Source: tahershah.com

When the infectious PPAP (Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen) song went viral last year, a lot of different copies of the video floated around on the internet, and they all had up to millions of views more than the original YouTube upload has gotten.

This phenomenon is called freebooting, where a monetized YouTube video that earns money from advertising is downloaded and re-uploaded in other places where views won’t earn the original creator any money.

Many Facebook pages do this, and if you get “funny videos” on your news feed that have added static captions on the top and bottom (like “This Will Make You Cry”), then that copy of the video has likely been freebooted, and that Facebook page’s admin is probably an inconsiderate thief.

But in Taher Shah’s case, his videos have been extensively freebooted not just by Facebook pages, but by other YouTube users, who have raked in millions of views by re-uploading his videos. Take “Top Pakistani Songs”, for example. This channel is verified by YouTube, and hosts a mirror of Shah’s “Angel”. Shah’s own upload of the music video has almost 1.5 million views. Top Pakistani Songs, on the other hand, has 4.5 million! That’s three times as many views as there are on the original video!

The same holds true for “Eye to Eye”. That music video has a little over 377,000 views on Taher Shah’s channel, but a staggering 3.2 million views on a Muneeb Rehman’s reupload on YouTube. That’s over ten times the number of views on the original. It’s worth mentioning here that the re-uploads of these music videos are monetized, and those channels are making money from Shah’s work.

Those examples are just one re-upload each. Both videos have been downloaded, re-uploaded, and seen in several other sources millions of times.

Taher Shah’s uploads of the songs are monetized, and based on some rough estimates, he wouldn’t have made more than $4000 on both videos combined. He could have made many times that amount had his channel gotten a substantial portion of the views on those videos.

The problem here is with YouTube’s enforcement of its content creators’ licenses. When Taher Shah uploaded the video, the copyright on them already belonged to him. In spite of this, a company that has gotten bad PR for aggressively taking down videos that exercise fair use when featuring copyrighted content, has let content creators be ripped off by other users on the same platform.

On the search results page for “Angel Taher Shah” and “Eye to Eye”, the versions of the videos that Taher Shah uploaded don’t even appear in the results. YouTube’s code probably assumed that the official upload was just a “mirror” of the duplicates that do show up on top and rake in most of the views.

YouTube has let down Taher Shah by depriving him of revenue and letting other users illegally receive what is rightfully his.

I don’t know why Taher Shah hasn’t appealed against this. Odds are that he himself doesn’t know that this is happening, or doesn’t care (he didn’t respond to my request for comment). It’s probably the latter, as Shah is a well-off producer (according to his LinkedIn) for whom YouTube revenue may not matter much.

Even then, Shah is just one example. If YouTube can be so aggressive in protecting the copyright of content creators who are not even on its platform, then it must exercise the same amount of due diligence, if not more, on protecting the rights of creators on their website. There are several small creators who are especially hurt by freebooting, and even if YouTube can’t do anything to stop that on other websites, it must get rid of the snakes in its own backyard.

I originally posted this piece as a note on my Facebook page. Slight edits have been made to reflect recent changes, and to add emphasis.

I am a media student based in Pune. You can follow me on Twitter at @AroonDeep.