

'YOUTUBE is EVIL': Somebody had a tape running, Google - tankenmate
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/29/oops_google_somebody_left_a_tape_running/

======
pja
Google seems determined to make exactly the same mistakes with YouTube Music
that it made trying to pushing Google+ down people's throats.

I.e., abuse a dominant position in one area to force users onto its other
services whilst completely ignoring both the collateral damage caused and the
actual stated preferences of their users. This is exactly the kind of thing
that people used to (rightfully) castigate Microsoft for & it's predictable
but depressing to see Google treading the same path. (I know "don't be evil"
was just a slogan, but there was a time when Google stood for the principle of
winning simply by being better than everyone else & it's saddening to see them
resort to these kind of underhanded tactics to force their products into the
marketplace.)

These kind of tactics do work in the short term of course, but ultimately they
have a corrosive effect on your long term success because users cease to trust
that you'll treat them fairly. Meanwhile the execs involved run off into the
sunset with their bonuses extracted by burning the company's goodwill in order
to drive short term metrics the way they need them to hit whatever internal
targets they've set themselves.

~~~
loceng
Really it's bizarre because the service they're offering on its own is quite
valuable, so they'll get user adoption eventually I imagine - maybe not 100%
but that's greedy or unreasonable at minimum. Far more damage is done with an
aggressive/controlling stance, future long-term revenues and negative
mindshare.

~~~
msandford
Google's definitely lost their way. Got too big, too fast and didn't preserve
the culture.

The biggest an organization can get and hope to have a reasonable chance of
not going evil is probably some multiple of Dunbar's number. I think
realistically the uppermost limit on it is going to be Dunbar's squared and
assuming everyone has really high social skills and no life outside work then
it's 250*250 = 62k people. But that only counts if everyone's job is doing
nothing more than keeping up with the company's culture; no actual work gets
done.

If you assume that you want your people to work while they're at the office
then Dunbar's probably goes down quite a bit. Let's use the more reasonable
150 number that's closer to average and let's assume that you only want people
to spend about 20% of their time on keeping in tune with everyone around them.
That puts your group size at 30 instead of 150 or 250.

Now let's suppose that we organize hierarchically and that the senior execs
really do live/eat/sleep/breathe the company. They're professional, high
functioning managers, so let's give them the full 250. And then let's suppose
that there are group managers who split their time between talking with their
group and with senior management.

That gives you 250 groups of 30 people each or 7500 total employees. And in
order to keep up with all these groups you've got to have 3-15 execs who are
all on the same page and running themselves ragged trying to keep up. If you
start adding more levels of management hierarchy you run the risk that as
information gets passed down the chain it gets modified slightly or
tremendously to serve the interests of any one individual in said chain. And
there are too many bosses you have to "go over" to get a reasonable chance of
talking to a real decision maker if you think something isn't right, but your
direct boss is telling you to do anyhow.

This chart shows that Google cracked 7500 employees before 2007.
[http://www.statista.com/statistics/273744/number-of-full-
tim...](http://www.statista.com/statistics/273744/number-of-full-time-google-
employees/)

I'd guess that they did between 2002 and 2004. The Google+/youtube integration
debacle started in what, 2013? That means it took them a good decade before
they really started to do outwardly very unattractive things. That's pretty
impressive (or my theory is totally wrong).

Either way, past a certain point more employees are more of a liability than a
badge of honor. It just increases the risk you do something stupid because
everyone believes they're doing the right thing and there are no lines of
communication to correct the misunderstanding, intentional or not.

~~~
pja
Everything I've read suggests that the G+ / GMail / YouTube integration was
forced onto the various parts of Google by executive fiat: The rank & file
Google employees were against it, but a company is not a democracy so it was
forced on them & by extension us.

Executive culture tends to laud the "visionary leader" who pushes their vision
on everyone else. When that vision is wrong-headed you end up with situations
like the G+ débâcle: it was a failure of the Google executive, not the
employees.

My guess is that we have the same effect in play with the YouTube Music
debacle: an "up and coming" exec who wants to make their mark by creating a
new business line for Google that brings in big profits. They don't care if
they sully the Google brand in the process because their incentives aren't
aligned with Google's, any negative effects on Google's userbase (be they
musicians, music consumers or just ordinary users of Google services) are just
collateral damage in their internal political game.

This is warring business units in action.

