H.I. No. 58: Hawk & Mouse

"H.I. #58: Hawk & Mouse" is the 58th episode of Hello Internet, released on February 29, 2016.
==Official Description==
Brady and Grey discuss: Brady visits Derek, greyhound corner, the UK/EU referendum, and problems with YouTube's content ID system and freeboot depression.
==Show Notes==
I just feel after every section out, it's like, I wonder if that'll make it. LAUGHTER Probably not. Why do you think that, Franny? That's also why I'm so confused about things I've talked about before on the podcast. Because there are things I've talked about and you've cut, and then like a few weeks later I might have like a second bite of the cherry and see if I can get it through this time. It's like, you're like, it's like when your parents say no to something and then you ask them a few weeks later. I sometimes feel like that with topics on the podcast was like, oh, great, Cata, I wonder if I get away with it next week. LAUGHTER This feels like the episode that nearly didn't happen. Yeah, because you are in California, which is awful for many time zone reasons we have gone over before. It's impossible to record, but it is night time for me and very early morning for Brady, as far as I understand. Great, great. You know where I am and you know I want to hit you, say it. LAUGHTER Say it, just say it for me. You're in San Francisco, Brady, at the spiritual home of number file. Yeah. It's Berkeley. Oh, is it Berkeley? I didn't know. I didn't know that it was Berkeley. My mistake. You are there so often it feels like, maybe you should just tell me when you are not at the spiritual home of number file. When you're in England, let me know when you're not there. No, as I was saying to you, I've recorded so many episodes here that it should be the spiritual home of Hello Internet. I actually haven't spoken to you since you took delivery of the package of classic and pro flags for signing. Oh, yeah, yeah. I was just wondering what you thought of the flags when you finally touched them and you know, handled them for the first time. I was quite impressed with the flags that you were able to get made. I have to say they were extremely quality feeling in the hands. I thought that would have an ass. Nice and thick. They felt like real. This is a flag that is going to be flown somewhere. But the one thing I was wondering is, I'm sure have you kept one for us, Brady? I got this whole big package of flags and I'm signing them for people and sending them off. I took them off to the post office. But as I was going through the package and signing all the flags one by one, I thought, is there going to be a flag for me? I didn't actually order one, but I was just wondering. Like, oh, I'm getting to the bottom of this. I don't think there's a flag for me. Well, we have a slight conundrum here because I sort of pre-ordered a batch and then the orders came in from people that wanted these. They're quite expensive. So I wasn't expecting a lot of orders. Yeah, the pro flags. Yeah, but there was only one pro flag left at the end. So unless I have more made, there's only one and there's obviously two of us. And I basically, I kept it for myself. Cut a long story short. I just didn't think it... I didn't think what would you do with it. You would... it's not like you'd put it up in your house or... I didn't think you'd want one. And I thought you'd be happy just knowing I had one. I am happy, Brady, because if there was one in the box, I would have thought, oh, that's really lovely. I'll give this to Brady for safe keeping. But you already kept one. And I don't know why. I didn't even cross my mind that you would already have one in your little Brady clutch. I was just thinking like, oh, we must have just sent them all out, but no, we didn't, of course. So yes, I would have just... I would have looked at it admiringly for a few moments and then sent it right back to you for safe keeping. Well, I have got one. So if we ever have another sort of public event like our Darth Vader or something, we have one that can be sort of flown over the event or something if necessary. If necessary. If necessary. I think that is absolutely necessary. Yeah. We're going to be in our writer whenever we do events in the future that the flag must be flown above whatever venue we are going to be at. And if one of us ever shuts down one of our YouTube channels, it has to be flown at half-mast and things like that. Yes, and we would request that all of the Hello Internet flags around the world be flown at half-mast if one of the channels gets shut down. Or I guess on the inevitable day when one of us dies first? Yeah. Something suddenly this is feeling quite morbid, but yes. Yeah. When you inevitably die before I do Brady, I really hope that everybody puts the flag at half-mast. That would be the respectful thing to do. I wonder if your wife would say the funny side if you died and at your funeral I gave her like a folded up nail and gave leg. I think a more touching thing could not happen, Brady. Sorry, man, I'm happy because we had mental image of being at your funeral now. I'm like, I'm going to get that out of my head. Hello Internet, suddenly serious. I've actually taken the pro and the classic off the market temporarily because it was just such a faph packaging them and siding them and then sending them to you for signing. And even though they're quite pricey, I still thought this is like taking loads of time and effort. And this is why listeners of the Hello Internet podcast might notice that anytime there's a one-off thing that happens, one of us, the Brady of us, is the one who always handles it. So anytime something goes up on eBay, anytime there's flags for sale, you recently did like a special run of t-shirts on like t-spring that was separate. You did the two animals t-shirts on t-spring. Everything that's a one-off is really a Brady off because I will not touch one-off things with a hundred-foot pole because I just, I hate how much of a faph they are. And like you said, it is always so much more of a faph than you think it's going to be. Even if it's something simple, like, oh, someone's going to send me flags and then I'm just going to pass them on, it's always so much more of a pain than you think it's going to be. And my own experience was, you know, when I first started doing the crowd fundraising thing, one of the rewards that I did was I did these handwritten postcards that I was sending out to people. While they were really fun to do and while like people always had me write really funny things, or sometimes quite touching things actually in the postcards, like wishing people happy graduations and all, like all these other kinds of things, eventually had to stop it because it was just like this, this flag problem of like, man, this takes up a surprising amount of time to do these things individually and to send them off to the post office. And so that was my lesson in scalability. I will touch no projects that cannot scale automatically. But I'm very happy to work with you Brady because you like to handle the one-off stuff. You'll complain, but you'll still do it. You're still having to handle them though because you had to take them all out and unfiled them and signed them and fouled them back up and put them in their envelopes. So I did it for the nation, Brady. Right, it was our flags. I was happy to do it, but still you handled the bulk of it. And I felt like the least I could do was eventually get around to sending them out. I have to say, I mean, it's not like we get asked for our signatures a lot, but I'm always reluctant to not sign something if I meet someone. In fact, I would never not sign something if I met someone because I remember when I have asked people for signatures and the ones who have refused and the ones who haven't. And it's burned in my memory to this day. How much it meant to me when I met like my favorite cricketer and he agreed to sign something for me. And I also remember the people who said no. Who said no? Who was the most heartbreaking, Brady? It's okay. You can share with the group. I'd rather not go into the nose, actually. It's too painful in memory. There enough. Fair enough, man. You'll share it when you're ready. Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, I'm still in an autograph refusal counseling. Yeah. It's a traumatic event. It's a traumatic event. Did I ever tell the podcast the story about when I met my cricket hero? I don't know. I think so, but I don't know. It's been too long. You tell it again anyway. So my cricket hero who was a wicket keeper for the West Indies cricket team called Jeff Dujon and he'd retired from cricket by this point. And he was now a coach of the cricket team and that cricket team happened to be an Adelaide and I was working by this point. And I took my lunch break off work and I was dressed in my, you know, my shirt and tie and everything. And I went down to the cricket practice where they were training so that when they came out of the training session, I could try and ask his autograph. And he was rushing from one place to another and he was refusing everyone and going past all the autograph collectors. And I called out him and I said, Jeff, can you, can you, can you sign this cricket card for me? And he sort of just sort of shook his head and kept going. And then I looked at him and I said, Jeff, I've come here in my lunch break and I like held up my tie like I grabbed my tie and held up and showed him my tie as proof. And he looked me up and down and he saw I was dressed in like work a tire. And then I just put on this pleading face and I said, you're my boyhood hero. And he just caved and he came over and signed my card. And the minute he did that, a hundred other people came running over and lined up and he had to sign all their things as well. But you know what, I love him for it and I still remember it. Like I still remember that he like, he heard me out and I made my case and he thought, okay, you've sold me on it and he did me a solid. See, I'm pretty sure that you have told this story on the podcast before now because I remember this. I've definitely told you the story. I just don't know if I've told it on the podcast. Well, we'll hear about it in the comments if we have. But it just reminds me again of just how, how sympathetic I am though to celebrities who don't want to sign autographs. You do hear from people all the time, you know, these stories that are burned into their mind of, oh yes, I asked this person for it for a signature and they said no. I don't know. I always just feel conflicted about these things but people sometimes feel really resentful about that. But the bigger the celebrity is, the more it is definitely like, but you don't understand how much of a problem it can be for that person. Where it's like, it's not just you. It's everywhere they go all the time. And then immediately once they start signing something, it's like, other people are going to come up and it can literally be a scenario like they could be stuck there for hours signing anything. People are always gauging this on, boy, I would love to be asked to sign my name on something once in a public situation and they're not thinking about it from the scenario of the celebrity. I don't know if I mentioned this before but there's a video that I think is the best example of what being a celebrity is like. And it's a video that Jim Carrey took in Brazil where he's beneath that giant Jesus statue. Have you seen this video? No, no, no. Okay, it's astounding because it's Jim Carrey. He's filming himself, he's filming his face and he says something like, oh, I'm here in Brazil beneath the gigantic Jesus statue. And he has the camera pan out so you're looking at the view. But then he just slowly turns around so that he's now facing the monument. And what you just see behind him is just a sea of people crushed right up against him. All of them have their phones out filming him. That to me is like the most clear example of showing that like celebrity at a certain level is just scary. You can see like he's crushed up against the edge of this monument and there's just like this crowd of people who just