
YouTube's seven-year stand-off ends - seycombi
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37839038
======
nom
German here. I'm happy that the whole thing is finally over, but also at the
same time very angry that GEMA succeeded in getting it their way, once again.
I don't think it's known how much money really changed hands, but knowing
Google and the scale of the situation, I think it's a fair bet that GEMA got a
huge sum out of this.

~~~
sparky_
Before, YT was completely unusable in Germany. You're right about GEMA, but
it's a win for most ordinary people. Unfortunately many other streaming sites
are useless still in all of EU. Netflix for example. Only with VPN through
United States or maybe Britain do you achieve full value.

~~~
Noseshine

      > Before, YT was completely unusable in Germany
    

This is gross exaggeration. I use Youtube extensively and I encountered a
blocked video maybe 3% of the time, and only when looking at music videos.
Even when that happened I simply enabled the (installed but usually remaining
disabled) Proxmate Chrome extension to use a proxy and get the (music) video
anyway. The change is welcome but won't have much of an effect on me. People
using Youtube extensively for music - and "current" music - are probably most
affected. I'd say the majority of music still was accessible. Often you would
have another video upload of the same song accessible when one was blocked.

Which reminds me of a different issue, is it possible that Youtube, and
possibly other video portals too, deliberately ever so slightly messes up the
sound of music videos? Maybe to ensure there still is an incentive to buy? I
can't really tell for sure, but a lot of music to me sounds a little worse
than I would have expected.

~~~
darklajid
Actually I'm with the GP: A large number of videos I cared about were
unwatchable - and the reason was usually low key background music from say an
uploaded twitch stream.

In other words: I don't (usually, it's quite rare) go to YT for music and
still I really believe that this change improves my usage.

I don't bother with proxy solutions, so this change is most welcome to me.

~~~
Noseshine

      > I don't bother with proxy solutions
    

Note that you didn't really have to do anything but install a Chrome
extension. If you left it turned on it would detect when a video was blocked
and reload the page through some proxy. Pretty low effort overall. Otherwise I
would not have done it myself, the only videos I ever needed it for were pure
music videos, which I can easily live without if it's even slightly
inconvenient to see them.

And remember the comment I replied to said "YT was completely unusable in
Germany", which is definitely not true no matter how any one individual person
might have been affected. It's one thing to speak about ones own experiences,
but YT wasn't "unusable in Germany".

~~~
darklajid
Sure, "completely unusable" is similar to the "literally unplayable" gaming
meme: Way over the top. I tried to point out that our experience (yours, mine)
differ and mine was repeatedly/often disturbed due to random GEMA claims,
while not even looking for music.

(I don't use Chrome, but I assume there'd be a Firefox extension. Then again,
I remember that there used to be a ~shady~ extension for exactly this YT issue
and I just never felt good about installing an extension for my browser for
this narrow a use case.)

~~~
Noseshine
I agree about the extensions in general. I had a very strange issue that
Google kept asking me for confirmation that I'm not a robot. I initially
suspected my aging router had been captured, so I replaced it. But only when I
removed the BTTV (Better Twitch TV) extension did it stop. I repeated the
experiment, one or two days after reinstalling it I was again blocked by
Google, and the block again disappeared very shortly after removing it a
second time. That extension actually loads most of its code from a server,
which they even write about in their README - I have no idea how this is
allowed in the Chrome store.

This is why I had the Youtube-proxy extension disabled, and only enabled
briefly for when I needed it for a specific video. Incidentally, today in the
headlines: WOT - Web Of Trust - an extension used by millions on several
browsers, has sold all browsing data of all their users to 3rd parties. Worst
part: According to journalists who purchased the data they were able to
actually identify individual users because of the many details that were
included.

------
erikb
This was really a ridiculous situation. Sometimes you couldn't see a movie
trailer (which is basically an ad) because there was a GEMA song in it, and
sometimes you couldn't watch the song video from the musicians official
channel because GEMA. I really hope that this will all be opened now that the
case is finished.

