It is multi-faceted for both situations.
For me to make my product unpublished would be like expecting Amazon to not list its products online. It simply isnt an option. I really dont want my content on Twitter, Telegram, Truth or any other platform that does not pay fair compensation. I dont have that choice because other people reupload that content. As far as the number of views I have lost, what we have tracked and logged alone is 9 billion in 10 years, the real number is likely multiples of that. On all digital platforms combined I’m around 800M views for perspective. 9B views is worth tens of millions of dollars. Those numbers are probably impossible to fully comprehend. Its taken me years of intense work to really absorb this data.
The music industry had the same problem even though they are afforded far better tools to combat piracy. This ultimately led them to accepting peanuts for payment with contracts with TikTok and META. Of course when artists start getting $1700 checks for 55M streams the backlash will be swift.
Ultimately the legislation is responsible for failing to act, supporting this failure to act is a tremendous amount of lobbying dollars from Google, META, Bytedance, etc. Google makes $30B per quarter on ad revenue from YouTube alone with estimates that about 1/3 coming from copyright infringements. They have huge incentives to keep the status quo. The social platforms ideal situation is to have creators struggle but survive.
The music industry beat Napster in a landmark case but realized it was going to be a constant game of whack-a-mole. Instead of continuing the everlasting legal fight they went the way of volume. Make music cheap and easily accessible on many platforms and they would make great money by signing 5 times more artists and doing 5 times less work supporting them. From an aggregation standpoint of the labels, they can make just as much money.
From the artists standpoint, the overwhelming majority are going to get shafted.
Here is what I am dealing with right now. We have thousands of youtube and META pages stealing our stuff. They have no moral compass, it is strictly a money making operation. Let’s say a typhoon hits a SE Asia country today. These pirate channels will rip dramatic tornado footage shot in 2016 in Kansas and claim it is from the typhoon that hit today. It goes viral and by the time the content is removed the money has been made snd the harm done. Rinse and repeat every time a storm happens anywhere in the world.
In order to have these channels terminated under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which predates social media we have to request the content be taken down. The DMCA says eeach platform must have a repeat infringer policy but fails to define repeat infringer leaving this up to the social media platforms who are benefiting tens of billions of dollars per quarter each. Originally most adopted a 3 strikes your out policy. Over time that has evolved to 3 strikes in 90 days to 3 strikes coming from multiple accounts in 90 days to a warning first, then 3 strikes coming from multiple accounts in 90 days. Now it is a warning first, 3 strikes in 90 days from multiple accounts, then the channel/page is given a 7 day grace period to advertise their alt account and the pirate is allowed to start over.
Next, the piracy channels can issue a counter notification. This is an aft of davit claiming the copyright strike was invalid. The artist thrn has to file a lawsuit within 10 days to keep the content removed and the piracy account stays open pending the lawsuit which may take a year to run its course. In order to file a lawsuit for copyright infringement, it has to be filed in federal court. The filing fee is $403 and a fairly complicated process. An attorney, if you can find one, charges about $2500 each. In order to file a copright lawsuit in federal court in the USA the content must have a copyright registration. That registration costs $65 and is a PITA to register and takes about 6 months to get. Each piece of content must be registered separately and must be done within 90 days of first publication.
So even if you make it to this point, the piracy channel/page being sued basically has a year to create and advertise dozens to hundreds of new channels/pages.
Since these pirates are 99% foreign actors they never show up in court and ultimately we win but all we win is a default judgement (an IOU from John Doe in Pakistsn) and get to shut down the channel/page that was ripping our content that has moved on to a hundred other channels and pages since.
It is not a coincidence that these piracy rings are mainly coming from terrorist and cartel states like Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Mexico, Venezuela, etc. our content is being used to fund terrorism, war, drug cartels, human trafficking while simultaneously destroying US businesses. We’re talking about billions of dollars a year in piracy with no risk of penalty.
In recent years governments in countries like Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and some central and South American countries have begun actively encouraging people to start actively pirating content as a way to stimulate growth. It’s not by chance that companies like META have targeted these same developing countries for their own growth.
In the process, news agencies, videographers, photographers and artists are being destroyed, tech companies are getting richer and misinformation is running rampant.
Now we are about to throw AI bots into the mix. Anyone that thinks this is only effecting artists is sadly mistaken. The content is the bait to draw the views and generate revenue. The intent is pure evil.