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This recently added terms of service clause is part of an update that will officially go into effect on December 10. YouTube has already made the details public. The clause states that “YouTube may terminate your access, or your Google account’s access to all or part of the service if YouTube believes, in its sole discretion, that provision of the service to you is no longer commercially viable.” Many initially took this to mean that YouTube might start indiscriminately pulling the plug on channels that don’t have enough subscribers or aren’t otherwise raking in those sweet content dollars.
After a weekend of uproar, YouTube clarified to The Verge that it’s “not changing the way our products work, how we collect or process data, or any of your settings.” Instead, this new update is focused on clarification. Certainly, it puts things in stark terms; elsewhere in the terms of service, the company outright states that it’s “under no obligation to host or serve Content.” It can, in other words, remove whatever it sees fit. But that’s pretty much always been the case. In addition, a version of the “commercially viable” clause has been in the site’s terms of service since last year. While the latest iteration states that YouTube has “sole discretion” to terminate access, the previous one said that YouTube first needed to “reasonably believe” it had cause to do so.
Still, the sheer degree of control the YouTube exercises over content created by users—even the highest-earning of whom are still contractors, rather than full-time employees—has revived calls for a YouTuber union.
“You(BetterMakeMoneyForUs)Tube,” Emerican Johnson of YouTube channel NonCompete said on Twitter. “This is such a big deal. YouTube is so clearly the enemy of creators. Time to get serious about unionizing.”
“This is also a huge one,” said leftist YouTuber Peter Coffin. “If we could unionize that would be significant.”
more here
After a weekend of uproar, YouTube clarified to The Verge that it’s “not changing the way our products work, how we collect or process data, or any of your settings.” Instead, this new update is focused on clarification. Certainly, it puts things in stark terms; elsewhere in the terms of service, the company outright states that it’s “under no obligation to host or serve Content.” It can, in other words, remove whatever it sees fit. But that’s pretty much always been the case. In addition, a version of the “commercially viable” clause has been in the site’s terms of service since last year. While the latest iteration states that YouTube has “sole discretion” to terminate access, the previous one said that YouTube first needed to “reasonably believe” it had cause to do so.
Still, the sheer degree of control the YouTube exercises over content created by users—even the highest-earning of whom are still contractors, rather than full-time employees—has revived calls for a YouTuber union.
“You(BetterMakeMoneyForUs)Tube,” Emerican Johnson of YouTube channel NonCompete said on Twitter. “This is such a big deal. YouTube is so clearly the enemy of creators. Time to get serious about unionizing.”
“This is also a huge one,” said leftist YouTuber Peter Coffin. “If we could unionize that would be significant.”
more here
