- Article 13 explained by an Englishman who lives in Europe
from his perspective.
Let's spill the tea.
Here we go.
(cheerful electronic music)
Hello and welcome back to another video.
I'm Alan Spicer, your YouTube certified expert,
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Now if you can't tell by this wonderful accent,
this weird hair, and the sarcasm
that I throw around in this video,
I'm clearly British.
And for the next six months or so,
we're part of the European Union,
which means we're affected by this Article 13.
Article 13, which is now Article 17,
'cause Europe continues to screw around with rules,
but the general concept of Article 13 is that
if you upload video content
and there is a possibility of any copyright,
there might be a small implementation of copyright removal,
video blocking, or non-access worldwide.
The big concern here is that YouTube
and other large social media networks will have to
vet every video that's ever uploaded to make sure that
there's never any copyright issues because supposedly
it would land on them and not the content creator,
or it would block the content entirely,
because rights management and ownership and
(slow motion stuttering) legal gumph.
Now I'm here to give my opinion
and possibly an unpopular opinion,
in relation to this Article 13.
Now I've been buzzing around the internet and YouTube
on and off for six, seven years now.
I've been creating content and websites
consulting clients for years and years on end.
The whole European Union paperwork thing to me
just reads like a load of text,
and if, or but, or maybe,
one of those relic laws that they've got wrong,
that they may never truly implement.
Now I'm not saying that if they don't,
that it wouldn't be catastrophic,
but I create original content.
Me, just me, in my room,
or out in the hills and dales of Yorkshire
talking to my camera.
Every now and then I will throw up a clip
in fair use of a person, a picture,
generally, I'm what I believe
is in the very, very safe bracket
of unique, original content.
From a very selfish perspective, I'm not fussed.
I'm not really bothered by Article 13, Article 17
or whatever they're choosing it to be called now,
because my content is me, it provides value,
you come here for my face, my very fluffy face,
my massive tea mug, and hopefully my opinions and insights.
When it comes to Article 13,
if you are a UK or European Union creator,
now is the time to start thinking of
the content you are creating and changing it,
or curbing it, making it more you, more you-centric,
and more original content focused.
This is to hit your bets
against what the law might implement.
I mean literally, this British law says that
you're not allowed to suspiciously handle salmon,
and you're allowed to kill Scotsmen from the castle of York
using a crossbow on Sundays.
There are old laws that still exist.
There are new laws that still exist that aren't implemented.
Look at the whole Patriot Act thing,
have you seen anyone bundled into the back of a car
in America and then disappeared off the face of the Earth?
Come to think of it, if they did disappear off
the face of the Earth we wouldn't know, but bear with me.
I believe this will force people to evolve their content.
This will push people to creating original content.
Yes, if you're doing movie mashups
and you don't have copyright control,
if you are doing video covers,
if you're doing songs that aren't yours,
then this might hurt you.
But from a very selfish perspective,
that doesn't directly involve me.
If this does sound like it could affect you,
you are a European Union citizen
that creates content
that uses other people's copyrights rightly or wrongly,
you've got a few months, maybe a year or so to change that.
Start vlogging, start evolving,
or understand that the videos that you do upload
with other people's creative content
might not be seen by a wider audience.
They won't necessarily be banned when uploaded,
they'll just be region-locked
and they'll only be able to be seen in Europe or UK,
and as long as you're okay with that,
and you wrap your mind around that,
then that's not so much of a problem.
On my channel I have the Baby Shark song,
if that's limited to only people in Europe seeing it,
that's fine by me.
Could this kill channels?
Yes, but that's no different than
an algorithm change on YouTube.
Do you remember five years ago, right?
When vlogging was all the rage
and you had to vlog for ten minutes, twelve minutes
every day without a problem, and then that disappeared.
Then you had prank videos and then
Sam Pepper framed his best friend
and faked shooting him and then that disappeared.
You had drama channels like LeafyIsHere
and DramaAlert and Scarce
and then those got down for bullying and those disappeared.
There will always be an algorithm change,
there will always be change,
and unless you can control your own audience,
unless you have a handle on
communicating with people outside this box,
then you're doomed to fail anyway.
So you either play by the rules
that the football match is played by,
or you get off the pitch and play elsewhere.
Now I appreciate that this could be harming you personally,
but just think, pay attention,
if you want to be on YouTube,
have a look at their rule book,
Have a look at the European Union's rule book,
start tailoring your football match to play on their pitch.
And then you'll be fine.
I truly believe this the equivalent of
the Darwinian theory of survival of the fittest.
Are you able to evolve, and if you do,
this could be your next big stepping stone.
This could make you that next boost, that next growth
because you've outstripped your rivals
that didn't think sensibly.
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