.  (Neither has the producer price index.)  The only connection between CPI-U and artists is what it costs everyone in the economy to live, not to produce music–and will necessarily underweight certain costs to artists like oh, say, GASOLINE.  Everyone uses gasoline, but artists probably use a lot more of it because we have to tour because record sales are in the toilet right next to webcasting rates thanks to the little intellectual elite in a far-away Eastern city.  We use gasoline to produce a product–music–not to drive to work like judges at the CRB.

Out of touch and mean-spirited.

And by the way–indexing everyone’s royalty rate to the CPI-U means that artists who live outside the U.S. will have their U.S. royalty rates pegged to U.S. inflation.  Can we expect to get the same treatment for royalties earned by U.S. artists overseas that SoundExchange collects?

This whole indexing idea is just stupid and it’s insulting.  Not only does it freeze our royalty rates for five years, it also guarantees that any increase in the value of music through the government licenses goes 100% to the services.  It is not shared by the services with featured artists, labels, musicians and vocalists.  The CRB just rewarded what economists call “rent seeking behavior” and what we call being a scumbag.

The geniuses in Washington just told us that they’re going to freeze our royalties and that they think we’re too stupid to know the difference.

Remember–the federal government froze the mechanical royalty rate paid to songwriters at two cents from 1909-1977.  Sixty eight years baby.

Mechanical Rate 1909
Copyright Office Historical Mechanical Rates

If you adjusted for inflation that two cents would be worth over 50¢ today–but it still would have the same buying power as two cents in 1909.  If they did it to the songwriters, they’ll do it to the artists, too.

If we don’t stop the runaway CRB, we may have to live with the consequences for a long time to come.  If you think this is wrong, let the Copyright Office know.  You can write to the Register of Copyrights directly at their public communication page:

http://copyright.gov/help/index.html

half cent
Will Pandora Bring Back the Half Cent Coin?

 

 

by thetrichordist

Artists Rights Advocates Make Gains in 2015… Web/Tech Admissions Laid Bare.

So many of the issues we’ve been talking about for years are finally becoming part of the larger and more mainstream conversations about artists rights and an ethical internet.

Seems like there is a little bit more than a slight draft blowing on house of cards that Silicon Valley has built. Here’s a quick recap.

FREE, UNLIMTED, AD-SUPPORTED, ON DEMAND STREAMING IS UNSUSTAINABLE.

Pandora CEO Mike McAndrews first started teasing this talking point during an earnings call in October. You can read those comments at Re/Code. But it was the more direct article McAndrew’s authored for Business Insider that really cemented what we’ve been saying all along…

“This gray market is unsustainable. If consumers can legally listen to free on-demand music permanently without converting to paying models, the value of music will continue to spiral downward to the benefit of no one.”

There is no turning back from this admission.

It’s funny how in years past so many in the music and tech communities could not and would not admit to this simple fundamental truth often telling musicians the true value of their platform was “exposure” so artists could “tour and sell t-shirts”. Well it now looks like the wheels have been run off that nonsense for good.

What would be really great is to see Pandora join the fight with artists against Ad-Funded Piracy. Pandora, Spotify, YouTube and every other Ad-Supported music platform must be aware of the fact that the downward pressure from these infringing pirate sites not only diminishes the value of music, but also the value of advertising on legitimate and licensed paltforms.

WINDOWING WORKS. ASK ADELE, TAYLOR SWIFT AND THE MOVIE BUSINESS.

Taylor Swift, Adele, Beyonce, Prince, Coldplay, The Black Keys, Thom Yorke and other artists have proved that Hits Don’t Need Spotify, but rather Spotify Needs Hits. The Wall Street Journal reports that Spotify is caving in on windowing.

Now, the service is caving in, according to people familiar with the matter.

In private talks, Spotify has told music executives that it is considering allowing some artists to start releasing albums only to its 20 million-plus subscribers, who pay $10 a month, while withholding the music temporarily from its 80 million free users. The company is only interested in withholding albums that can be kept off of other free music sites, such as Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube, for the same amount of time, one of these people said.

There is no turning back from this admission.

This means that Spotify has admitted that it is NOT a discovery medium, it is a retail outlet. Spotify is the digital cut-out bin offering the lowest amount of value to artists. The big problem for Spotify now is who decides who is a lessor or greater artist? Who is going to have that conversation with artists and managers that they are a lessor artist and not worthy of Spotify’s stamp of approval to only be streamed to paying subscribers? Ironically, but predictably the new boss is worse than the old boss.

