A Little Google Copyright Irony
The other day we driving and the Google Street View cam car passed going the other way and I thought to myself…”I wish I had my camera! It would be great fun to follow the Googmobile around a take pictures”. You know…to see if the Goog people get irritated and stuff. But. I didn’t have my camera.
When I got home, I looked up the address here on the old street view. I guess maybe I was thinking that the folks at Goog have some hyper-speed up-link and they are posting these things in real time. They aren’t.
Anyway, here’s a screen shot of the front of the apartment here that’s kind of interesting in light of the news that Google is getting a Quarter Million copyright take down requests a week…
…right under the window on the left there is a copyright watermark of some sort. It’s hard too see, faint. Here’s a zoom…
Apparently, and no doubt other folks have pointed this out but it’s news to me….so, Apparently Google is copyrighting images of your house!
So, next time I see the Googlodytes out roaming around acquiring intellectual property, I will track them and get some copyright photos of my own. You should too.
A Quick And Simple-Minded Attempt To Follow Some Of The Google/YouTube Money
An interesting piece from Digital Music News this morning…
It may not be the cleanest experience, but it is the biggest experience – by a gigantic and overpowering margin. In fact, nearly 40 percent of YouTube’s trillion-plus annual views come from music videos according to the latest research estimates. And according to our calculations, that makes YouTube Music bigger than Spotify, Rhapsody, Grooveshark (and Rdio, MOG, Deezer, and eMusic) combined.
So, YouTube gets their revenue from ads. They are able to sell ads because of the enormous amount of traffic (“trillion-plus annual views”) they get.
YouTube, of course, is owned by Google, the world’s biggest ad agency. So, for practical purpses this discussion is about Google.
I’ve been curious about how Google really makes their money and how much. But, it’s a tough trail to follow.
I can provide a little of my own insight because, I do recieve a bit of revenue from Google for using them as an ad provider and I have also, recently become an advertiser.
I have ads, provided by Google on this website and I also have some YouTube videos up which are part of the revenue sharing partner program.
I also have a guitar lesson site (Jack’s Guitar Lessons) that I have been promoting with Google AdWords.
In an effort to follow the money here are my calculations as of this morning…
Here’s what I pay Google, the average cost per click is…$0.74
Here’s what Google has been paying me per click…$0.21
So…just from my numbers it appears that when an ad is sold roughly 72% of the money goes to Google.
I have no way of knowing how representative these figures are.
However, looking at the example that 40% of YouTube traffic comes from music, it brings home the fact that Google doesn’t absorb the cost of providing the content that drives all of the traffic that provides the revenue. Sure, Google has it’s overhead but, if they get anywhere near 72% of that revenue, one has to wonder how much of Google’s overhead is “administrative” costs.
Yet More First Hand Evidence Of How Google/YouTube Sucks
A couple of days ago, I posted a video for a new song. Yesterday, I got an email that said this…
Thanks for submitting your videos for monetization. We have disabled monetization on the following videos because we were not able to verify that you have the appropriate commercial use rights for all included content:
“Wish I Had An Answer, Wish I Had A Gun-Jack Pribek”
Submit documentation for this video
If you can provide documentation that you have the necessary commercial use rights for all elements in your video, please take a moment to learn how to claim rights to a video, and then submit documentation using the links above.
Please note that we may only serve ads on advertiser-friendly content. YouTube reserves the right to make the final decision whether to monetize a video, and may disable monetization for users who repeatedly submit ineligible videos. If you currently have videos pending review, you may choose to opt them out of monetization by visiting http://www.youtube.com/my_videos.
Thanks,
The YouTube Team
I’m not up for going in to a whole ‘nother Google/YouTube rant right now. Luckily, I copied my polite reply to The YouTube Team…
Yesterday I finished writing a song called, “Wish I Had An Answer, Wish I Had A Gun”. Then, I recorded a quick video of the song and uploaded it to YouTube and submitted it for monetization.
This morning a got an email stating that monetization for the video has been disable because “we were not able to verify that you have the appropriate commercial use rights for all included content” and stating that I could submit documentation proving that I do have said use rights.
Simply put, there is no documentation; I wrote the song yesterday!
I have not copyrighted the song nor have I signed a song agreement with a publishing company for the song. I am not under contract with a publishing company at this time.
Actually, it may be interesting to note that I do have some knowledge of copyrights and licensing as I ran a fairly well known music publishing company for several years. Heck, I’ve even done copyright research at the Library of Congress.
It is not uncommon at all for publishing companies to pass around demos of songs that have not been copyrighted. One of the first question a publisher asks when a song is submitted to them is. “Are the copyrights open?”. The reason for this is; the song has a better chance of getting cut if it still has room for development-other writers making changes and getting a share, that sort of thin.
And when I make a video of one of my original songs, I consider that video a demo of the song. And since I am, in essence, my own publisher, I want to keep the copyrights open.
Now, I am not concerned so much about the advertising revenue on this video because the amount of money these ads produce is a pittance.
I do however, have a couple of questions.Is there some software or logarithm that you use that is indicating that some other party has a claim to the rights for “Wish I Had An Answer, Wish I Had A Gun”?
If so, I would be highly interested in knowing who and why as I assure you, I wrote the song yesterday…on the same couch I am now sitting on.
Also, I just viewed the video on YouTube and right next to my video there is a button for a video advertising the “21 Jump Street” movie. In fact, in the description for the movie clip, it clearly states that it is an ad. So, does YouTube somehow have commercial use rights for all included content in a video that includes only myself playing guitar and singing a song I wrote yesterday?
Thank you and I look forward to your response.
Jack Pribek
And, of course, I haven’t heard anything back.
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Pribek At Zazzle
The post to blame: Most Peculiar Mama (Don't Eat Your Cat)