want to get close to him. And it's like man everywhere Jim Carrey goes, it must be like this all the time, it must be just awful. So that's why if you see a celebrity, leave them alone. That's my advice people. It is it is always kind of packed up there anyway, but I do want to see that video. I'll have this interview. It's super weird, super creepy. Alright. So while I have been here for two weeks, I did go to LA on the weekend. Oh, sorry. Oh, it was good. I went and hung out with Dirk from Berestabli. I mean, we had a great time. Oh, Dirk from Berestabli? That would be worth going to LA for. It was Duke date weekend. Really a date weekend, huh? Well, I'm away and Mrs. Dirk was away. It was just the fellas. Yeah. I got there and Dirk was like, let's go riding on bicycles like down to, you know, Venice Beach and because everyone's all outdoorsy and that. And I'm a little bit ashamed of what I'm about to say, but we had Dirk had a bike and we had to borrow another one from his neighbour. But we only had one helmet between us. And the LA roads are kind of crazy. And we were going to be riding on all these main roads. Yeah, that's just not a good idea. Yeah. And like, I just got off the plane and like, of course I can ride a bike quite capably, but I don't ride bikes often. And I especially don't ride them on LA roads. And I was a bit like, oh, I don't know if I want to ride a bike without a helmet. So even though it was, I'll switch to Dirk, even though it was Dirk's helmet, when he did offer to let me wear it, I did not take the hardest nails option. And I took the helmet. And the funny thing was we then like posted a couple of selfies on Twitter. And people were like condemning Dirk for not wearing a helmet. And he'd given me his helmet. He'd sacrificed his helmet for me. And he's still copped up for being not safe. So anyone who saw those pictures and thinks that Dirk was being unsafe and doesn't wear a helmet, he was sacrificing his pretty face and amazing brain for my inferior face and brain. Yeah, but he should catch Flack for that because he was being unsafe. I don't care if he normally wears a helmet that's still dumb. Dirk, are you listening to this? Where a f***ing helmet when you're riding your bike. What the hell's wrong with you, man? If I'm ever gonna visit you in LA, I can't do it if you're dead. I love it when you get, oh, mumsy and protective. I'm not being mumsy. It's just stupid. It's just ridiculously stupid. Disappointed in you, Dirk. I'm really disappointed. And then like within five minutes, he was pulling out his phone and sending text messages while we were riding along as well. I don't even want to hear this. I don't even want to know. This is just, I told him off for that. Oh, yeah, that's where you draw the line. You're happy to take his helmet away. His skull protector, but the incident gets on his phone with text messages. Oh, that's over the line now for Brady. Suddenly Brady gets protective now. There was a very funny moment though, when we were riding along. You know, there's those paths on the beach so you can ride along the beach. It was all very lovely. And we were planning on saying Michael that night of the source fame. So we had to call him up. So as we were riding along, we called him up on speakerphone. And we were riding side by side while Michael's voice was blasting out of the phone. And we were like both talking to him, like looking at the phone. And it did occur to me that if there was like a bystander who was like really into educational YouTube videos, they would have thought, was that Brady and Derek just riding past? And were they watching a V-source video? Because it was just Michael's voice blaring out of his phone. And Michael sounds so much like Michael in his videos too. He's like, he's so the same person. That was definitely my takeaway the first time meeting Michael was. When you meet someone who does a YouTube channel, there's always a moment of calibrating in your brain, just between them on camera and them just in real life. But I have never met anyone as close to themselves on and off camera as Michael. Like if you ever in a room with him and he's talking to someone behind you, your brain can't help but always think like, is someone just playing a V-source video? I swear someone's playing a V-source video on their phone. It's like, oh no, I'm just in a room with Michael. He's just a few pieces behind me talking to someone else. That's what's going on. It was fun, but we also, I mean, we really lived the fidgetron lifestyle. We went bike riding the first day and then we walked up a mountain. We went up to the Hollywood side, sweat and up the hill. There was kind of a very ironic moment when we got to the top of this ridge. There was a left turn or a right turn and the left turn would take you to this thing called the Wisdom Tree. And the right turn would take you to the Hollywood side. And we say went Hollywood. I said, there's something so ironic being with you here, Derek, choosing between Wisdom and Hollywood. He's moved to Hollywood though. Derek has chosen Hollywood. No, no, he's definitely the most Hollywood. We also did go to the Wisdom Tree, but that's because it was only 100 metres away. But after it imparted Wisdom, I imagined it. It did not. I did not feel any wiser. I don't know what it was. It's not like the tree of the knowledge of good and evil up on the mountain. No. The tree of good and evil is not on a mountain. Good and evil is the tree in the garden of Aiden. And there's the burning bush up on Mount Sinai. We've got to get you back to Sunday School, man. My Sunday School teacher will be so disappointed. I really liked going up to the Hollywood side. Did you, like in the movies, they always end up sitting on top of one of the letters. Did you, Derek, sit on top of one of the letters and hold hands and, you know. Yeah, funnily enough, that's not really how it works when you actually get there. Really? You can only look at it from behind through a huge mesh fence. And it's like disappointing, but it was disappointing in a way I liked. I liked sort of the grittiness and saying like the ladders on the back of it. It's actually made of like corrugated iron, like wavy corrugated iron. And then when we got to the summit, there was a viewer. I loved it because he said, oh, you do number five. And then he tried to say Veritasium and couldn't say it. And he was wearing a speedmaster. So we ended up just talking about speedmasters. I was at the Hollywood side talking with a number five viewer talking about speedmasters. That was that. How could not have been happier? And he got Derek's name wrong. And he got Derek's name wrong. Derek wanted to look at a couple of open houses because I think he's looking at sort of dabbling, dabbling with some real estate. So we then he and I just went around to open houses together. Like, like people were coming up to us saying, what are you guys looking for? Yes, there's really was a date weekend. Two young guys in love looking to buy a house together. He was a super host. I tell you what, he went above and beyond the call of duty. He basically shuffled me around, took me for nice meals, winded and dined me. Derek knows how to show someone a good time, huh? He was. He was fantastic. So, but I'm not going to stop calling him Dirk. Come on, they go so far. So, so Gray, I really strongly, strongly think it's time that we do some follow-up on guns, germs and still. No, no, no. Okay, listen, listen. I just, I know I took myself into this corner here. Listen, people, we will do follow-up on guns, germs and still. I swear. Each time we've been preparing for the show, I look at all of these notes and all of these links that I have. And I just feel like, I again, I just can't even. Like, I have to load all of this stuff into my brain before I can even remotely talk about it. But at least this time, I have an excuse. I have an excuse to put it off because actually by the time this podcast will be up, I will have probably put up the second part of the video. So, at least then, okay, we'll just get it all over it once next time. But we're not going to do it this time. You're not going to drag me into it, Brady. People will have just seen the other video, maybe. God, I hope so. By the time this podcast goes up. But I'm not getting into it now. I'm not getting into it. I love when people put things off and it just piles up. Yeah, it gets worse every time. Like, as you keep putting it off, it's twice as hard next time. I lived with this mate of mine and we used to like not do the dishes until like there was not a single dish left in the house. And then we would like have a big, we would have dishes day where we would put on music and just do the dishes together. And I thought that was really funny. And I was telling this mate of mine about it. And he said that's nothing. He had these mates whose house he used to go to all the time and they were like real sloppy university mates. They never did their dishes. But my mate used to always sleep on their couch and use their house. So he felt a bit guilty like he owed them something. So one day he looked at their kitchen and thought, and there was dishes piled like almost to the ceiling. Like they were just going out and buying more dishes rather than cleaning dishes. And things were getting caked on and it was like he said it was it was unbelievable. So he said, I'm going to do these guys a favor. Like I can really surprise them for letting me stay in their house. And he spent all day up pooled he sleeves up and spent all day scrubbing these dishes like chiseling food off them practically. Like he says he spent four or five hours washing these dishes and then piled them up all gleaming in the kitchen. And these guys came home and he sort of said, I've cleaned all your dishes. And they're like, no way. And he's like, yep, it took me four or five hours, but I've done it. And they were like, you did all the dishes and he said, yeah, and they didn't believe it. And they went into the kitchen and they said, did you do all the dishes? And he said, yeah, I did all of them. And they said, even the ones in the laundry. And he went into the laundry. And there were four or five times more dishes piled up in the laundry. They'd filled up the kitchen with dirty dishes and started moving them to the laundry. And they were four or five times more dishes again just caked in food piled in the laundry. And my friend just said, I'm not doing those ones and walked away. Okay, what the hell is wrong with people? Okay, listen, listen. Okay, there's only two things to do in that scenario. You buy disposable plates that you can throw out paper plates, plastic utensils, just buy them. It's so cheap to buy them. Or you have a dishwasher. There shouldn't be anything in the middle of these two options. If you don't have a dishwasher and you're going to be moving plates into another room for long term storage, just buy disposable ones. They did throw those ones away, the ones in the laundry. And they just went at the back and smashed them and put them in the bin. So they were disposable ones. They just bought the expensive disposable ones that made a real dish material. Today's episode is brought to you by Hover. Use Offer Code React to get 10% off your first purchase by going to hover.com. Hover.com is the premiere seller of domain names on the internet. It's the first place I go to whenever I have an idea for a new project. And I want to make sure that I grab the domain name as fast as possible. I know you have some idea for something in your head right now. Grab the domain name at hover before somebody else does. Hover takes all the hassle and confusion out of registering a domain. They give you easy to use tools to manage that domain so anyone can do it. It's simple enough to use that you'll be comfortable figuring it out yourself. But if you don't want to bother, there's a support team that's always ready to give you a hand. 