As with Pandora’s admission about unlimited free streaming being unsustainable, Spotify also recognizes that Ad-Funded Piracy, particularly of the YouTube variety (and mentioned by name) must be managed effectively for windowing to work.

YOUTUBER’S GET PIRATED ON FACEBOOK EXACTLY HOW MUSICIANS GET PIRATED ON YOUTUBE, AND THEY DON’T LIKE IT.

Here’s a shocker. YouTuber’s who create original content through their own investment of time, money and resources are outraged when Facebook users “Freeboot” (aka Pirate) those videos depriving the original creator of the revenue. Hank Green writes a post on Medium that breaks it down.

According to a recent report from Ogilvy and Tubular Labs, of the 1000 most popular Facebook videos of Q1 2015, 725 were stolen re-uploads. Just these 725 “freebooted” videos were responsible for around 17 BILLION views last quarter. This is not insignificant, it’s the vast majority of Facebook’s high volume traffic.

There is no turning back from this admission.

Every argument that has been used against musicians, filmmakers and other creators for using the DMCA to protect their work suddenly takes on new dimensions when the tables are turned.

Larry Lessig had convinced a generation that they we’re being criminalized because musicians were “out of touch” with the “sharing economy”. When musicians issued DMCA notices to YouTube they were vilified, taunted and publicly shamed “Sorry that video is no long available due to a copyright claim by the artist.”

THE DMCA IS NOT A “LICENSE” FOR INFRINGEMENT, COX LOSES SAFE HARBOR IN JURY VERDICT. 

Perhaps the single greatest ruling of the year involves Cox Communications losing it’s safe harbor under the DMCA. Digital Music News reports on the jury verdict.

Ultimately, the court found the situation to be more complicated than that, with Cox now ruled guilty of both contributory and willful contributory copyright infringement by a federal jury.  The jury award is $25 million, though that probably represents a small prelude to damages that could ultimately push into the hundreds of millions.

There is no turning back from this verdict.

For those of you keeping score at home it is the DMCA abuse that has been used as a shield against copyright infringement liability by the internet and web/tech communities. Many businesses including many ISP’s and content hosting platforms such as YouTube have used the DMCA to build massively profitable businesses that are largely comprised of infringing works, otherwise known as User Pirated Content. That may be about to change thanks to this ruling.

THE PIRATE / FREE CULTURE MOVEMENT HAS FAILED. 

In a recent interview Peter Sunde, the founder of The Pirate Bay, the flagship of the free culture movement admitted he had failed and was giving up. The most interesting admission by Sunde is at the end of the interview where he echoes what we and other’s have been saying for years.

So, is there like a concrete thing we should focus on? Or do we need to aim for a new way of thinking? A new ideology?

Well, I think the focus needs to be that the internet is exactly the same as society.

There is no turning back from this admission.

There is an excellent open letter in response to Sunde by David Newhoff at The Illusion of More that is well worth reading with a detailed look at why Sunde has failed. But it is Sunde himself who makes the most profound admission.

We have centuries of rule of law for civilized societies that respect and protect individual creators rights in the authorship of their work. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 27, part 2 states “Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.”

The greatest irony here is that Sunde set up The Pirate Bay as an attack on capitalism, but he started by attacking artist’s and creator’s moral rights firsts. The paradox of “pirate logic” expands when one recognizes that The Pirate Bay was said to be making over four million dollars year. Yeah, that’s the way to fight capitalism, attack the ability for artists to survive and pocket four million a year. We couldn’t make this up if we tried.

SO LETS CHECK THE MATH HERE AT THE END OF 2015

  • Pandora attacks Spotify stating the Unlimited, Ad-Supported, On Demand, Free Streaming is Unsustainble.
  • Spotify attacks YouTube stating that Windowing Can Only Work If Windows Can Be Enforced.
  • YouTuber’s attack Facebook stating that Stealing and Monetizing their work Without Permission is bad.
  • Cox Communications attacked the DMCA stating “F*ck The DMCA” and lost.
  • Peter Sunde attacks Capitalism stating that… oh well, forget it… it’s nonsense.

There is a lot of work to be done, however these admissions set the framework for the future of these conversations going forward.

jean michael jarre IRM 1

[NOTE : THIS ARTICLE WAS UPDATED ON SATURDAY DEC 19 TO ADD THE PARAGRAPH ABOUT COX COMMUNICATIONS]
by Trichordist Editor

What Does BMG v. Cox mean for the Copyright Alert System

Music Technology Policy

A Virginia jury today handed down a $25 million judgement in favor of BMG for willful contributory copyright infringement by Cox Communications following what was apparently a very brief deliberation.  There will be much written about the case, but let’s think for a moment about what it means for the Copyright Alert System.

