Youtube Confessions

March 10, 2022

When I first discovered Youtube in 2005, the first videos I saw were pics of northern lights and pics of colorful formations in outer space. Great visuals, and the poster would use some commercial music like Enya as background.
Then I noticed videos playing past hit songs, using still pictures of the singer. This was clearly some form of copyright infringement but they just piled it on and kept doing it. So I took the idea and started presenting past records that were rarities but great, to make them better known to everyone. The idea was education and archiving.
Youtube was being run by the original entrepreneurs. After a couple of years it was bought by the Google people.
There was a major fight in society over this type of infringement.
The basic method that media owners had of fighting this was to invoke the federal law and give YT a Takedown Notice. Each notice cost the owners ~$150 to prepare. Also imagine what a ton of work would be involved in monitoring uploads and finding your particular works.
If a channel received three copyright strikes it would be permanently closed. There is a chance to appeal a strike and have it removed. One problem YT created was that on the third strike the channel would instantly vanish, so there was no way to communicate and appeal. It is in fact a violation of law to not allow an appeal.

Then Google used Yankee ingenuity and concocted an alternate system called Content ID. The owners would become Partners of YT and submit digital copies of the works they manage. By computer, each new upload is scanned and violations are identified. The owners decide whether to allow or to block. There are no Strikes involved in this system. The video remains in the channel inventory but cannot be shown. Or it may be shown but the owners get revenue from ads.
This can be win-win because publicity creates demand for retail purchases, and the channel is not closed.
Some smaller music companies do not go thru all the Partner process, and still use Takedown Notices.

Problems with the system:
Music companies employ teams to deal with YT. These are ordinary young workers who are likely not expert at law or politics. They can and do make bad judgements. When you appeal a content ID it is judged by the same people at the music company, not by Youtube. If the company rejects your appeal it simply stays blocked.
There are errors understanding what can be copyrighted, or what is fair use.
A Takedown Notice can be appealed and it works differently. If the owner does not respond in 30 days then you win by default. If owner disagrees and you still appeal, then the owner's only recourse is to go to court and get a court order. (This is my recollection from past years) He does not get his way by default. This is all according to federal law. If the channel feels sure the complaint is invalid then it may not fear a legal action, which is not likely to come.
A strike expires after six months.

Youtube music actually comes under a different law from the copyright law. It is streaming, which comes under state laws. I'm not sure how they are sorting that out now.
When thinking of royalties be aware that one play equals one listen by ONE person. It's far from one play on radio.

The Advantages of Knowing Communists

November 1, 2015

I grew up in the 1950s in Canada, and in hindsight I've realized various things that were going on.
The establishment of this society is basically communist. That would be the Freemasons and the Jewish leadership.
So many of the guys I associated with were in communist families, and I didn't realize it.
It's not that they were reporting me or anything, we got along personally. But if I voiced some interesting ideas, these ideas were quickly passed on to their parents, and from there to the entire establishment in the city and then throughout North America.
This is in the Believe it or Not category.
Examples of ideas I thought of in the mid-1950s:

- Plastic drink bottles. It was established that glass bottles were used because plastic was not biodegradable. I voiced concern over how dangerous broken glass can be. You can step on it and it could go right thru your foot.  Soon they switched to plastic.

- Ballpoint pens. We started in school first using pens that were filled with liquid ink out of little ink containers built into our desks. Then came pens with liquid ink replaceable cartridges. It was not unusual for ink to leak out and stain your shirt pocket. I thought it might be possible to design a tube with ink and a rolling ball at the tip. The guys wondered if that would be feasible. Then someone said that had in fact been invented but wasn't in common use. Soon after it replaced liquid ink pens.

- Hard floor coatings. School halls didn't like to host dances because shoe polish would stain the hardwood. Their rule was to dance in your socks. I said to the guys that in this day and age it should be possible to create a floor coating that would be hard and semi-permanent, so the stains would not get to the wood. Soon that came along, and by the time I got to high school we could dance with our shoes on, like civilized people.

I have a feeling I should put such anecdotes on the record. Although Google might not give this blog prominence in search results, especially if anything political is mentionned.
If anyone in dis world sees this, comment whether you want more. I could write a book. I can see how many views this gets.

Collapse In The Computer World

(Updated December 6, 2017)


Frustrations in the digital world.

Google+
If you have an account with Google, they are hell-bent on making your identity public to the entire world. This is thru the new google+ feature. It's another one of those "social sites". Every Google user is to automatically get such a webpage eventually as they develop it. The Google dorks insist on pasting your real name plus your mail Contacts, and any other personal info they choose. They aren't asking whether you want it.
     My question is whether this is just due to infantile immature young programmers, or a part of the world totalitarian program.

