A YouTube scammer conspiring to run what Billboard described as possibly the largest music royalty scam in history, Jose Teran was recently sentenced by the US government to 70 months in prison.
He was hit with a "significant sentence," US attorney for the District of Arizona, Gary Restaino, wrote in the sentencing memo, because of the "greed and the great lengths" that Teran's scam went over the course of five years to fraudulently claim rights to 50,000 songs. Ultimately, the scam routed $23 million in royalty proceeds away from mostly Latin artists and into the bank accounts of Teran and his co-conspirators.
Teran, the sentencing memo said, "obtained more than $6 million in personal profits" and continued pocketing $190,000 in stolen royalties—which he hid from officials—even after he was indicted for the fraud. Partly because of this, Teran is considered a "high-risk to re-offend," Restaino wrote.
[...]
Artists attempted to bring a class-action lawsuit against YouTube to gain access to systems to monitor their royalties and stop royalty theft, but that case was dismissed earlier this month before going to trial.Teran could attempt to run the scam or something like it again, Restaino wrote. The US government considers Teran at high risk to re-offend, partly because just 12 days after being summoned for his indictment, he promptly created a new bank account to stash additional stolen payments sent from AdRev.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday July 01, @01:16PM
I think you'll find the RIAA's gig is far larger.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by lars on Saturday July 01, @01:22PM (1 child)
I've found a lot of copyright free music is being claimed by scammers on youtube. So many times, I've made a video, used copyright free music in it and gotten a claim months later. By that point is is very hard to go back and edit the video to use new music. I'm thinking the only past is using AI generated music, or music from the youtube archive.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday July 01, @04:04PM
I was about to suggest no audio at all, but you might get a clain with copyrighted silence [wikipedia.org] too.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snotnose on Saturday July 01, @09:24PM (4 children)
A couple channels I follow, Sea of Tranquility and Rick Beato, have both bitched about YT demonetizing them due to copyright issues. Pete flat out won't play any music on his channel, which sucks as he's mostly a reviewer. Rick bitches about it, and sometimes says "this might get me de-monetized but whatever..".
Meanwhile, I made the mistake of listening to "top hits of the 70s" once while cooking breakfast and now my recommended feed is full of "top hits of the 60s", "Yacht rock volume 4", "rock ballads of the 60s", "All top 10 songs of the 70s" and a shitload of other music videos.
Looks to me like YT will knock you hard if someone says "gimmee money for that" (guilty until proven innocent, good luck talking to a human) but, if someone is willing to change their channel name after 3 strikes (Hey! Let's do "Tops Hits of the $InsertCatchyNameHere") they're golden.
A personal example. I like Jeopardy, been watching it for as long as I can remember. I cut the cord years ago and channel 39 (where Jeopardy lives) is on the edge of OTA channels I can pull in. I went to the NBC website to watch it streaming, they asked me who my cable provider was. "I don't have one, fuck both uVerse and Cox for charging too much when I don't care about 90% of what they offer".
To which NBC said something like (it's been over a year since my last attempt, cut me slack here) "your cable provider is not kosher. kthxbye".
I don't have a cable provider, and want to watch your show online, with full commercials (which I haven't done in 20 years thanks to Tivo), but you won't let me because, reasons? If I had a cable provider I'd also have a DVR for commercial skipping and I wouldn't be asking "pretty please Mr Hedge Fund Dude, can I watch your offering with the same commercial load as your cable subscribers?"
Meanwhile, Jeopardy on YT shows up about 9:30 AM my time (broadcast is 7:30 PM), the first feed or two has horrible editing issues, then things may or may not get good enough so I can watch the show, and about 6:30 PM my time those feeds start to give "the copyright owner has decided you can pound sand, pay us or watch OTA, kthxbye".
I get to watch Jeopardy about 3 days out of 5, even though I'm willing to sit through (Ok, I'm gonna pee, make the bed, make a drink, feed the cat) the excessive commercial breaks.
I came. I saw. I forgot why I came.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 01, @09:34PM (3 children)
While I don't want to suggest piracy, I'm sure/certain there are torrents or better streaming sites around for your Jeopardy needs then to have to hope that someone streams it on youtube. As always -- piracy is the superior product compared to most other forms of delivery cause corporations suck when it comes to delivery.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 01, @10:42PM (2 children)
Jeopardy might be beneath the pirates. I don't see it on my usual pirate streaming sites outside of a couple specials and the movie Double Jeopardy.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 01, @11:53PM (1 child)
Nothing is beneath tv-piracy. A program like Jeopardy have some kind of international appeal to. Quick search on some of the big public trackers show daily episode, 5 days a week -- monday to friday, going back months with about 100+ seeders.
Jeopardy.2023.06.30.720p.HDTV.x264.AC3.mkv
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03, @06:01AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 02, @02:22AM
Spotify suggested this song:
https://youtu.be/W6UsH4ezMa4 [youtu.be]
But it seems to be the same as this:
https://youtu.be/8uZGBbic0a4 [youtu.be]
But different copyright?
It also recommended this: https://youtu.be/HpHRkk94u98 [youtu.be]
Similarly: https://youtu.be/GA_CGTZH1g0 [youtu.be]
Is similar to this:
https://youtu.be/TiAZukcfODQ [youtu.be]