The judge in the case ruled earlier in pre-trial motions that Cox had failed to maintain an effective repeat infringer policy and procedure.  What seems to have been most compelling to the judge was that Cox didn’t do enough in terminating repeat infringers although the company did temporarily suspend access to a users Internet connection.

That is interesting because the Copyright Alert System (which involves the largest US ISPs) is essentially a system of notices and alerts that never results in what seemed to be important to the court in Cox–termination.  Which is actually just…

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by thetrichordist

Jury Rules For BMG on Cox Media P2P Piracy

Details are still slim, but it looks like a victory for artists and rightsholders.  Court agrees ISPs are supposed to have real policy for disconnecting repeat infringers.  Cox basically had a “fake” cutoff  policy and lost DMCA protections. Fox is now liable for user’s infringement.

Law360, Washington (December 17, 2015, 12:38 PM ET) — Internet service provider Cox Communications must pay music publisher BMG Rights Management $25 million for turning a blind eye to illegal music downloads by its subscribers, a Virginia federal jury found in a verdict Thursday, holding the ISP guilty of willful contributory copyright infringement.

http://www.law360.com/topnews/articles/739353/breaking-cox-must-pay-bmg-25m-for-user-piracy-jury-finds

by Dr. David C Lowery

Opt Out of Pandora’s Purchase of Rdio

Remember that Pandora is buying some assets from the Rdio bankruptcy with the intention to expand its webcasting service into a windowing service like Spotify?  How can they do that you may ask?  Don’t the licenses for those recordings and songs terminate in a bankruptcy?

Check your email–you may have received this notice from Pandora with the misleading subject line (with our emphasis):

We’re writing in regard to Pandora’s recent announcement that it plans to acquire certain assets from Rdio.  We’re currently working to finalize the transaction and are extremely excited about the opportunities this acquisition will bring not only to Pandora, but to the music industry as a whole.  With that in mind, we wanted to reach out regarding your company’s musical compositions embodied in sound recordings (the “Content”) stored on Rdio’s servers. As part of our acquisition of Rdio’s assets, we would like to retain the Content contained on these servers for possible inclusion in expanded Pandora service offerings in the future.

To be clear, Pandora will not launch expanded service offerings without acquiring the appropriate licenses. In addition, we will access the Content for possible ingestion into our Music Genome Project. We believe that retaining this Content is the surest way for Pandora to include your compositions upon the launch of any expanded service.  However, if you would prefer that your musical compositions not be included at this time, please follow the link below and indicate your intent to opt-out.

Pandora Media, Inc.
2101 Webster St., Suite 1650
Oakland, CA 94610

ConsentInquiries@pandora.com

Please click the following link if you wish to opt out:
https://www.musicreports.com%5Bredacted%5D

Why are they sending this email around?  If Pandora wants to launch an on-demand service, they’re very likely going to need negotiated licenses or licenses like the ones Rdio already holds.  This is all new to Pandora–Pandora executives are to hiding behind the federal government to protect their business and guarantee them a multimillion dollar payday for that 14 bathroom vacation house they’ve always wanted.

If Rdio has a license from you for your songs, Pandora may recognize that those licenses cannot be transferred from Rdio to Pandora in the Rdio bankruptcy.  Why else would they be asking you to opt in to a new license in this misleading email?  But wait…they never say they’re asking you to opt in, they’re offering you a chance to opt out.

And wait and see–if you don’t respond, they will say that they offered you a chance to opt out, so by not opting out they will deem you to have opted in.  Pretty scummy, right?  And how do we know this?  Because it’s what a scumbag would do.  Then naturally its what Pandora would do.  Very predictable.

The problem is that you have no idea what the business model will be of whatever new service it is that Pandora may launch, so why in the world would anyone ever agree to a license for a business before you even know what the business is?  How would you ever know what’s fair?

It seems like the only smart thing to do if you’ve gotten this email is to opt out immediately.  If you decide to opt out, it would probably be a good idea to follow up with a letter telling Pandora that you want no part of it.

Here’s an interesting side note.  Check out this sentence:

In addition, we will access the Content for possible ingestion into our Music Genome Project.

That sounds like Music Genome rights would be included in whatever license Pandora wants, and if you opt out, Pandora would not have the rights to “ingest” (lovely) your songs.  It sounds like Pandora might think they need a license to map your song into Pandora’s “Music Genome”.  That’s interesting because we do, too.