~~~
loceng
There would have been many ways that integration could have occurred, so that
executive direction isn't inherently the problem - it's more if there was no
one to direct the nuances of doing then there's a problem.

That kind of nuanced understanding is the difference usually between
successfully companies and their unsuccessful companies.

------
fpgeek
I really don't understand the scandal here. This just confirms that Google is
offering musicians the choice that's been suspected ever since YouTube Music
Key just a rumor:

(a) Go all in on monetization (ads, Content Id, Music Key, etc.)

(b) Go all out on monetization (upload videos for free, no other commercial
relationship).

They aren't offering this choice because it helps them kill puppies or
whatever, but for what should be a blindlingly obvious reason: People who pay
money for a service that gets rid of ads on music videos are going to be
pretty ticked off if they still see ads on music videos.

You can call this evil, but you should be crystal-clear on what you're saying:
Google trying to offer a service that lets people pay to get rid of YouTube
ads (something lots of people say they want) is evil.

Personally, I think this isn't good or evil, but an example of the inevitable
problems and complications that arise when you try to add subscriptions to a
hugely popular ad-supported service with many different stakeholders. I
suspect that this sort of thing is an underappreciated reason why Google is
hesitant to offer paid subscriptions as an alternative to ads in other
contexts.

~~~
nosequel
Your (b) there means that people can upload all the licensed songs they want
and no money goes to the artist and the artist has no choice in this except to
agree to (a). (A) is a binding 5 year contract that forces her to release
music on youtube as soon as it is done and cannot sign any other exclusive
release deals on any music. Both choices remove all "choice" from the artist
in regards to their own work. Imagine if github did the same to you with any
code on their site, every programmer would leave for a new site the same day.

~~~
fpgeek
Um, last I heard, unless you pay them, Github requires you to make any code
you upload open-source and publicly available. In many ways that's even more
far-reaching than what YouTube is asking, but that hasn't stopped programmers
from flocking to them in droves.

That does, however, suggest to me an option (c) that Google isn't offering:
Musicians pay Google to run Content Id on their behalf to simplify the
takedown process. While I'm sure there are some win-wins they're missing by
not offering that (possibly including Zoë Keating), I really can't fault them
for that. I expect the PR and legal complications would dwarf the storm that's
already here.

~~~
icebraining
_Um, last I heard, unless you pay them, Github requires you to make any code
you upload open-source and publicly available._

Publicly available yes, open source no. You're free to choose whatever license
you want:

 _You 're under no obligation to choose a license. It's your right not to
include one with your code or project, but please be aware of the
implications. Generally speaking, the absence of a license means that the
default copyright laws apply. This means that you retain all rights to your
source code and that nobody else may reproduce, distribute, or create
derivative works from your work._

~~~
ldng
The requirement used to be _open-source and publicly available_

It is now only _publicly available_

------
andybak
[Update: Sat. morning: After discovering that Keating was taking detailed
notes of her conversation with a YouTube representative, YouTube appears to be
re-grouping to clarify their policies and figure out exactly what artists are
being told. They have also not clearly explained why they are demanding a
retraction from Digital Music News. More as it develops.]

[http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2015/01/23/breakin...](http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2015/01/23/breaking-
youtube-says-zoe-keatings-claims-patently-false)

This is getting interesting.

~~~
andybak
Addendum - what is key here is that Zoe's original post was balanced and
rational and even-handed. Even if YouTube disputed the factual aspects of it
then this was a really poor way to go about it and has merely confirmed the
feeling that they are throwing their weight around with small artists.

They could have turned things around by engaging in dialog and still got their
point across.

Someone at YouTube needs to go back to PR school after this.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Someone at YouTube needs to go back to PR school after this._

I'd say that someone just needs to be repeatedly hit in the head with a copy
of Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People".

Seriously, every single PR flop I've seen discussed here (or anywhere else)
was a result of failing to adhere to a single basic rule: don't be a
douchebag. It's really _that simple_. Do we really need PR schools to teach
people how to be decent human beings?

