BY: CLAIRE KIM
YouTube has become a big thing now. It started as a video network that let people who wanted to broadcast something have the opportunity to, through their own YouTube channels. This idea of YouTube and creating our own content and then publicizing it out for the public has become used in so many ways now. Some people just want to produce something and share it through the media. Some just have fun making videos and doing their own film production. Some even pursue YouTube as a full-time career and they really make money. However, now that money is involved it doesn’t seem surprising that some people will do nasty things to earn money. On YouTube, to earn money or profit, a video needs a certain amount of views on their videos to raise a good amount of money. Videos that don’t receive as much attention as others will lose against them and will not create any momentum in their money-making part. So in the end, many people post unnecessary videos to receive the views they want. By this point, they have exceeded the limits of what behavior is appropriate on YouTube and this causes some problems to arise. Most issues concerning YouTube are around copyright and fraud.
Now the public response has said that some users have gone way too far with YouTube almost even breaking the law. This is something that shouldn’t be taken so lightly any more, and we really need to stop. We are abusing the objective of YouTube and no longer using it as a creative outlet, but as a network where playing dirty online is easily accepted.
Wall Street Journal has reported that the music industry is also in major crisis due to copyright and infringement on YouTube. It’s ridiculous that since the situation has become so big that people have to manually track users to block them from doing it over and over again. I mean once they get a warning to stop acting up online, shouldn’t they even take a second to realize that they might be doing something wrong? Sometimes I don’t understand why people do certain things when the answer is right in front of them.
Wall Street Journal has also mentioned that with this ongoing trend of copyrighting music and uploading it onto YouTube, it impacts other major music streaming websites like iTunes and Spotify that offer it for an actual price and makes a real profit from producing and sharing genuine music from the artists. It’s greatly damaging their sales and this continuity can lead to some unexpected problems on their part in the future. The value of artists and right owners are slowly diminishing as well since this sprung of YouTube video sharing.
With all of that in mind, the main controversy is the Content ID that YouTube owns as a system that allows users to upload videos for the goal of creating a business and helps them to receive money through advertisements. The Content-ID is not a very accurate system so it often causes problems with identifying copyright material. As Mr. Cohen said, “There’s some level of work and involvement that is really required for that balance”.
Not only has YouTube impacted the music industry but it has also impacted many people’s attitudes towards the usage of the internet, and that’s not okay.
claire kim. 