We’ve thought for a long time that Pandora needed a license for each song in the Music Genome and that the use of an artist’s name to create channels also needed a separate license for the use of the artist’s name.

Unless you’re in the habit of buying pigs in pokes, you could do worse than to opt out of any license you ever granted to Rdio and tell your publisher to do the same.  Once Pandora can tell you exactly what they want to do with your song, you can always change your mind.

After what they’ve done to artists and songwriters, who would ever trust these corrupt guys if the government didn’t force you to?

by thetrichordist

Pandora’s Shell Game with Royalty and Revenue

Here’s why Pandora should not get lower rates!

Music Technology Policy

thimblerig definition

Remember when Pandora used to complain about how royalty costs were over half their revenue?  Let’s take a look at their income statement for the last 12 months (“trailing twelve months” or “ttm”) from Yahoo! Finance:

Pandora Income Statement

“Total Revenue” of $1,100,000,000.  Because as Sean Parker will tell you, you know what’s really cool?  A billion dollars.

“Total Cash” of $363,600,000.

And at least at the moment, zero debt.

So stop right there–what do you think the response would be if you walked into any business school in the world (and not just the good ones) and asked the first MBA you met this question: How would you like a case study of a public company that has a $2.69 billion market cap, and that has government mandated vendors (that’s the artists and songwriters) whose selling price (aka royalties) is set below market by the government, and that has a billion…

View original post 592 more words

by thetrichordist

Music Director at WJCU Breaks with National Association of Broadcasters in Letter to Congress Supporting Artist Pay for Radio Play

Music Technology Policy

[Editor Charlie sez: It’s the end of 2015 and it’s time to look over the good news that came during the year.  For those MTP readers who missed the interview with Karoline Kramer-Gould, the heroic Music Director at tastemaker college radio station WJCU, here’s the reprint from Chris’s blog on Huffington Post.  If you already saw it, it’s well worth a re-read to remind you that we do have friends–a lot of friends–in radio who support treating artists fairly and who have devoted their lives to music every bit as much as artists and musicians have.  What makes Karoline so special is that she was willing to stand up for what she believes in and speak truth to the MIC Coalition.]

The United States is the only democracy in the world that does not pay recording artists for radio airplay. Artists and record labels have been fighting a legislative battle…

View original post 2,521 more words

by thetrichordist

An Open Response to Peter Sunde | David Newhoff @ TIOM

The Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde has recently stated he’s given up. His interview can be read here. David Newhoff at the Illusion Of More responds to Sunde in a brilliant open letter that is required reading.

This is what comes of evangelizing the idea that it’s okay to exploit other people’s investment of real labor and real capital in goods and services that would otherwise have regenerative value. And exploiting these types of investments is precisely what you and your colleagues did with The Pirate Bay.

At least part of the Internet you don’t like is what comes of preaching to a whole generation that they can have whatever they want, free of charge, as long as it’s just a mouse click away.  And indeed, we are lately seeing the wheels come off that naive (and frankly predatory) idea. As the leaders of Pandora and Spotify begin to see that “freemium” isn’t a business model; as Facebook’s video service “freeboots” the promised ad-share value out of the pockets of YouTube creators; and as the global network of pirate sites is revealed to be a malware-infested and sophisticated black market that preys on individual consumers, you seem to have missed the point, Peter. The “fight” you lost is not with the MPAA and the principles of real capitalism—but with the unfettered greed you helped foster on the Internet you asked for.

READ THE ENTIRE POST AT THE ILLUSION OF MORE:
http://illusionofmore.com/an-open-response-to-peter-sunde/

by Trichordist Editor

Pirate Bay Founder: ‘I Have Given Up’ | Motherboard.Vice

This interview is fascinating on so many levels and deserving of it’s own in depth post to explore Sunde’s comments.  Here is just a teaser…

What is it exactly that you have given up?

Well, I have given up the idea that we can win this fight for the internet.

The situation is not going to be any different, because apparently that is something people are not interested in fixing. Or we can’t get people to care enough. Maybe it’s a mixture, but this is kind of the situation we are in, so its useless to do anything about it.

We have become somehow the Black Knight from Monty Python’s Holy Grail. We have maybe half of our head left and we are still fighting, we still think we have a chance of winning this battle.

So what can people do to change this?

Nothing.

