The article "The Copyright Balance and the Weight of DRM", Gillepsie argues "...that authors require financial incentives to motivate them to produce..." This helps explain one of the aims of Copyright Law: to ensure that the author gets the financial rewards that they have earned with their work, and that no one else does who may falsely claim the work as their own. This claim is very accurate with many forms of media and production, focusing mainly on the entertainment market such as books and music. However, with many forms of communication that are presented by the digital age and the uprising of the internet, this is no longer the case for many talented "authors."
In the instance of YouTube, there is a bustling, active community of channel users that upload their videos for others to few without any aim of recieving financial compensation. Granted, YouTube does pay many of their accounts that produce videos with millions of views, consistently. But running a YouTube channel is hardly a business, as for most it is just another form of expression that requires no financial incentive. There is one YouTube Guru, KevJumba, who uses these profits for charity. He runs one of the most successful YouTube channels on the Website, so he decided to make a second channel that will show similar videos, but rather than pocket the money that YouTube pays him, he donates the money earned each month to various charities that users vote upon. Every month he racks up over $1000 earned by his "cultural expression" and donates it to charity. It hardly seems as though he is making videos because of financial incentives.
I examined a similar aspect to yours, but you had a very good example to support your claim. YouTube is not normally thought of as a gold mine. We all have that friend who makes homemade movies and uploads them just for fun. I had no idea KevJumba even existed...it is slightly intriguing. I wonder if his material is significant enough for copyright status? Its good to know that someone is using the monetary incentives for a good cause!
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I never knew about the side of youtube that pays accounts that produce million view videos. It brings about a point of whether youtube users will start attempting to use youtube for financial incentives because it is possible. While you brought up the point about KevJumba using youtube to donate to charities, isn't he doing it on a second channel? I feel as though he still profits from his primary channel. But I'm not sure, I don't really fully understand the workings of youtube.
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