------
anotheryou
Maybe they got cold feet because finally a cool alternative to GEMA is
emerging: [https://www.c3s.cc/](https://www.c3s.cc/) (current status:
somewhere in the bureaucratic labyrinth, but slowly making progress)

------
sean_patel
I still see "This Content is not available in your Country" on many Japanese
Youtube Videos (browsing from USA). And even stranger, it only shows that
message when browsing from a mobile phone's browser (ex: iPhone Safari).
Here's an example of a cat video (there are many more) :
[https://www.pawpurrazi.com/cat-toilet-paper-sit-
roll/](https://www.pawpurrazi.com/cat-toilet-paper-sit-roll/)

Watch the youtube embed video on that page in a mobile phone.

So what gives? Is Japan also in some dispute?

~~~
resfirestar
Also in the USA. That cat video plays on Firefox and Chrome for Android, but
if I open the link on my laptop and open the embed in a new tab (because I
block external scripts on my laptop), it "contains content from Jukin Media.
It is restricted from playback on certain sites." So my guess in this
particular case would be that something in Safari prevents YouTube from
recognizing that the video is embedded on a site that bought an embed license.

The more general problem with watching Japanese videos from the US is largely
due to the fact that many Japanese media companies like to sell exclusive
international distribution rights for all of their content, regardless of
whether the buyer will actually distribute all of the content, or if the buyer
is only going to use it in China or Korea. So they block their videos outside
of Japan and we often can't find a version available in the US.

~~~
sean_patel
Interesting. This makes sense. So I guess the content owner / "Licensor" is
the problem here, and not Youtube. Good to know.

------
nedsma
Finally. I hated internet in Germany because of this and the lack of public
wifi access points.

~~~
pjmlp
We don't need public wifi access points in most European countries because our
3G and 4G connections tend to be quite good, at least in the main cities.

~~~
mullsork
Except 3G and 4G is ridiculously costly if you want a reasonable amount of
data without taking on a 2 year contract. I live in Berlin and the Germans I
talk to about this usually don't see a problem.

I moved here from the Nordics so you could say I'm spoiled but I think it's
reasonable to have near unlimited data so that I can actually watch
YouTube/Spotify/Netflix without worrying that it'll make me unreachable on
Whatsapp/Messenger when I'm out and about.

Public access points would be great in Berlin (can't say for other cities) for
sure, but they'd have to change that stupid law where the owner of a
connection (say, a café) is persecuted if one of its visitors do something
illegal on their connection.

~~~
pjmlp
I have 1 GB per month on a O2 pre-paid card in Germany.

That is a reasonable amount of data for me.

Also that law applies to everyone with an wlan router, not just coffee owners.

~~~
mullsork
> Also that law applies to everyone with an wlan router, not just coffee
> owners.

Very true. I'm only really thinking about it when I try out a new café that
doesn't have WIFI.

I used to have 1GB on Blau. I'm trying desperately to cut all ties and get
some money back from them but they're horrible, that's another story though.

In any case I've been paying about 10e for 1GB per month. Yes I can live it
for sure, I often don't even go beyond 600Mb per month.

With unlimited data I would use my phone a lot differently though. I'd likely
stream Audible Channels if I got the urge or found something interesting while
on train, maybe I'd watch something on YT or check out new music.

Because of these expensive limited plans I'm not using my phone a lot. It's
both a good thing but also a bit sad I think. I'm very much ranting here,
sorry for that.

It's just weird coming from unlimited data that you pay 15e/month for (4G
unlimited mind you) to this thing. Friends at home regularly surpass 10Gb per
month because they're streaming music constantly. Some even use their phones
as the only internet connection they have, skipping landlines entirely!

------
6stringmerc
Not sure I'd come across this particular rights / negotiation case in the past
but I'm grateful to get a chance to read this article posted here. Quite
useful to stay in the know. I hope all the parties are pretty satisfied with
the terms and processes now.

