Why I don't like the "making money on the internet is easy" pitch
I have been noticing a lot of people promoting ways to make "easy" money on YouTube. I am a firm believer that there is no such thing as easy money. Looking into these easy money schemes, I hold to my beliefs. One of the video schemes is that you can make free money by essentially copying other peoples YouTube videos. The video states that all you have to do it take someone else’s video and modify it or cut it together with someone else’s video then post it as your own. I want to explain the problem with that and give a little more information on creative commons copyrights and YouTube. I have commented on it before (http://napalmgraphics.blogspot.com/2012/11/copyright-part-three.html).
First I will agree that YouTube does use Creative Commons license
as a default for videos. When you upload, generally speaking, you are agreeing
to a few things. Side note, I highly recommend always reading the agreements
when you upload, or do much of anything on the internet. Yeah, it is tedious
but you want to know what you are actually agreeing to. Anyway, here are a
couple things you are agreeing to by using YouTube: You will not access YouTube
videos with any other player than YouTube. You will not post YouTube videos on
your websites without using an embedded YouTube player.
The important one here is "You affirm, represent, and warrant
that you own or have the necessary license...to publish Content you
submit." And "(Y)ou retain all of your ownership rights in your
Content. However, by submitting content to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a
worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty free, sub licensable and transferable license
to use, reproduce, distribute..." And "You also hereby grant each
user of the service a non-exclusive license to access your content through the
service and to use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform such Content as
permitted through the functionality of the service and under these terms of
service.” And to top it off, for every video you want to use, you have to
verify that they do not have any other copy rights on their material. Creative
Commons license has many different levels and some do not let you modify the
content.
So based on YouTube’s user agreement you MAY be ok. It does not
say that you can take someone else’s video and modify it without consent. That,
to me, is a big enough grey area that means you should not be doing thing. But
in order to make money off of it, you have to be running AdSense. So what does
AdSense say about this practice. AdSense policy states “Any other content that
is illegal, promotes illegal activity or infringes on the legal rights of
others.”
Putting it all together, it is a HUGE grey area. Although it may
not be outright against policy or copyright infringement, it walks the line.
And if you make money off of it, you take the huge risk of a law suit. I ask my
readers to be wary of easy money. If it was easy to make money, people wouldn’t
be trying so hard to do it. Work is not easy. Making money is not easy. So make
your own videos and work hard to get your blog, website, YouTube page, off the
ground. If Grump Cat (link) can do you, you can too.