~~~
forgottenpass
_Do we really need PR schools to teach people how to be decent human beings?_

Probably not, but it's bad for business to be decent human beings.
PR/x-relations/etc is about faking decency while unapologetically pushing a
business agenda, that does take training.

~~~
TeMPOraL
That's how I feel, too. When I look at the whole area around sales, marketing
and PR I can't help but wonder how come we, as a society, managed to
legitimize being liars and cheats as an occupation. Lies are so common, so
ordinary, that no one notices anymore.

~~~
schneidmaster
Hardly a new phenomenon, though. The deodorant industry, for example, got its
start in a successful advertising campaign convincing people they smelled bad.
[http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-advertisers-
convin...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-advertisers-convinced-
americans-they-smelled-bad-12552404/?no-ist)

------
k-mcgrady
Here's a link to the transcript that's referenced in this article [0]

[0]
[http://zoekeating.tumblr.com/post/109312851929/clarity](http://zoekeating.tumblr.com/post/109312851929/clarity)

------
Agustus
_> Google spends billions on marketing, paying lobbyists and buying influence.
It funds over 150 organisations and overtook Goldman Sachs last year as the
biggest corporate political donor in the USA._

Google and Microsoft wanted nothing to do with this culture, until they grew
too big and those threatened started drafting legislation to curtail them.
Once faced with a government action, both companies started having presences
in the Capitol. It needs to buy influence to protect itself from its
competitors, who already have entrenched lobbying efforts. The author's
attempt to paint Google as evil from lobbying efforts fails to note the reason
for this, government ability to critically damage a company.

1\. Microsoft lawsuit over bundling Internet Explorer

2\. Google had an FTC investigation regarding its search engine share

~~~
anon1385
3\. Google refused to stop advertising illegal pharmaceuticals after repeated
warnings from the FDA and then eventually received one of the heaviest fines
ever handed down by the US government (half a billion USD)[1].

[1] [http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/google-forfeits-500-million-
ge...](http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/google-forfeits-500-million-generated-
online-ads-prescription-drug-sales-canadian-online)

------
cowsandmilk
As a Massachusetts resident, this brings the question of "two-party consent"
to the forefront for me. There are many times I would like to record
conversations, but cannot legally do so.

Who does two-party consent benefit more, the large corporations or the
individual's right to privacy? Or is it not black and white?

~~~
dhimes
I hate that law. It makes me think that some politician got caught talking
about something immoral or illegal and sought to make phone conversations
"safer." It certainly doesn't help, for example, a victim of domestic violence
who receives threatening phone calls. He/she has to go to the authorities and
receive permission.

On the other hand, in a conversation with like this with a corporation she
could simply announce that she is recording it. Corporations do it all the
time, in part at least to help train their customer service. And if the corp
decides they don't want to have the conversation on the record, then they
don't get to have the conversation at all. In other words, you say, "I am
recording this conversation" rather than asking, "Is it ok if I record this
conversation?"

~~~
jeffreyrogers
> In other words, you say, "I am recording this conversation" rather than
> asking, "Is it ok if I record this conversation?"

I'm not sure that is legal. I've had a few job interviews that were recorded,
and in all of them I was told I needed to consent to being recorded _on tape_.
So basically the interviewer would say, "are you okay with me recording this
conversation?" and then I would say, "yes, that's fine."

~~~
ceejayoz
> I'm not sure that is legal.

I'm pretty sure it is, considering the number of companies who have a "This
call may be recorded" warning as part of the phone tree.

------
vpeters25
The article reads like a pro-copyright/pro-SOPA hit piece, I would take it
with a grain of salt.

I don't see anything too evil here, just reasonable business decision forced
to them by the ridiculous copyright framework.