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Is this your other corner? Greyhound Corner? Greyhound Corner? Is that, can that be a corner? Can I stop it from being a corner? I think not. You know, I love Greyhounds. Do you like Greyhounds? I like Lulu. Greyhounds seems like if you and I were going to get behind a dog, if there was going to be an official dog of Hello Internet, it would feel like it would be the Greyhound because I have one and they have Grey in their name. It seems like a no-brainer or is that too obvious? I mean, I would never get a Greyhound, but Lulu is very lovely. I wonder if anyone has named a Greyhound CGP Greyhound. It seems inevitable now that you've been doing it. It's only a matter of time. Well, Greyhounds have been a little bit in the news lately and on my mind. Why is that? I read a story yesterday that has outraged me Greyhound. Outrage, huh? It is about the gambling industry which makes a boatload of money from Greyhound Racing and the Greyhound Racing industry. It's not something I particularly approve of, but obviously these dogs when they're racing days finish traditionally have been treated very poorly. Sometimes they have just been put down. Speak terrible, isn't it? That's terrible. Is that? Yeah, I'm going to agree with you that putting down dogs after their racing days are over is not a good thing. The Greyhound Racing is just something that's really weird about it. I grew up in a place where there was horse racing, which I'm sure is not exactly like a pleasant industry. But for some reason, when you grow up near-ish or hearing of a thing, it just seems more normal. And I never saw a Greyhound race until I came to the UK. That was the first time I said, I can't remember where it was. There's some big Greyhound racetrack that closed down a few years ago. And I went there with some friends because they were fans of it. And it was one of the last races. But anyway, so I saw Greyhound Racing. It's just a strange thing to see these dogs that have been bred to be like Cheetah's racing. It's like it's made up, too, isn't it? It's like you're right. For some reason, maybe it's just conditioning. Horse racing kind of seems normal. And then it's like you would make up for joke. Oh, we could race dogs or we could write, but no, we wouldn't really do that. But they do do that. Right. I'm sure it's probably got a history longer than horse racing for all I know. But it does seem strange. Yeah, but not only that, it's like we're going to superbreed these dogs to be amazing runners. We're going to stretch their biology as far as we can to turn them into running machines. So there is there is though this sort of retired Greyhound industry or not an industry. It's a charity where they take these dogs after they've finished their racing days and they re-home them. That is where Lulu comes from. Lulu was a racing dog. Lulu Raced had a semi successful racing career. She was retired. She went off to a retired Greyhound Trust that had the job of finding a home for Lulu and Lulu found a home with us. The retired Greyhound industry is funded by the racing industry itself. And at the moment there's a lot going on in the parliament and in the media about the betting industry not giving enough or in some cases not giving any money to retired racing Greyhounds. Basically they have a voluntary levy and the amount they're giving to the retired Greyhounds has fallen by nearly 50% in the past decade despite the profits being in the hundreds of millions of pounds. I mean I guess the companies that are running the race tracks or whatever. Yeah. They have signed up for a policy of self-regulation. They say don't worry we'll choose to donate a certain amount of money towards the continued care of Greyhounds. Is that the current state of things? Like they're just opting to do it? That's my reading of it. It does seem like it's basically a public relations thing. I mean obviously the Greyhound racing industry can get a slap a lot for the treatment of dogs quite rightly. And I think for PR reasons they have these things in place. And if you go to Greyhound I have been to a Greyhound racing event as well. They always have like a section halfway through where they'll parade a couple of retired Greyhounds and they'll talk about the retired Greyhound Trust. So it's obviously sort of a diffusing PR tactic to say we support these dogs afterwards. But that support is clearly waning. There's one gambling, according to this article, there's one very famous gambling company in the UK called Betfair. And they announced a few years ago that they were stopping their voluntary contribution of £800,000 a year. I think this is outrageous. I read this article last night and I was so angry and I thought, oh people need to know this. I wish more people knew it. And if only I had some way that I could tell lots of people about this. And then it sort of occurred to me, oh I do a podcast with CGP Grey. Maybe I'll mention it there. And I don't know, I don't know what I want to happen or people to do, but I just want to say, this is outrageous. Greyhounds are wonderful, wonderful animals and this makes me angry. So do you think that the betting company should be required to pay for the Greyhounds end of life or rehousing? Or what do you think is the ideal outcome here? I think they should be forced, and this is what's being debated and parliament, I think, making this sort of levy and payment compulsory and not just a voluntary PR thing. I think the people who are making all this money out of the Greyhounds should be doing more to rehome them. And I think if this company, like I think if the industry is making £237 million out of Greyhounds, I think a reasonable chunk of that should be going towards making sure that these Greyhounds have a nice life afterwards and don't just get killed and have their ear cut off so that people can't see the tattoo in the Greyhounds ear and know who killed it. That's not unreasonable, is it? Okay, so I got a couple of questions here. Go ahead. I probably won't have the answers, I'm just like stirred up by an article. Right, he's stirred up, no answers to anything. Yeah, that's how internet anger works, isn't it? It's outrageous. The bare minimum of facts, maximum emotion. Right, exactly. I love dogs, I have one of these dogs. No, this is like I have been following this for a while. I've gone to Greyhound charity events and we've been very involved in patronage for retired Greyhounds. So this is very close to my heart, obviously. It seems to have just bubbled to the surface a bit lately. There's been a few stories going around about mistreatment of the dogs and abandoned dogs found with this ear missing and things like that. And it's got me stirred up. The thing to me that this immediately strikes me as is an externality. In economics, there's a cost that a company doesn't want to bear, but they are a producer of that cost. So it's like, okay, so you have this industry which churns through the Greyhounds, but then they don't want to pay for the retirement of the Greyhounds. But they want to take all of the profits from the prime life of the Greyhounds. And it's like, okay, I am anti-externality in general because then you're not incorporating the full cost of the thing. And externalities are bad. But what I'm just, what it's occurred to me as you're talking though, is who owns the Greyhounds during their racing life? Presumably, the betting companies don't own the Greyhounds. They're owned by breeders and there are people who race them in for whom. And these people are also under the cost. It's not like I'm talking about the betting industry because I guess the betting industry, I think, make the most money. I think they make more than the breeders. And also the betting industry seem to be the ones who are in the firing line at the moment. Whether that's because they're the ones who are reneging on their commitment and the breeders are not reneging. I don't know if that's the case or not. I don't know the current status of whether the breeders are doing their bit. And so it's the betting industry that are getting slapped around. But you are quite right. These are bred by people who race Greyhounds for a living. And I believe they have obligations in this area as well. I'm not saying that it's just the betting industry that is responsible. But the betting industry is what drives this industry. If the betting on Greyhounds ended tomorrow, I think Greyhound racing would end within a year. Yeah, that's why. But I was just wondering, who are the players here? It just occurred to me. It seems unlikely that the company, I don't know anything about this, but just thinking about it. Someone else must own these dogs. The players of the breeders, the tracks and the entertainment around them, the people who sell beers and meals to people who can watch it, the betting industry, presumably TV and media. Although I don't know how much that is supplementing the gambling and how much people just watch for the fun of it. There are multiple stakeholders here who are extracting value to use a grazum from the dogs. And I think they should put some value into their retirement. If you were emperor for a moment here, would you allow the Greyhound racing industry to exist? And you get to determine what percentage should go to happy Greyhound retirement? Or if you were emperor, would you ban Greyhound racing? Well, that's an interesting question. I mean, obviously, because I have a Greyhound that I love, like, I'm glad that the industry existed before, because it brought Lulu into existence, so. Right. But if I was emperor, it became emperor tomorrow. That would put me in a very interesting conundrum. That's why I'm asking. I don't know. My first instinct was to say, stop it. But if I was emperor and all powerful, I mean, I see how much pleasure Lulu gets from running. She's never happier than when she's running really fast. She was just, she was bred to love that. But I mean, if I was emperor and I could have every dog pampered and on a big velvet pillow, eating its favorite pig's ears, and then do one race a week, and then get a nice pat afterwards, and lots of people watch it and enjoy it. And then they have these amazing retirements. I mean, if the level of care was like luxury, sparring, vagus level, and I'm emperor, so I can dictate that. Well, you can dictate a percentage of the company's money that has to be spent on the Greyhounds. Greyhound welfare. Right. You can't, I mean, unless you're going to start taxing people to just take care of Greyhounds, like you're taxing the whole nation, I think you might then have some problems on your hands there. But you could say like, oh, 50% of your profits have to go into Greyhound luxury services. Like that's what you can do. Part of me says, stop it, you know, we shouldn't be using animals in this way. But I ate meat and I don't know Grey, I don't know, that's a really good question. I think if I became emperor tomorrow, I would phase out Greyhound racing. Hmm. I've been to Greyhound racing before. I've even bet on Greyhound races. So there is a hypocrisy there, but I think I would be comfortable phasing it out over time. Yeah, even if it meant that Greyhounds ceased to exist eventually. I'm willing to be a bit gray rational about that and say that if the dogs, if people let the dogs in breed them, they'll continue. And if they don't, they won't sort of survival of the fittest maybe, I don't know. I love the idea of survival of the fittest as though there's any kind of natural selection with dog breeds. That's true. Yeah. So this is the world's most prep-rich example of that. It's more like survival of the cutest or survival of the most, survival of the most appealing to humans. Yeah, or at least appealing to a subsection of humans. This is the most anti-natural selection that they're compulsively be. As long as there remains a small group of humans that are extremely dedicated to Greyhound breeding, like there will still exist Greyhounds. I have got another Greyhound dilemma. Oh yeah. On a recent holiday, Lulu was running on the beach. Lulu loves running on the beach. That is like, that is her navana. And I was filming her with my iPhone and I was filming her in slow motion so that I could watch some great, you know, glorious majestic footage of her running along the beach. And she was running towards me at absolute