YouTube Fears Article 13 Will Kill It's Business

Let's begin with what this article from thehe new European Copyright Directive that makes YouTube feel threatened.

Article 13

Use of protected content by information society service providers storing and giving access to large amounts of works and other subject-matter uploaded by their users:

1. Information society service providers that store and provide to the public access to large amounts of works or other subject-matter uploaded by their users shall, in cooperation with rightholders, take measures to ensure the functioning of agreements concluded with rightholders for the use of their works or other subject-matter or to prevent the availability on their services of works or other subject-matter identified by rightholders through the cooperation with the service providers. Those measures, such as the use of effective content recognition technologies, shall be appropriate and proportionate. The service providers shall provide rightholders with adequate information on the functioning and the deployment of the measures, as well as, when relevant, adequate reporting on the recognition and use of the works and other subject-matter.
2. Member States shall ensure that the service providers referred to in paragraph 1 put in place complaints and redress mechanisms that are available to users in case of disputes over the application of the measures referred to in paragraph 1.
3. Member States shall facilitate, where appropriate, the cooperation between the information society service providers and rightholders through stakeholder dialogues to define best practices, such as appropriate and proportionate content recognition technologies, taking into account, among others, the nature of the services, the availability of the technologies and their effectiveness in light of technological developments.

What the Article means?

This is the provision within the new European Copyright Directive which seeks to make user-upload services like YouTube legally liable for all copyright-infringing content on their platforms. YouTube is claiming that Article 13 will essentially break its service. It says that, due to the liability caused by Article 13’s wording, it may have to blacklist videos like Latin smash hit Despacito in the future. Statistics show that over 7 years worth of content is uploaded to the service everyday. Will this really break the service all together? The bigger question is, will this be more fair to the creators of content. This will also segregate the content creators on the basis of original content and copyrighted content which will make it better for the original creators. We think YouTube has shown its monopoly for a long time and now it's time for them to be a more creator friendly application. Music business lobbyists strongly disagree, suggesting that such cautions by YouTube are nothing more than additions to a “carpet-bombing propaganda” campaign designed to whip up unfounded worry about the legislation. The European Copyright Directive is likely to be passed into law before the close of 2018. We are excited to see where YouTube goes with this new article.