Google came with a simple solution: their way or the highway. Sounds harsh but
anything else would require massive man-hours of development and lawyer-
vetting. They rather pull your stuff rather than risking the money with very
little chance of recouping the investment.

Zoe Keating, on the other side, disagrees and wants google to actually expend
tons of money developing her "special case" into the system...

Edit: removed redundant sentence

~~~
icebraining
_anything else would require massive man-hours of development and lawyer-
vetting._

Why would keeping the current system - which is essentially just allowing
people to use ContentID without being forced into accepting new legal terms -
require massive man-hours of development and laywer-vetting? What's so
difficult about it?

By the way, I fully agree vis-a-vis the SOPA comments. But it just goes to
show the adversary of my adversary is not always my ally.

~~~
fpgeek
Keeping the current system and _not_ doing YouTube Music Key isn't very
difficult - but there are more than a few reasons to think it is worth doing
(all the people who block YouTube ads and/or use unauthorized downloaders, for
example).

Doing YouTube Music Key and writing in special cases for independent artists
while simultaneously making sure not to open any loopholes that would let, for
example, Sony hold the service hostage later... that strikes me as very
difficult, at best.

------
howeyc
Could someone tell me what this whole thing is about? From what i gather it is
the following:

1\. Users currently can monetize using contentID - any videos uploaded
anywhere using their shit and they get a cut of the ads (if there are any).

2\. Google is making paid streaming version, artists now have two options:

2a) Agree to have everything on paid and free side and get money. Also,
everything you release everything must also release to Youtube (I assume this
is the main sticking point??).

2b) Don't agree and only have shit be on free side and not get money. You can
upload whatever you want when you want.

~~~
onli
Basically, yes. She points it out pretty clearly in
[http://zoekeating.tumblr.com/post/108898194009/what-
should-i...](http://zoekeating.tumblr.com/post/108898194009/what-should-i-do-
about-youtube)

There are some additions:

2a) … The release on Youtube must happen at the same time and in a specified
quality.

2b) … Everything that has been uploaded by her before will be deleted.

The obligation to release on Youtube is of course completely unacceptable. I
like to think it would be quite illegal in many countries outside the US as
well.

------
coding4all
The most realistic solution to the problem =>
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8937287](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8937287)

------
moyix
The Register article goes on for a while about the "weakening" of copyright
law that allowed this to happen, but never actually says what legal change
occurred that makes this possible. Anyone know?

~~~
icebraining
If I had to guess, I'd say they mean the DMCA Safe Harbor provisions; which
allows a user-content site like Youtube to exist at all - previously, you
could be liable if you were distributing any kind of unlicensed content, so I
believe that legally, you had to vet each upload.

------
vilhelm_s
Can anyone make sense of what the Google representative is saying in the last
paragraph of the transcript, the part that goes "your channel will be
separated from the deal and you can enter into a regular youtube partner
commercial terms which allows you to monetize the content"? What music would
be monetizable under that scheme?

~~~
icebraining
From what I understand about the Youtube Partner thing, it essentially allows
you to make money from the videos _uploaded to your channel_ , but not from
videos uploaded by other users, even if you hold the copyright to those.

Essentially, they pay you for the "service" of uploading the videos and
drawing users.

------
datashovel
Dear journalists who are covering this story. (1) get the actual contract.
Does it back up what this artist is claiming? (2) Find out the name of the
Google employee who was telling the artist these things, corroborate the
testimony of the artist and determine whether the employee was a high-level
executive or lawyer within Google, or if they were just a customer service
representative who had no authority to be giving legal advice to a customer on
behalf of the company.

With all due respect this article does not go into any specific detail of what
real evidence exists to back up this story.

------
blister
I think it's time for a serious YouTube competitor with more favorable terms
for the content creators. Jason Calacanis seems very prescient now [0].

[0] [http://blog.launch.co/blog/i-aint-gonna-work-on-youtubes-
far...](http://blog.launch.co/blog/i-aint-gonna-work-on-youtubes-farm-no-
more.html)

~~~
masklinn
The huge problem is Youtube is the go-to place when teenagers and young adults
want to listen to a piece[0] and they know it.

