San Bruno, CA — The world's largest video platform on Tuesday announced a new on-screen identifier designed to alert viewers when a video they are watching is a copyrighted and pirated video, but will temporarily keep the videos available until 'profitability substantially drops'. The company describes this feature as a "transparency milestone" for the broader thief ecosystem.
The icon, a clearly visible badge displayed prominently in the lower-right corner of the player window on both desktop and the mobile app, has been promoted across the platform in a series of in-product banners as "a new way to find premium content that you didn't pay for." A company spokesperson called it "a significant step toward distinguishing original content from content uploaded without authorization from its rightful owner."
Asked whether the platform planned to take down the videos so identified, the spokesperson said it may eventually, when advertisers stop paying for that space. "It can take months or even years for us to review whether a video is copyrighted. We will continue to collect ad revenue until that review is complete."
How the Icon Works
The icon appears once the platform's automated copyright detection system has matched the upload against a registered work. The detection has been operational since 2007, but this is the first time that YouTube can relish in stolen content to their users. Asked why videos so flagged have not been removed in the seventeen years since the system was deployed, the spokesperson explained that the company prefers "a balanced ecosystem in which the profits of others' works still flow to us."
"A strict removal policy would create friction for our content partners," she said. "Many of whom don't feel comfortable sharing pirated work on torrents. The icon shows you can stream illegal videos without risking a virus."
Internal documents reviewed by Satyr Satire describe the existing arrangement as "unilaterally beneficial." The arrangement involves YouTube keeping the unauthorized video online and selling advertising against it, while the rights holder hopefully doesn't find out about it. It is unclear if rights holder accounts will include this feature. The viewer who is not a rights-holder may indulge in the thrill of breaking the law, while YouTube looks the other way.
When the Icons Might Do Something
The platform's roadmap, shared briefly during the announcement, indicates that videos bearing the icon will eventually be deprioritized, demonetized, or removed at the company's discretion. The discretion will be exercised, according to an internal slide, "when the underlying market dynamics no longer support continued visibility."
A second slide, titled Long-Term Vision, simply read: "When it stops paying."
The platform's parent company declined to comment on whether the icon would apply retroactively to the estimated nineteen billion hours of footage already uploaded to the service, much of which has been used to train the same generative systems the icon is designed to disclose.
Satyr Satire in no way accuses any platform of stealing intentionally. You just need to look at the lawsuits to see it.