Bob’s Burgers? Simpsons? South Park? You want them, they’re yours my friend… as long as you have enough bandwidth!
YouTube is something of a Johnny-come-lately to the whole streaming thing. But in light of current events, their initial reticence takes on an almost ironic edge. See, you can now, thanks to YouTube Livestreams, watch full episodes of copyrighted content.
The content, seemingly exclusively animation, runs the gamut from Spongebob Squarepants, to King of the Hill, to South Park, and anything in between. So, it certainly seems that YouTube’s hesitance was at least founded in something. As you might imagine, this may become a big problem for the company. And while it’s currently all constrained to content from lower cable networks right now, it could spread to the likes of Netflix content or HBO Originals (Game of Thrones was, for a time, one of the most pirated shows in the world after all).
Sweet hydra, we have us a problem!
That is all, however, just the tip of the iceberg. See, these streams are popping up faster than they’re taken down. And, even worse, due to the way YouTube currently handles content ID, they need to be manually directed towards a stream to take it down. In short, it’s like trying to dig a hole to China with a spoon. Content ID only works for streams that are archived or saved after the fact.
And these aren’t problems just for YouTube. Almost any service that provides streaming can, potentially, be used in such a manner, if not worse. both Facebook and Periscope’s streaming services have been used for similar purposes; but it doesn’t stop there. People have livestreamed felonies as they were committing them on both platforms. And while all of these platforms have publicly stated their intolerance of those willfully using them against the guidelines (and all of this is against guidelines), they’re still fighting an oddly one-sided battle. Especially considering the fact that YouTube’s own algorithm will put these illegal YouTube Livestreams in your recommended section if you search for anything related to them.
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