PLEASE READ THE FULL POST AT VICE-MOTHERBOARD:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/pirate-bay-founder-peter-sunde-i-have-given-up

by Trichordist Editor

Karma Meets Irony. “Freebooted” YouTuber’s Feel The Sting Of Piracy…

Watch and learn… We can’t make this up. Seriously you have to watch this video.

If we had a nickle for every YouTuber or Tech Journalist that advised musicians that “YouTube” was the SOLUTION TO PIRACY we’d be rich. Really rich. I mean, really, really, really rich. We we’re told YouTube was “promotion” and “exposure” to make money other ways.

We were told how if you just “made stuff people wanted” and “connected with fans” then they would reward you with loyalty and support. Musicians were told they were “whining” about piracy and that they should “adapt and evolve” to the “new way” and just embrace all of this “awesome internet empowered promotion”.

Funny how it is when the shoe is on the other foot. See here’s the thing. All of these YouTuber’s make money from the advertising that runs on their YouTube videos. But when those videos are ripped from YouTube by fans and uploaded to Facebook guess who doesn’t get paid? Yup, you guessed it… the YouTuber’s are getting stiffed and they don’t like it.

Where is Larry Lessig to help these folks out? Remember kids, don’t break the internet! It’s “sharing economy” afterall. You do the work and silicon valley shares the profits.

Soooo… when a musician’s work is pirated on Napster, Grockster, Kazaa, Limewire, The Pirate Bay, oh and YouTube… Musicians should “get over it”. But when a YouTuber’s work, labor and creative output is devalued, or worse monetized by a third party (Facebook) who doesn’t pay them anything, well then, you know, that’s “bad”.

The issue gained national attention this year earning editorials and reports from the likes of Slate, “Facebook’s Piracy Problem” in July. Time followed with a story in August, “This Is Facebook’s Biggest Problem With Video Right Now.” And recently as November AdWeek chimed in, “Facebook’s ‘Freebooting’ Piracy Problem Just Cost Casey Neistat 20 Million Views“.

This quote from the AdWeek story above kind of says it all…

But then they ran into a problem known as “freebooting,” which entails republishing videos on social sites without the consent of the folks who made the clips. In essence, it’s a practice of intellectual-property theft that’s plagued Facebook more than other digital platforms—PR-wise, at least—in recent months thanks to a few whistle-blowers.

They go on…

“I spent roughly a week issuing take downs on Facebook—a convoluted process,” Neistat told Adweek. “I crowdsourced the process of finding the freebooters because there is no way to search Facebook. In all, I took down well over 50 different posts—[which was] not nearly all of them. I simply gave up after a while. I anecdotally kept track of the view counts—over 20 million views on the videos I took down.”

Here’s more to chew on from a post by Hank Green on Medium, “Theft, Lies and Facebook Video“.

According to a recent report from Ogilvy and Tubular Labs, of the 1000 most popular Facebook videos of Q1 2015, 725 were stolen re-uploads. Just these 725 “freebooted” videos were responsible for around 17 BILLION views last quarter. This is not insignificant, it’s the vast majority of Facebook’s high volume traffic. And no wonder, when embedding a YouTube video on your company’s Facebook page is a sure way to see it die a sudden death, we shouldn’t be surprised when they rip it off YouTube and upload it natively.

Facebook’s algorithms encourage this theft.

Hmmmmm… where have we heard this story before? Maybe it was Daily Finance back in 2010, “Viacom vs. YouTube/Google: A Piracy Case in Their Own Words“.

• On July 19, Chen wrote to Hurley and Karim: “Jawed, please stop putting stolen videos on the site. We’re going to have a tough time defending the fact that we’re not liable for the copyrighted material on the site because we didn’t put it up when one of the co-founders is blatantly stealing content from from other sites and trying to get everyone to see it.” Four days later, Karim sent a link to the other founders, and Hurley told him that if they rejected it, they needed to reject all copyrighted material. Karim’s reply: “I say we reject this one but not the others. This one is totally blatant.”

• A July 29 email conversation about competing video sites laid out the importance to YouTube of continuing to use the copyrighted material. “Steal it!” Chen said , and got a reply from Hurley, “hmmm, steal the movies?” Chen’s answer: “we have to keep in mind that we need to attract traffic. how much traffic will we get from personal videos? remember, the only reason our traffic surged was due to a video of this type.”

Yup, Karma meets irony… How very interwebs… Ok, Ok, Ok… Sorry, just one more…

Everyone’s creativity deserves to be protected. All creators should be united against the illegal, infringing and exploitative uses of their work (especially for profit) without consent or compensation.

by Trichordist Editor