top speed. And there was a puddle in like on the beach that she couldn't see. And I was oblivious to it as well because the water was very clear and still. And when she stepped into this puddle, she had the most spectacular crash. You could imagine she, I mean, you've seen the footage of it. See, she smashed down head first onto her neck. She rolled onto her back. She slid for about two or three meters on her back across the wet sand. Audrey, Audrey, my little Chihuahua who was watching had to leap out of the way because she was about to get cleaned up like a, like a skittle by a bowling bowl. And like for a split second, I thought Lulu had broken her neck and was, and she was going to die. But straight away, Lulu jumped up, shook the sand and water out of her coat, waged her tail and was ready for more running. She was absolutely fine. And as soon as I realized she was fine and ready for action, the thought also occurred to me. I just filmed this in slow motion. And I looked up to my wife with a smile on my face. She was just completely distraught and worried that Lulu was hurt. And I just looked at my wife and said, I've got that on film. What a good dog owner. And she was a bit disappointed, like she was like, oh, you care about this filming. And I said, look, she's absolutely fine. And she's wearing an attire. She wants to run. We put her on the lead for 10 minutes because we were worried that maybe she shouldn't run. But she just wanted off the lead. She wanted to run. She was absolutely fine. This happened a number of months ago. And I am yet to do anything with this footage other than show it to a few of my friends. Because part of me now feels like it would be wrong of me to take advantage of her mishap. I've been like, I've been torn about whether I should put this up on YouTube for people to look at and have a laugh at. Or I should just like, save Lulu's embarrassment. Lulu's not going to be embarrassed. No, no, I know. Of course she's not. I know she's a dog. But I felt a bit torn about it. But I think maybe the time has come to put it on YouTube. And I just want you to hold my hand here for a minute and tell me it's okay. It's okay because Lulu is fine. And I have never seen a more magnificent filming of anything human or animal tripping up and just totally crashing in the way. That she does in that video. And again, the very fact of poor little Audrey realizing what's occurring and running to get out of the way and just making it. The video is just perfect in every way that it could be. You have to put this up on YouTube. It is going to be a free boat central when I do it, isn't it? Yeah, without a doubt it's going to be everywhere immediately. But it's amazing. The fact that it's like, it would be a great video if it was just a regular video. The fact that you happen to be filming in slow motion when this occurred is it's like winning the lottery. It's filming something like that. You have to put it out. Maybe I should put it up and somehow do it for the Greyhounds. Do it for the Greyhounds. Whatever you got to tell yourself, man, just get this up on YouTube. Right? Like you're going to do it for the Greyhounds. You're going to donate the money that's raised from that to the Greyhound Tracer. Whatever, man. Just like put it up. Put it up. It's great. Yeah, for the Greyhounds, sure. Whatever. You can sign off on your conscience with that one. I do see what people say because it's amazing. Yeah, of course you do. And I've been hearing about this for months now. It occasionally comes up. You're like, should I put that video up? Just do it. Go ahead. Here, look. Look. Here's the thing. You know now we're doing this podcast. I promise you, Brady. I won't cut out this part. So this is going to go up. And then people are going to herang you for it. If it's not in the show notes. So you have to put it up now. Okay? But is this its moment or is this a chance just to build up more anticipation? Because now it will be disappointing. I mean, even Gray big did up. I'm giving you what you want. Which is that I am checkmating you into having to put this video up so that you can feel that you don't have the responsibility of this. You're doing it for the Greyhounds. Right? You're in the moral clear on this one, Brady. Because I'm putting it in the show. Thank you. Thank you. You're a good friend. I'm a good friend who bullies you when you need it. You didn't bully me. You just you gave me what I needed. This episode is brought to you by Harry's. Harry's offers high quality razors and blades for a fraction of the price of the big razor brands. 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Check it out. Go to harries.com and use the promo code HI to save five dollars off your first purchase. Thanks to Harry's for supporting the show. The EU-UK referendum date has been set. I believe it's during the Glastonbury Music Festival which I intend to be at. So that is a spanner in the works if I intended to go to the polling stations. I think it is June 23rd. And so yes, it is a in-out vote on whether or not the United Kingdom should stay in the European Union or if it should leave. Is it that cut and dry inner out or is it sort of a bit watered down and we're voting to consider leaving and there'll be more steps or is it really black or white binary? I attempted a little bit to look into this and it just it was so many of these things. It gets so complicated, so fast. But my impression is that a vote on leaving the European Union would start the mechanics of actually the UK leaving. It's not like boom on that day suddenly it's out. It's a bit like if the Scottish independence referendum had gone differently. That would have been the start of presumably a possibly multi-year long project of Scotland to eventually become independent. And I'm guessing that the same kind of thing is going to be the result of this vote one way or the other. Yeah. But it's on, we seem to like to track referendums and votes on this podcast. And so now this is another thing that is going to be coming up. Something that we can have on our radar for the future. It's a great tragedy that Hello Internet is not in one of these podcast networks. Because if we were, we could have had a postcard referendum that the people decide if we should like withdraw from our network. Like we could have mirrored it like we did the flag referendum. But that's not to be, there's not really anything Hello Internet can be in or out of. So we haven't really got like a something that we can sort of secede from. No, that's because we are our own independent nation here really, right? We're not in any of these coalitions. Yeah, we're a mighty, we're a mighty nation. So I think like there's a million questions about this. I'm secretly hoping Gray is going to make a video, but I don't know if he will or not. He doesn't tell me these things. But the million dollar question is this. Do you think the UK should be in or out? Can you, can you vote by the way? You know, that's actually a good question of if I can vote. My current voting status is entirely based on this funny arrangement that the United Kingdom and Ireland happens to have with their citizens. Like it is nothing to do with the EU. If I was an Italian citizen living in the United Kingdom, I would not be allowed to vote in national elections. But it actually never occurred to me until you just asked now if I can vote. And I wouldn't be surprised if I'm not allowed to vote. I don't know what the rules are. I may not be able to vote on this as an Irish citizen in the UK. I can vote by the way. I'm a fully fledged UK person. I have a UK passport. Do you know how you're going to vote? I do not yet know how I'm going to vote. I am very unfamiliar with all the arguments which I think are about to start in earnest now. I completely and utterly reserve the right to change my mind. But if someone put a gun to my head right now, I said, Brady, vote or I pulled the trigger, I would vote to stay in the EU. Do you have any particular reasons why or is that just your gut feeling? It's partly gut and it's partly that I feel like some of the people who want to leave the EU are perhaps have a more insular. I don't mean insular in like a in a judgmental way, but they're more in the UK. They're a more insular person and they see the EU as an external thing and that they don't like. Because of my work, I travel into the EU a lot. I do business in the EU. I like the freedom of all of that. And I suspect if the UK was no longer in the EU, there would be just more barriers put up to that. Not necessarily insurmountable barriers. There was a time when there was no EU and business still happened. But it has become very easy having the EU as one big thing for someone in my position. So from a purely selfish perspective, I like being able to travel and do business in the EU without much incumbrance. So I think that's a good thing for me. What would be your feeling? Okay, so you were whispering before like, oh, you know, you're wondering if I'm going to make a video about this? I don't like to talk about video projects, but I can say it's pretty likely that I will end up making a video on this topic. I mean, so here's the thing. Every time I have looked into doing any kind of video on the EU, of which I have only done one that just barely touched on anything. Like the EU and its relationship with all of the member countries is just so incredibly complicated. And I used to be very much more pro EU than I am now after having looked into a whole bunch of stuff about it. Because looking into the details of how the European Union operates, it's like, oh, a bunch of people I used to dismiss as kind of crazy people about how the European Union is super undemocratic. Like when you actually dig into all of the details about how the whole system works, you go like, you know, it kind of is an undemocratic governmental body. Like they just have so many weird ways that so many unelected people make decisions. So I do not dismiss the criticism of the EU out of hand. Like it's just, the whole thing is very, very complicated. It's definitely a, also, like, aside from its kind of, you know, overriding structure, it is a very flawed body. Like I certainly could criticize things that you do and the wastefulness and things like that until the cows come home. But like you say, that's maybe that's not the core argument I don't know. The thing is we're not getting a vote on changing that. Right. We're just getting a vote on leaving it. Right. That's exactly it. Like there's an in-out vote and there's like a superstructure that maybe you like or maybe you don't like. And you know, everybody has different feelings on this. The slang term for this argument often is the shorthand where people talk about the United States of Europe, where it seems like there's a general political movement towards more of a United States of Europe situation, meaning that the various member countries are more unified in what they do as opposed to the current situation where they are less unified. It's tied up in all of this complicated argument about like what do you want the European Union to be? And do you want to continue to be a member of that? I am definitely going to over the next few weeks try and dig into as much as I can of the argument for leaving. Because my natural first response is like you. If I had to vote today, if someone just put a gun to my head, I would say the UK should stay in. Like that is my natural position on this. I think that leaving would be a mistake. If I'm going to put together a video on this, I can't just take my natural response and then just be like, oh here's all the reasons that we should stay in. So I am interested in seeking out and trying to find all of the arguments for the opposite side of this. Should I take from this that you're leaning towards a video that will have more of a position rather than just laying out the facts? Should we expect a video where you come to a conclusion then? That doesn't sound like a normal video you would make. Well here's the thing, I can't say if the video comes to a conclusion without having actually done all of the research ahead of