New comment on a paper about YouTube and music

 Here.

Abstract

This useful article about the effects of music on YouTube on consumption of the same music elsewhere should be understood for what it is: An empirical investigation of YouTube’s effects. It allows no conclusions about “safe harbors” both because YouTube was not relying on the safe harbor regime either before or after the relevant policy change and because, as YouTube’s lack of reliance shows, the safe harbor regime primarily protects thousands of websites that don’t behave like YouTube. Under the European Union’s new Article 17, sites like YouTube are now required to negotiate with copyright owners to license works uploaded by users who do not own the copyright thereto. YouTube, however, was already doing this. The article [Wlömert N, Papies D, Clement M, Spann M (2023) Frontiers: The interplay of user-generated content, content industry revenues, and platform regulation: Quasi-experimental evidence from YouTube. Marketing Sci., ePub ahead of print October 27, https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2022.0080] has implications for what music companies should ask for in these negotiations. However, it would be a mistake to generalize from YouTube to the Internet as a whole.

RT: This was kind of frustrating! The authors seem to think that, with a licensing/filtering requirement, there wouldn't be much music on a given site, whereas with a notice and takedown regime, there would be a lot. (You know, the way there is on Wikipedia and Ravelry and all those other DMCA-compliant sites.) So they insist that their evidence--which is about music consumption on other sites before and after YouTube cut a deal with GEMA--shows something about the effects of "safe harbors" generally. But since YouTube was not relying on safe harbors before the change--when it just blocked GEMA music in Germany--or after--when it licensed--their evidence cannot stand for the proposition they claim it stands for. If anything, it shows the opposite, that licensing leads to more reliable availability (and thus makes YouTube a better substitute for other sources of music).