"EU Copyright Regulation Will Impact Livelihoods Of Hundreds Of Thousands"

Following GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), the European Union is not going soft with the big tech companies. After Facebook, Google, and Twitter, now EU is looking forward to shackling YouTube. However, its CEO Susan Wojcicki seems to be strictly against it.

In a second blog post voicing against Article 13, Susan said that it is simply impossible for YouTube to comply with the law. The massive financial loss will not be limited to YouTube, but to the creators too.

The whole heat revolves around European Copyright Directive or EU Article 13. While there are hundreds of clauses in the law, the crux of the directive is that online platforms should regulate and prevent the uploading of copyrighted content, and they are directly responsible for any copyright infringement when it comes to the content shared on their platform.

Susan explains her case with the popular YouTube video “Despacito” which has over 5.6 billion views as of now.

This video contains multiple copyrights, ranging from sound recording to publishing rights. Although YouTube has agreements with multiple entities to license and pay for the video, some rights holders remain unknown. That uncertainty means we might have to block videos like this to avoid liability under Article 13. Multiply that risk with the scale of YouTube, where more than 400 hours of video are uploaded every minute, and the potential liabilities could be so large that no company could take on such a financial risk.

She also mentions the Content ID program which YouTube relies upon to address copyright infringement. “We believe Content ID provides the best solution for managing rights on a global scale,” writes Susan Wojcicki.

Interestingly, the YouTube CEO subtly hints about the specific impact of Article 13 on the EU citizens itself. Susan said: “EU residents are at risk of being cut off from videos that, in just the last month, they viewed more than 90bn times.”

It seems like if Article 13 gets the final vote in January, YouTube will lose a hefty amount of money. YouTube creators would also have to pay the price.