time. Like I don't know, right? But let's imagine. Let's imagine a scenario in which my initial thoughts of what I have gleaned about how the EU and the UK interact over the past. If my initial thoughts pan out to the way that I think they am, I would be very comfortable making a video that explicitly said something like the UK should stay in the EU. If after I feel like I have done due diligence on this topic that I can back that, I'd be fine making a video like that. But I don't know if that's the way that video is going to come out until I actually research more into both my own side, right? Which I don't know all of that all that well and the opposing side. Like I want to be able to look at this more than just my initial reaction. So I'm curious to try to find legitimate sources on both sides for this. But again, my initial impressions, which internet may be very, very wrong. But my feeling on this from everything I know about the UK and the EU is it always seems like the UK has the best of everything when it comes to the European Union. Like the UK has all of these exemptions from European laws that it doesn't like. The UK is not involved in the monetary currency, so it doesn't have to deal with any of those problems. The UK is not part of the Shengen agreement, so it has its own border control that is totally separate from the rest of the European Union. It seems like all of the things that the kinds of people who want to leave the EU talk about. It's like, but the UK already has a lot of that stuff. Like it already has control of its own currency and borders and many of its own rules. I don't see the potential gains of leaving outwing the costs, like the benefit of being integrated with the European Union, with the ability of being able to do business much more easily. That's my initial thought on it, but I could be wrong. There could be things that I'm not considering here. Those are my initial thoughts as of right now. Like you say, as the weeks and the months go on and people start having more arguments about this and I start looking into it more deeply. I may change my opinion on that, but I think my vote would be to stay in. I'm assuming you don't like the EU flag. It's just boring. It's like a boring corporate flag. That's what it is. It could be a bank flag. I just wanted to get you on the record there. I don't feel super passionately about it because in some ways, isn't that it's job? It's a gigantic, super national structure. If you said, oh, it looks kind of Italian, it wouldn't be doing its job. Job number one is to be bland and inoffensive. We'll put a bunch of stars in a circle. Done. Look at what it's like. And even that they picked the most corporate of all colors blue. In that respect, it deserves a designer award. Like if someone said design a bland flag and someone came up with that, they are meeting the brief. Today's episode has been brought to you by Squarespace. This must be the simplest way to create a beautiful landing page, website or online store. They've got easy to use tools and templates. Anyone and I mean anyone can create a stylish web page that's easy to maintain. I use Squarespace myself both for my own blog and the daily website featuring our postcards from the Hello Internet flag referendum. So you can check them out as examples of what I mean when I say anyone, even with my limited skills, can do it using Squarespace. I think most people have an idea for a site or potfolio, some sort of project they'd like to showcase online. Squarespace is your ultimate solution. Now for 10% of your first Squarespace purchase go to squarespace.com and use the offer code Hello when you check out. Now that offer code not only helps us here at Hello Internet and you get that 10% off, but there could be an additional benefit that I never thought of. Here's an email that comes to me from Corey. What have I heard he has, I've got it here in front of me. This is what Corey said. Today on my way to work my car broke down. The tow truck came and picked me up and drove my car to the shop. He told me, I assume this is the driver of the tow truck, not the tow truck itself, he told me that it would cost $175 to hook it up and $5 a mile to get it to the shop about 20 miles away. And all it should have cost me $275. However on the ride he asked me what I did and I told him computer stuff. His wife is opening her own dog grooming business and needs a website and asked if I knew how. I promptly filled him in about squarespace.com and even gave him the promo codes for your podcast and 10% off. He was so appreciative of the help that he knocked off $25 and didn't charge me for the miles, turning my $275 bill into a $150 bill. So thanks to you and CGP for saving me $125 on my towing bill. Anyway there you go folks spreading the word about squarespace and our offer code could save you even more money than you thought. That's not guaranteed, it only happened for Corey but it's a nice story. What is guaranteed is 10% off your first squarespace bill when you go to squarespace.com and use the offer code Hello. Get that website started today and thanks to squarespace for their support of Hello Internet. Have you seen all of the kerfuffle over the YouTube system lately? It seems like a lot of people are making videos about how they don't like how things are working at YouTube. Have you been following this at all? I've followed a little bit. I mean I've been living at Grey. We haven't talked about this. Yeah. But I've been at the center of a free-breeding storm in the last week. Oh yes. I had a video that I posted to YouTube get Facebook free-booted big style to such a point that it became a trending topic on YouTube. I think it was the third biggest trending... no it was the third biggest trending topic on Facebook while I was just a victim. I was partly coincidentally but well timed. I was contacted by the Wall Street Journal that was doing an article about free-booting. Oh yeah. And I was sort of recommended to them by the interviewers. I don't think they sought me out. No I'm sure they sought you out of the world expert on free-booting. Well I'm not an expert on free-booting but as the co-iner of the word, as some people may realize, I think I have a special place in the pantheon of free-booted. I was thinking the other day though, like you know how I like joke around brag about how I came up with this word that's taken off. Is that something one should brag about? Like if I invented the word murder, would I be proud of that? Maybe not. Maybe this isn't such a claim to fame on realising. Maybe it's a claim to infamy. You know, I love it when you go, it's just, it's like sometimes you say these things and I don't even know how to respond to what you're saying. You really do. It's just like you've thrown this Brady wrench into my brain and all of the gears are clogged up. My brain is trying to think like, okay how do we explain to him that coining the word is not the same thing as participating in the thing that the word is going on. But then another part of my brain is going, that does not mean to be explained to me. He must understand that. That does not need to be explained to me. But what I'm saying is if you invented the word murder, would that be like a nice, it's like if a disease gets named after you. Like is that, like that's not a good thing is it? But see like the very way you phrase that just makes my brain go back to he knows that it's not doing the thing right like Lou Gehrig didn't bring Lou Gehrig's disease to the world. It's named after Lou Gehrig. No exactly, but he's like forever associated with it. Right. Like I think I don't think people are there blaming Lou Gehrig for this disease. But he's associated with it and if we could bring him back and ask him the question and say, do you want this disease to be known as Lou Gehrig's disease? This is a bit different now because it's actually named after the person, but still there isn't a, yeah, this is this is the classic Brady maneuver of taking something and turning it into a vastly more extreme version of itself. Where it's like, yeah, I'm much more, I'm much more likely to agree here, but if we go back to your original example of like inventing the word murder, how could anyone possibly possibly object to that? I invented the word murder. Okay, well done. I mean, no one really cares because you because you would forever become associated with murder like when you looked at this Brady. You know what is great about this when you talk about like forever associated with this. We've clearly come to the point long ago, maybe even a year ago now, where the vast majority of people who are using the word freebooting have no clue who you are. Oh, I'm forever associated with this. Are you though? You are already long relegated to the dustbin of linguistic history here, my friend. It is only this corner of the internet that has any idea that this was you. Grand vision of yourself. Oh, the Wall Street Journal is contacting me because of my freebooting associations. Don't be mean. You're being a meanie. I think you're reflecting you back to you in a thousand years. Like obviously, obviously every time someone says freebooting, they don't like think of Hello Internet, but in a thousand years someone might say, why did they start calling it freebooting and like some academic might start researching and stumble over it? And like no one will care about like, I don't think people are ever going to find out that like what I did, like in my job or that I made videos or anything like that. So like this one thing, like I think now you're making, yeah, you're tricking me into making it sound more grandiose than I think it is. No, this is what you're thinking. Again, you're envisioning people. No, a thousand years from now, remembering who you are. No, I'm not. No, I'm not. I'm just making the point that do you want to be associated with coming up with something that is a negative thing? I feel like you understand, but you're pretending not to understand. No, this is, this is what I'm just so fundamental problem. It's like the more you talk, the less I have any idea what you're trying to say. You invented freebooting, man. You know, be happy about it. In the future, people will look up the root meaning of the word and for a brief second, they will read your name in a book long after you're dead and forgotten. And I imagine you're the kind of person that would bring some sort of pleasure to you. I don't think that's the case, but I do like to think that the things I do aren't for nothing. Like I don't think my whole purpose for existing is so that I can earn enough money to buy tomorrow's dinner. I do like to think there's more to me than just sustaining myself until my heart stops beating. But I don't like, I don't want people to be like reading about me in a cyclopedia or anything. I have no visions like that, but I'd like to think that there is a bit more to me than the next meal. Right. Then just your negative association with freebooting. I was just thinking about it. Anyway, I did this short interview with this Wall Street Journal person. And the position was, and this is my position at the moment, is I'm just exhausted by it. And I just don't care anymore. And all these people were tweeting me and emailing me all these, you know, have you seen now this website's taken it or this player's playing it or it's on all of these Facebook pages now. And this was over the weekend, actually, while I was with Dirk. And I was saying to him, I wish that they weren't telling me. And I don't want people to stop telling me because I, you know, knowledge is good. But I almost wished that they didn't because it just became like cognitive load. And I don't want to, I didn't want to get all upset and go to the mattresses over it. I just, I just was like, I just don't want to know like, I'm just, this is what happens now. So this Wall Street Journal guy called up and I think he was hoping that I'd be all fired up and go on a rampage. And I was basically saying to him, look man, I just, I'm just exhausted by it. It's just like, you just have the question. Yeah, it's called the saddest man in the world. And he asked me