Recently I had a friend who used Youtube to promote her new album in a very successful way. She uploaded some demo clips on Youtube and sent out Emails asked us to watch. It’s easy for us to recommend her clips to all of our friends through Emails. So everybody just checked her clips on Youtube and found she really had a great voice. Some of the link sent to the owner of restaurants or host of some great music related events. One month later, when she started to promote her new album, she got several chances to sing in restaurants and several events. She’s a new signer, but through Youtube, tons of people getting to know her. Moreover, they bought her albums to support her. Youtube really provided a platform for those who want to share their talent through video clips. If you dare to show, you’ll definitely find your fans. It’s a great opportunity for those super-star-to-be. They don’t have support from big music companies and don’t have promotion budget as well, unable to afford buying any advertisement on any channels. But at least they have YouTube.
Also, I can understand that through some special features like “share” and “friends”, you can hide your videos that only allow friends to access. No privacy concern and you can share only with your close friends overseas. It’s a thoughtful function to me. So I think it’s unfair to state that YouTube hinders plaintiffs’ attempts to locate infringing videos to protect their rights only because they have this kind special service. It is true that some users use this function to hide their videos which contain infringed content. But I’ll say you can always figure out doing illegal things through some legal functions.
Moreover, I don’t really think YouTube shift all the burdens entirely onto copyright owner to detect infringing videos. There’re over billions clips over there, it’s too hard for YouTube to police all the infringing works. People use that platform to share their creations for free, shouldn’t let YouTube suffer undue burden!
No one really claims that YouTube isn't a cool thing. But clearly YouTube poses costs to copyright owners. After all, someone needs to police for infringement. Your friend uses YouTube to promote herself - but when she gets a little more successful and creates an album, she will want to be able to control it's distribution so that she can get paid. It's nice for people to volunteer their money, but eventually markets require that sellers have the right to say "no" when they choose to. If YouTube makes money from ads, but is also the facility for huge amounts of infringement, is it fair for your friend to have to monitor it (and every other user generated site in the world) and send takedown notices? If she can do it, why can't YouTube at least try to use their enormous search capabilities?
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