[0] the alternative being torrents, and they're very much non-instant.

~~~
Gustomaximus
> go-to place when teenagers and young adults...

Doesn't that make it easier to disrupt? Younger people are less habit forming
and more likely to try new services. I would think the licencing with record
labels & infrastructure requirements would be the tough part for a new
entrant.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Younger people are less habit forming and more likely to try new services.

Younger people are not less prone to forming habits. There are, of course,
always _new_ young people who may not have the same habits as the last round
of young people, though.

------
delinka
Can someone elaborate on this bit?

"As Silicon Valley has been very successful in persuading the public to throw
away their strong legal protections, Google may well get away with it."

What "strong legal protections" have been removed?

------
pdpi
The SOPA jabs at the end were completely unnecessary.

------
MrBunny
Would it be possible for her to have 2 accounts? One for paid stuff and one
for free? Or would that mess with the content id stuff?

------
silverlight
If it's from a tape, why not post the tape?

~~~
kmfrk
One reason would be that it compromises the identity of the representative and
makes it about him/her - when they were just following the script.

~~~
TomSawyer
Excellent point. I only thought of wanting to avoid the legal ramifications of
surreptitiously recording a conversation in some jurisdictions.

------
mrucci
It's hard to believe that articles in this newspaper are _not_ generated by a
markov chain or some other machinery.

Just look at the titles of articles published by this author:
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/Author/2578](http://www.theregister.co.uk/Author/2578)

What the hell does this means?

    
    
        "MI5 boss: We NEED to break securo-tech, get 'assistance' from data-slurp firms"

~~~
andybak
The Register originally aimed to parody the style of headline writing in
British tabloids.

And the irony has slipped into being just a house style now - one which is
rather uneven in quality and appropriateness.

------
beyondcompute
Google-Google, what are you doing? Another embarrassing episode on how users
are being treated.

------
fndrplayer13
Googs being terrible? Who would've guessed.

~~~
morganvachon
At the risk of being modded down along with you (hi Google fans!), I'll say
that even though I have a much lower opinion of Google lately, I was still
surprised by their actions in this case. I know that Google has never, ever
cared about the individual, but this is surely an abuse of copyright far worse
than what the record labels could ever dream of.

Still, I have to wonder if this is just the Youtube division of Google acting
this way, and perhaps once the big heads at Google HQ get wind of what's going
on (or more accurately, the PR department), they will intervene on Ms.
Keating's behalf.

Then again, that would open the door for who knows how many other independent
artists under Youtube's Draconian contract to go after them for the same deal.

And of course, I'm happy to see that Ms. Keating is getting some free
publicity out of all of it. Even if she ultimately can't pursue Youtube for
lost ad revenue, she still has the power to publish her works in other media.

~~~
smosher_
Your parent was modded down for bringing nothing to the conversation. It might
as well have read "lol google."

Unfortunately other similar media aren't as lucrative. Even if they pay as
well, not being on YouTube creates an exposure problem. I hope there's some
way to work this out, but to be honest, Google still seems to me like the
least sleazy company to help you monetize your music, and that's not a
compliment to Google.

~~~
morganvachon
> Google still seems to me like the least sleazy company to help you monetize
> your music

I don't know...even if you sign with the worst of the traditional record
labels, once your contract is up the rights to monetize your own works revert
back to you. With Youtube (so far) it seems that if you refuse to sign with
them, they still claim the right to monetize your works even if you don't
upload them yourself. They take away the artist's control over their own works
without even a contract in place. That's extremely sleazy if you ask me.

~~~
smosher_
Yeah, although Google and others were always willing to monetize your work
without your knowledge or consent. To some degree that's how the internet
works and it's not _entirely_ a bad thing, and a lot of it is not intentional
(photograph a painting, share it on forum with banner ads.) But with Google,
their change is now they're unwilling to give back without a contract.