a few questions and got me fired up. So I made a few wisecracks towards the end. And I'm sure that's the only thing that will get used in the article if anything gets used in the article. And I will come across as like an angry wisecracker. Yeah, that's why you never talk to reporters. You should know that. If I don't come across this way, I think the overarching theme of me on the issue of free booting now and copyright is one of jaded exhaustion. And I'm just being beaten down. I've just been beaten. He said to me, you know, it seems like the way forward for the YouTubers or some YouTubers think the way forward is just to start putting all their videos on Facebook. So that other people don't put it on Facebook first. And I said, I just said that would just be what a tragic way to for the war to end if they win the war that way. Yeah, but I mean, the thing is it's like a, it's a serious consideration. Of course. And it's a thing that I have totally tested out. I mean, a couple of people who follow me on my Facebook page will notice that I have occasionally tested putting native videos just up on Facebook. And I'm kind of the exact same thing of like, can I at least be the first person to post my own goddamn video on Facebook and try to try to get some, some number of views from that? You know, but it is, it is totally depressing to end up doing that. Anyway, that's not, that's not the main thing that's going on. That's not what we're here to talk about. Yeah, that's a side issue in the never-ending exciting adventures of copyright, which is what we want to talk about now a little bit. I have a big thing with us, you ex-hazen. I always think it must be quite boring for the podcast listeners. It's very inside YouTube. That's why that's why it's at the end here, Brady. Yeah, there's nothing else coming people if you don't want to hear about copyright. Turn back right now because there's been a bunch of stuff about it. What do you want to bring up of these numerous things that have been going on? There have been four videos in relatively rapid succession, which are all dancing around the same topic. There have been two videos from Grade A under A, which is a YouTube channel I quite like, that have been talking about problems broadly in the YouTube system. Channels getting taken down, copyright infringement, and a similar thing with, I hate everything, another good YouTube channel talking about the same kind of problems of like copyright strikes against his channel. And then nostalgia critic also put together a video talking about fair use on YouTube. And what all of these videos are talking about to some extent is the content ID system that exists on YouTube. And this is the system that is supposed to allow content owners to keep an eye out for uploads of their content on YouTube's system. Now, I feel a bit like the fine brothers thing from last time. I want to mention something like that relates to me before we get into this conversation. So you were talking before about how you didn't even want to hear about how your video kept getting free booted just everywhere all over Facebook. And it's going crazy and it just like gets you just depressed after a while. And so I in the past few months had gone through something similar where I had for a very long time a bunch of automated Google alerts and searches for my own videos being uploaded elsewhere. Right, particularly on YouTube. But so I would be searching for titles or very similar things to the titles of my videos. And Google would send me emails like anytime something similar popped up. And then I could do the normal thing which is to file a take down of it where it's like, okay, someone just re-uploaded my video on their channel. Let me fill out this long form and get it taken down. But at a certain point, it became just so many notifications just all the time that it became just like depressingly overwhelming. Like what do I want to do? Do I just want to constantly spend afternoons of my time filling out the same DMCA form over and over and over again to take down videos on YouTube of my stuff that people have re-uploaded? And so I basically turned off a bunch of the alerts because my feeling was like, you win. You win freebooters like I'm just giving up. I just don't care. I don't even want to know anymore that like, oh, this has been uploaded here. That's been uploaded there. Yeah. But then I realized like, oh, but wait a minute. Isn't this the whole point of the content ID system that YouTube supposedly has? Is that people who are rights holders can do this in an automated fashion? Isn't this the idea of this thing? And so I tried to reach out through a couple of the contacts that I have at YouTube to be like, hey, I know that I'm not one of these big multi-channel networks that you guys love to work with. But like, I am a content owner. Can I please also use the content ID system to try to do automated recognition of when people upload my stuff? And long story short, I have a meeting with YouTube in a couple of weeks that they're going to see if they can set this up for me. I'm already in that gray. I know. This is one of the many, many frustrating things with YouTube right is like, they're seeming capriciousness. And so some people are in, some people are in, I seem to be in some bizarro in between land where I need to convince them that I should be able to use this system. Like I can't, like you were talking in the last episode about people who can just like press a button and have other people's videos taken down. I haven't got that. But if someone re-uploads my videos, it will be identified automatically in that person. I don't know what happens. That person gets some kind of notification. I actually don't really look at it. I'm a bit, it's very automated. And I never really see it much. And sometimes I'll log into something and it will say, oh, so and so, you know, pinched your video. But I mean, that's only for YouTube. And I don't think the problem is as big on YouTube anymore. I think the problem is much bigger outside of YouTube. And that's like, and that's just free for all. We have no control over that. It's partly why, like when YouTube creators are talking about the problem of Facebook freebooting, kind of implicitly what creators want is something similar to content ID on Facebook. And so I bring all of this up because I want to have this as the starting point for this conversation because it's very easy when people are complaining about the system to complain about big companies giving copyright strikes. This is almost like whenever I talk about politics or if I do a video on politics, I never want to talk about the specifics because as soon as you talk about the specifics, the conversation is like it's over before it's begun. Because then people are thinking about their team and what the how they want their team to win. But what we have on YouTube is like in without thinking of specific teams, you have these two broad groups. You have people who are making videos and people who want to use fair use content in their videos. And there's a whole genre of people that fall into these sort of extremely broad category of reply videos, which may or may not be fair use. But let's say like a certain number of them definitely are like they're people who want to make videos and who should legally be allowed to use clips from other people's videos to do so. And then on the other side, you have content owners who want to be able to protect themselves from people just endlessly re-uploading their material. These are the two sides and YouTube wants to make these sides happy. Like in many cases, they're the same side. People like upload videos and they also want to protect their own videos. Like it's a very, very complicated case. But the thing that I didn't quite realize before this latest kerfuffle is just how far the content ID system is really bent in favor of content owners. The structure of the way content ID works vastly, vastly favors the owners of the content and disfavours creators, but creators are owners of content. I know, I know, right? But I don't quite understand. I have a power when I create content that if someone steals it, I can try and take action. And the person at the other end fears me like I'm a hawk that's going to sweep on them and protect what I made. But I am also a mouse every time I upload a video, I live in fear that someone is going to wrongly, I hope, accuse me of stealing content. So I don't like I am both people every day of my life. It's like how do you balance this thing? But here's my view on like the system level problem of what's going on. Let's say right now, like you, dear listener, like you are creating a YouTube channel. And let's say you upload a video in which you have some unarguably like fair use material in it. So you upload some video, you have a little clip from a TV show that you're reviewing or whatever, right? The way the current system works is that the owner of the material that you have used can automatically lay a claim on your video, which to keep things very simple will basically means they're going to get any money that you would have earned from advertisements on that video. So they can claim the video. Now the reason that this is an unbalanced system is because you as the video creator can then start a process which says, oh, but this is fair use like I want to appeal this I want to work through this whole process and say like, oh, no, this is totally fair use. That process can take quite a while to happen. It can take up to three months, like depending on how super long companies want to wait, like if they want to wait until the absolute last moment, because there's like a 30 day window and there's like there can be three replies back and forth, it can take forever. But the point is that all all that while while the video has a claim on it, the person who made the claim is earning money off of the video that you have put up. Yeah. And if you win your claim, you don't get any money back. That is nuts that the person who laid the claim keeps the money throughout that and then even if they and even if the original little battle of wins and it was fair use, they don't get the money for that those that month or three months. That is totally crazy. But the thing that compounds it is that you as the person making videos, you can only challenge three of these claims at a time. I mean, let's say you have a back catalog of like a hundred videos and one day you wake up and discover that all hundred videos have been claimed by some media company saying like, oh, you know, whatever, you have our material in here, right? Yeah. You have a hundred videos that are now earning money for the person who's made the claim or the company that has made the claim. You are earning no money on any of those videos. You're only allowed to challenge three at a time. And this means like, okay, you can be looking at like years before you could clear all of those claims if they all take the absolute maximum of time. And so this is where the system is horrifically unbalanced because it's like, okay, content owners can lay an infinite number of claims. But for some reason, YouTube has decided to put this arbitrary limit on how many claims a channel can fight at once. So like, okay, we have this ridiculously unbalanced situation where if you are a company that has access to this whole content ID system, like you might as well just lay claim to everything, like you can set up the system to have rules about what do you want to do? How many seconds do you want to allow of content before the system automatically flags it? You might as well just say like, oh, allow no seconds worth of time. Like any use is not fair use. Claim everything and just have the bot go automatically laying claims across the whole of the YouTube landscape. And then you just start collecting the money from that. Like there's no incentive for the claimant to have any kind of respect for fair use. Even if you are as a content owner, like you are every single one of your claims comes back as invalid, right? YouTube can see in the system like, oh, this company in the past year, it's made 10,000 