Windows 8
More downhill degeneration from the dorks at Microsoft.  Dumbfoundingly dumb changes in many ways to the system. No instructions to speak of. They can't be bothered. The IQs are going downhill fast.
     It's because it's run by little boys who feel it's better to be "cool" than to be sensible. The solution is for such an important industry to be controlled by IBM, where they are mature people.

Firefox browser
Users felt that Mozilla Firefox had the best design and was most enjoyable to use.
Then came the Chrome browser from Google. It used different coding which worked faster in digital terms. It also has a different layout in a few ways.
Users, myself included, felt that the layout was inferior to Firefox.
What about the dorks at Mozilla?  Well they turn out to be infantile little boys too. Chrome scared them and they scrambled and made Firefox like Chrome.
No more advantage to Firefox. The business is run by children again.
Now in 2017 their usage is down so that some websites are not even accommodating Firefox, and the sites don't work.

In general there's a problem getting these guys to provide explanations about products. Consider that the Personal Computer is the most complicated product in history, but does not come with any manual.
This is from the liberal minds in San Francisco's Silicon Valley.

The last time I wrote an article criticizing Google, my page views suddenly stopped. They stopped showing it in search results. This is not an innocent company.

The idiocy of "fire doors" and entrances.

In hindsight I've been surprised at how many of my ideas have been passed around the establishment and executed. Sometimes in unwise ways. Sometime in the 1960s or 70s I just commented to a friend about those fire alarms in public buildings like schools. At exits there were those boxes on the wall to pull and set off the building alarm as someone was escaping the building. I said I wonder if someone would always pull that or whether sometimes it wouldn't be.
Voila next thing I know a few years later I see that exit doors are barred, no exit allowed. Only if there is a real fire, because opening the door will automatically set off the alrm.
So now most of the doors designed into buildings can't be used. I even see a hospital in my city where the front entrances are barred, because they have been designate "fire doors". Visitors have to figure out a way to find some obscure side door that can be used.
Now here's da test for ya. Can you see anything wrong with this?
Just because some neurotic government planners couldn't cope with the idea that maybe (don't know if it EVER has happened) an exiting crowd wouldn't pull the alarm. Building traffic has been destroyed. I doubt this could get thru to them. Just fire them all.

By the way I live in Canada. I assume it's this way in the US.
I could probably write a book of anecdotes about how my comments have influenced public policy, sometimes in ways I appreciated, sometimes in the most stupid ways.

I think while I'm here I'll add one more. In 1982 while temporarily living in Toronto I was trying to take some cityscape photographs. I walked into one apartment block to get the view from a hallway window.
Well what do ya think was the result. Now just about all blocks across Canada have their front doors locked.
Why? Nobody in that block noticed me or cared. But I mentionned this to a friend  there who apparently worked in the media. Must have got very indignant about "trespassing", passed it around the establishment.

Apartment blocks with locked entrances and no buzzer intercom systems everywhere. How can you call on someone? Oh you should phone them first. Oh! Then they should wait for ya by the front door. Yeah. There couldn't possibly be any other needs for free entrance. Another test question for ya.

How geography relates to liberal and conservative

Here is my observation about how geography relates with personality, particularly conservative and liberal. Basically conservatives end up on the west and south sides, while liberals tend to live on the east and north sides. This occurs in whatever physical area you want to choose - nation, city, province, even the globe.

In the USA it is clear that the northeast is the most liberal, and the southwest like Arizona and southern California are most conservative. I see it in my own city. I can identify a north-south street that is the divider. In the US I think the Mississippi is the divider.

As to the globe, northeast Asia is the most liberal. Look at how the orientals are so concerned about "face" rather than just "getting things done". The Japanese are so fixed on relating, that if you say you like their sweater they will quickly offer to give it to you as a gift. If you don't take it they will be offended.
The Americas would be the most conservative part of the globe.

In Europe Russians and eastern Europeans are more liberal and concerned with relationships than the western, who are more oriented to productivity. Northern Germans are more liberal than southern. Western Ukrainians are more conservative than eastern. Russians are more liberal than Ukrainians. (This is where leftists get irrational and call conservatives "fascists".)
In the Arab world Saudi Arabia is the most conservative, as witnessed by their alliance with the United States. Iraq and Syria would be the most liberal, as illustrated by their tendency to the Baath socialist party.

I find this within sections of the city. I just haven't found it within rooming houses.

I'm still considering how north and south fits in. I tend to think that those on the north of the west are liberal conservatives, while those on the south of the east are conservative liberals (still basically liberals).

I'm judging by the northern hemisphere. Is it the opposite in the southern?

Of course I don't mean that the location causes the orientation, but that the tendency will be for those types to gravitate to those areas.

Why should it be so? You need to be attuned to the realities of spiritual influences and rules. Like people's characters are affected by their birth date, there are many such influences we don't realize.