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The estate as the copyright holder (in most cases) can pull down the videos if they like.

YouTube is not obligated to host and serve content for free forever.

As many other big tech companies they have a very strong position in the market (edging into monopoly / duopoly territory), which essentially prevent competitors with different business plans to be successful.

To me this sounds like the market is broken and warrants a critical investigation.



That supposes the estate is even aware of such content. Which is the issue I am talking about. I would be fine if google disabled formerly free videos until someone agreeded to monetizing them, but to just arbitrarily make that change means it’s done without the possibility of consent.


> I would be fine if google disabled formerly free videos until someone agreed to monetizing them

That seems worse? All these videos that I uploaded become inaccessible just because I'm not around to approve monetization?

(Disclosure: I work for Google, speaking only for myself)


If I had explicitly removed monetization of a video then yes, I would prefer an explicit conformation of the change. If nothing else to avoid confusion.


It is not explicit: historically, videos were unmonetized by default




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