copyright claims against other people's YouTube channel. And every single one of them has come back as invalid. YouTube is like, oh, thumbs up. That's fine. Right. Like that's legit admit business practice. And in the meantime, they earned all the money while those claims were active. Like that's crazy. Like it's a crazy amount of power to give to the content owners. When on the flip side, like, you know, the people uploading to their channels, like you can only dispute three. And if they, you know, you have three go the wrong way, like your channel will get deleted. It's just such an unfair system or it's so lopsided is really what it is. The other thing I didn't realize was happening. And I know you've put this in the notes here, but it seems like now's the time to bring it up. The thing I didn't realize was happening somewhat naively is this isn't just a case of there being a gray area about was that fair use or wasn't fair use. There seem to be companies whose mood is operandi is to make claims against other videos that aren't in this gray area of fair use. But just to make completely fake claims that where they clearly have no nothing in the video at all, it would be like if I went and claimed your last CGP grade video, even though I don't make the videos. I don't make the music. I don't make the animation. I'm just some guy who makes other who exists and I'm just saying, oh, I made that. I'm not saying I made that still that he took or I made that music. I'm just saying I made that. I'm claiming it completely not debatably just completely fake. It's almost become like a Nigerian email scam thing where companies can just create this like shell company, claim every single video on YouTube as something they made, even they've never made it. They could never have made a piece of content in their life. And that just becomes this little revenue maker because presumably some people won't fight it. Some people might not know they've been claimed against and that. And you just, it's just become this like loophole. I can't believe it won't be closed within days now because after seeing the I hate everything video about it, it's like I watched that and thought that that can't be real. Yeah, the I hate everything video is just the is the absolute pinnacle of this. It was a standing. Yeah, it's it's it's it's amazing, but it is also just the natural consequence of this system where company comes in and says, oh, okay, we can make claims. There's no penalty for making false claims. What we're going to do is just manually identify videos that are getting popular and manually put on a claim on them. And just and and so I hate everything as this example where it's like, oh, this company called Merlin I see see or something, but that they claim that a section of his video is playing a song by someone they represent, but they don't represent that person. And the song isn't in the video, right? Like there's no debate about this. But nonetheless, the way the YouTube system works is like, okay, but that was I hate everything's most recent video. It was it was rapidly running toward a million views, but this company Merlin I see see something like because of this dumb system, like they get to make all of the money. I hate everything won't get any of that money back when the claim is proven to be false. And YouTube just has no consequences to making false claims. Like that to me is the real core of this. Like you can't have like content ID should be this system that is trying to balance these two parties. Right. And to keep everybody happy. But if if one side can act in a way that has no repercussions like well, of course they're going to end up totally exploiting it. And this the I hate everything situation is just the pinnacle of it. It's like, well, might as well just start laying claims on all kinds of videos and just collecting the ad revenue. It's crazy. It's really crazy. Can I ask a naive question? If I make a claim against you, like I think you've used a bit of number fire, then your gray video that you should have used. And you and you say it's fair use. And we go through this month, few months, processes of me saying you stole it. You saying no, I didn't me saying yes, you did. And neither of us give any ground. How does it end? Who's the final ampire on whether or not something was used fairly like by default? So my understanding is that it's the person who is claiming it is fair use is the default winner. So that so I would have to take you to court in the end. That's right. That the after after three months, if no one if no one gives after three months, the fair use claim a wins and or it goes to court. Part of what is being decided in these documents that are going back and forth is that the person who has made the video is basically setting themselves up to be sued. If a like and to lose really big, if a court finds that it's not fair use. Yeah. So like that's what happens is like you are ticking a bunch of boxes as the video creator that will totally screw you over if you're lying. So that's why I think it defaults towards the the creator being the default victor because it's like, okay, well, they've just they've put themselves in a situation where they're screwed. You can take them to court if this really is a big problem and they're just it's over for them, right? They're not going to win. So the first time that gives me some small insight into why this crappy system maybe was set up that way though because that means if if the if the big bad wolf keeps the money until until the noble fair use person wins the day. So you see why you would skew it you would skew it that way because if the big bad wolf turns out isn't the big bad wolf. You're pretty unlikely to take someone to court. It's like it's like you've sort of tipped the scale a little bit so well, you're if someone is if someone is taking advantage of you in the end that person is going to win because you're not going to take them to court because that's just going to be a bowl like for everyone. You're not going to take them to court so the little bit of compensation you do get for being exploited is you keep the money for that first month or two and then they'll have and then they'll then they get to exploit you for the next hundred years because they won the day. Yeah, and most of the time that's not the case, but it's all you can almost see why you would set it up that way now. I don't think they should, but I can almost see why they would. Yeah, and this is one of these cases where I have never had to follow this through all the way to the end. I've had to do a little bit of this, but not very much because I've always had claims released after just the first challenge like it hasn't really gone super far. So I this is a case where I may be wrong about these details, right, but let's but let's just let's just assume for the moment that this that this is the case. I can see the argument. Yes, they're like, okay, we will give you some compensation in the meantime to make up for the fact that you won't go to court. But the problem is anytime you drop the price to zero, people are going to use an infinite amount of it. Right. If it has any utility at all. And so what YouTube has done with this system is it has dropped the cost of making claims to zero, which then incentivizes companies to just lay out an infinite number of claims. That's where the core of the problem exists. And if there was some kind of penalty to just constantly making false claims, then this wouldn't be the case. But since there's no penalty, you just might as well make all the claims in the world. It's almost amazing that content ID has existed this long before some genius at Merlin ICC, Co or whatever, I thought like I know how to make a whole bunch of money while doing nothing. It's astounding. It's absolutely astounding. So this is one of the rare cases where I feel like there is a relatively straightforward answer to this, which is YouTube imposing a cost on making claims. So that you just don't make an infinite number of claims. Do you mean like like 10 cents or something like you know, you got to pay a dollar or you got to pay $10 and I don't even I don't even mean less is there. I mean a cost just in in the sense of any kind of cost. Some small amount of money or some like strikes or getting your multi channel network removed if you have too many false claims. I don't think that will work. I don't think that's good enough either though because people just create these sort of shelves, these shelves won't they? And then and then have like a week or two of fleasing everyone and then they get thrown off the network. Oh yeah, yeah. Sorry. To be clear, I also agree with you with this idea of the ascrow that the other very simple change is if a video has a claim on it, all of the money is held in a separate account that goes to the winner in the end. Right. That's like that plus a small amount of cost for making claims is the way to fix this and it's it's it's unlike our conversation last time we were talking about how do you fix angry internet mobs right where I think there isn't anything that you can do that isn't worse than the problem that you're trying to fix. This to me seems like oh there's a relatively straightforward solution to this that I hope YouTube implements because it's just like man makes everybody angry this content ID system. I tell you what though if you have a viral video and like you know so there's like potentially thousands and thousands of dollars sitting in this escrow pod. Suddenly that fight over fear you just going to start getting nasty. It's like suddenly the trophy is more like it could become a real mess. The amount of money isn't any different than the amount of money that we're talking about now. It feels different though. It feels different. If you want to get really cynical about it then you can just say oh YouTube has an incentive to prolong the process to make it a year long so they can earn interest off of all of the money the exact amount of this grow. There's that to right that did a good to double the number of forms that you send back and forth. Yeah. It's just turns into a buddy pain in the ass. As with as with many of the things that we have discussed about on the podcast before. I just I find so much of this YouTube's business stuff just exhausting like exhausting in this really boring way that I just find like man. It is I'm not trying to be like oh we know back when it was small it was amazing and it was a little community of people making videos together like that's not my feeling of it. But I don't know there's just there's just something about like all of the layers now that are involved in like I just want to upload a video on YouTube but it's like oh but there's multi channel networks I can and if you want to be a creator you need to sign up for one of these mafia osu style multi channel networks. And if you don't sign up for one of these multi channel networks and you have like this whole other big set of problems to work with and there's the YouTube on top of it and this content ID system and gigantic media companies moving in and just. And it's all very busy like there's so much stuff to keep track of and there's so much stuff to worry about it's just it's better at the me at least you can kind of do that I can't I'm just rubbish yeah it's it's it's absolutely it's just absolutely exhausting like it's just so much to think about and. Coming back to fair use just to be controversial and get people upset for a second. I think I think most people misunderstand fair use. Oh I mean obviously and and we've talked before about how saying fair use doesn't automatically mean his face but but this would be much less of an issue if there wasn't maybe I've just become more aware of it but it feels like it's becoming a bigger and bigger thing of people just. Being like derivative and an original and I know and I know people are going to say hey man everything is a remix and that's like a trendy thing to say but like if everyone just makes their own stuff if people just create instead of doing what they call create which is reacting or reviewing or twisting or changing what other people have made this would not be such a big issue but I think I think it's lazy and I know that's the controversial thing to say because it's an active creation to transform. Someone else's creation but I think it's lazy and I think because it's easy more and more and more and more people are doing it and it's what's creating this storm around what's fair use and what's not fair use and what's copyright and that it's because everyone's just being a lazy bones taking taking the work of what I was probably becoming a proportionally a smaller number of people who actually make new stuff who actually go out with a camera and film things or who sit down and say what exaggerate and say what's going to be a lot more. Or who sit down and write like a script or sit down and animate something those people seem to be coming us I know that they're probably growing but they're becoming a smaller proportion and there's this growing growing growing group of people who then just wait to greedily devour all these creations and just watch them or comment on them and and that's what they do to make their money as as someone who's in that smaller group. It feels a bit frustrating. Yeah, it always is frustrating. The Facebook thing is now a total and utter industry and there are people who are doing it legitimately who I have a bit more respect for and people who have but every time you make a video that's any good, there was a whole bunch of people who just immediately gobbled it up and put it onto Facebook. Yeah, and there was another group of people who emailed me I've got a whole bunch of emails in my inbox from Facebook people and companies saying we saw this video can we can we please put it onto our player so there are people who are doing the same lazy thing but at least they're asking permission which I give them credit for. But it's just it's just this growing industry now just sitting there waiting with with their mouth open to be spoon fed other people's creations. Yeah, it can be it can definitely be a bit disperial when you are one of the people who puts a lot of work into making a new thing and then just seeing a bunch of people make money off of your work and there's an amazing clip. It's in I think it's in the first grade A under a video where he talks about the problems with YouTube but it's an amazing clip where that he gets of one of these guys who does these react channels. Where the guy literally says at the start of the video he's like it's time to make money off of your hard work right before he goes to just film his dumb face watching other people's videos. I know that's so vagrant vagrant I tell you what just to reactivate my rant for a second this is what it reminds me of because I was filming yesterday with a guy who designs clever things like mathematical models and dice and things like that and then he mass produces them and he can sell them is a really clever guy coming up with these ideas. And I said to him you know how are you getting these made presumably you know you send the design to China and they make it and he says that's normally what I do but that's always a big step when I do that because the minute I send it to China to be mass produced. They will steal the design and a thousand other people will make knockoffs of it and it will be produced by other companies and the person who's doing it for me will sell it to other companies and the minute I do that it's going to appear everywhere. So people who mass produce things feel that now they feel this dread that the minute goes into the wild west of China the wild east I guess I should say of China it's going to get stolen because there's less protection for them and they no longer control their intellectual property that's what it feels like for me now whenever I make something that I think is a little bit special and will interest people. I feel like the minute I the minute I press upload on YouTube part of me feels excited that I'm finally going to be sharing this with the world and another part of me thinks this is the moment I'm also giving it to all those people all those free builders who are just waiting with their mouths open to gobble up what I've created. It puts a different feeling on it when you know with almost 100% certainty that like more people will see the thing where someone else has just taken your thing that on your own channel like if you distribute all of the free but booted views that happen elsewhere like it. It's very often like a larger number than the people who see it on your original thing it's like oh god why like why am I even the sucker who's doing this anymore right like why am I why am I just feeding this whole economy of parasites on my back and yeah it's just is just desperating and like you say it's. I mean really I even feel like in the past few months has turned into just this remarkable industry of looking for things that are popular and then just leeching off of them and it. Hey great no they're curators and if someone says oh you should just be happy that it's being seen by so many people tell me that when it happens to you yeah that's exactly right no one ever feels that way when it's it's their own it's their own thing but. So yeah I don't know it's like I was saying before I feel a bit weirdly defeated in this whole process of having deleted all of the alerts that I used to keep on top of of other people uploading my stuff or it's just like manage just too much I just can't deal with this and then also just finding myself in the situation like man I don't want to set up the YouTube content ID system like this is not another thing that I want to deal with but it's like okay I guess I'm going to go into a moment. I'm going to go into a meeting with YouTube and and have this done and figure out how to make this work and like plead my case for please allow me to try to make claims on my own videos that are uploaded elsewhere but it's like I just feel like I don't I don't want to do this but I've been forced into a situation where I just have to because it happened just way too much you know I thought yeah I mean you have to you I mean your channel is easily massive enough for that but I tell you how I tell you how ingrained it ε has become when I'm filming I'm already thinking ahead to how I'm doing it. I'm just thinking ahead to how I'm going to edit the video sometimes I'm already thinking what the title of the video will be sometimes I've been thinking what the thumbnail could look like it's just like the way my brain works like and now if I'm filming something out you know in a lab or in an office with someone and I can tell this video is going to be really good and I'm already thinking I could call up this and this is how I'm going to edit it and it's going to be really popular. I'll reach the point where while I am still recording while the red dot is still on the screen I'm already thinking about the fact that this video is going to be free booted like the days are over I'm thinking this is going to be a great video loads of people are going to watch this it's going to be one of my really big ones for the year. I'm also at the time thinking oh man this is just going to get stolen so bad like it's permeated that fire into my process that's how much a part of my consciousness it is now. Thanks for your brooders. Yeah, yeah it really is so yeah this has been your semi weekly dose of happiness from the LWNF podcast. We're still really lucky to have such a good job. Yeah of course of course like that's always that's always the thing but it is it is the defeat in our voices is the like the acknowledgement and the recognition of this like economy that we're going to do. Like economy that we are feeding into with our own creation. Like that is the thing that just suddenly feels different about it as opposed to a lot of the earlier conversations that we had where it's like oh individuals are uploading our own stuff and it's like oh no now there's just a whole economy about this and tying into the YouTube content ID system. Like now there's even this absurd length of people making money just straight off the work of channels like I hate everything false claims when it's like this not even not even uploading anything right they're just able to literally steal the money from a channel by putting in a content claim. And you know me Brady I don't like to use the word stealing frivolously but I think a lot of this stuff with this content ID system is like no that is stealing like that is money that was as close to that person's pocket as it could possibly be before you diverted it into your own pocket with this false claim for which YouTube will will never punish you. You're a stealer. Do you know who we sometimes sound like and I am aware of this we sound like the music record companies did five ten years ago when things like Napster and all this stuff started and I didn't feel piles and piles of sympathy for them like I saw what was happening was wrong but I didn't think you poor record companies I thought well you know you make money anyway and okay this is unfortunate but it's sort of a just a thing and that's exactly what we sound like now. Don't you think see I yeah I agree with you right that there is a certain sense in which we sound like the record companies right part of what I think was the record companies problems was there refusal to acknowledge how things were in the world and that was why I had like no sympathy for them and this is a thing that I try to be aware of that's why like for example I'm like I want to set up content ID because I like okay the way I was doing things is just totally unsustainable and the other thing is is as we discussed before like this is partly why I feel like I'm just kind of giving into Facebook at this point a little bit tapedly because like okay well if my videos are going to be all over Facebook anyway they might as well be my videos right I might as well post them on Facebook. Isn't that said that you did that before they found a way to reward you for enriching their site isn't that said that they won the battle that way yeah I mean it really is but it's also partly why like I have tried to change my business over time to adapt to that pulling aside the curtain for a little while. Part of this whole like recognizing things are getting free booted everywhere thing is one of the big decisions about why I finally I'm so late to this party but I finally said like okay I'm going to do it. I finally said like okay I am going to put embedded ads at the end of my videos like I must have been one of the last big channels on this train but I decided to do it in no small part because I was already thinking like okay well. Facebook I won't be able to earn any money from advertising on Facebook because they don't have any kind of revenue sharing plan so the only way that I can make money if I'm still posting my videos on Facebook is if there is an embedded add in there. And then I can count those views as part of how I sell the advertising to who is ever sponsoring those videos like this is this is why I've been trying to change my business very slowly to adapt to this new situation it's like I don't want to put my videos on Facebook but I also just can't can't stand like a like a rigid statue and refuse to bend or recognize the changing environment around me because that way lies doom. And so if in the future that means like okay well I upload videos on Facebook and I have embedded ads in them this is just the next step of how of how this business is going to work are you going to post your videos on Facebook tonight. I guess you need to set up a whole bunch of Facebook pages I already have Facebook pages for all those projects I guess this is a good time to tell the people follow us on Facebook. God I feel so gross saying that but seriously do follow us on Facebook. You You You You Now this is the like the arm rest on my chair a bit Something always something there is a house it happens that no matter where you are you there's something in your environment that you can fiddle with that I'm going to have to cut out later everywhere we go.
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