The Murky Ethics of Clipping on YouTube

0:00The Colin and Samir Show is supported by Microsoft Copilot. This is something I thought I would never say, but can I share with you my favorite prompt? I mean, like when you say something like that, I have to say yes. Were you going to say no? No, but okay. Just let me hear it. So when I'm researching for a guest or I need to know a lot about a subject matter, I say, make me a podcast about. And when you do that, you're going to get a short blurb about that subject. And then in like two minutes, you're going to get a podcast. So check this out. Welcome to Co-Pilot Podcasts. Picture this, a guy working the front desk at a hotel, making lacrosse videos in his spare time, completely unaware that he's about to become one of the most influential voices in the creator economy.

0:38Today, we're diving into the remarkable story of Colin Rosenblum. Wow. Did you pay it to say that? That's crazy. That's very kind. It's crazy, but it's my favorite way to learn about a subject matter. I'm learning about so much more now that I can turn this research into like a seven-minute podcast that I can listen to just when I'm walking. Did you tell it that I worked at the front desk of a hotel? Dude, the prompt is just make me a podcast about Colin from Colin and Samir. That's it. I may be biased, but I'm on the edge of my seat. I'm hooked. So if you guys haven't checked out Copilot, check it out.

1:10Try it for your research. Try it for getting variations of your titles, your ideas. It's one of my favorite tools on the internet right now for our creativity. And now back to the show. What's up, everyone? Welcome to this episode of Creator Support. On today's episode, we are talking about the murky ethics of YouTube clipping. We also reflect on our interview with Emma Chamberlain. And then later in the show, we're joined by a YouTube creator with 50 ,000 subs to do some real live creator support. Live creator support. This one felt like a radio show to me. I think you guys will enjoy this one.

1:43If you make it to the deep end, let us know. All right, back from Thanksgiving break. Big week to come back here, Colin. And only one more month in the whole year, which is crazy. That is crazy. It's been a big year for us. Huge week. Yeah. Mainly because we had a big bagel breakfast. That's right. Yesterday morning. That's right. At our office. We got a bunch of bagels because we had some team members from YouTube come down and visit our studio, which was awesome. We got to talk about what the future of YouTube looks like. Always fun. But also a big week because we finally had Emma Chamberlain on the show, which was maybe four or five years in the making.

2:21I just read a comment that said, took you long enough. these things take time they take these things take time but yeah when we first started the Colin and Smear show we wrote down a long list of dream guests and actually Emma was kind of the last one on that initial list that we that it took us a long time to to book her and and to get the show to a place where she wanted to come on you know and what was really cool was after we pressed publish on that episode yesterday we actually met as a team and reset our dream guest list. That was really, that was a really cool and fun experience to, to, to also recognize and go back to that initial dream guest list and be like, wow, it took a long time, but we got a lot of those guests on the show.

3:05There were some crazy guests on the list this time. I just want to say, yeah, Tyga dropped a Drake. Yeah. We, we said it was no bad ideas, uh, truly a free flowing brainstorm and said, who do you think we, we could have on the show? Um, but we also took a step back and reset the show. And I would urge all creators or anyone who's making a show to look at the end of this year and offer it as an opportunity to reset. We do this thing where we reset, okay, who is the audience? Has the audience changed? Who are the guests that we want to have on? What is the value proposition of the show? And then what's our process to create the show?

3:46These are things that we want to reset and take a step back and recognize like how the show is evolving. And I think, you know, we're making some continued efforts to evolve the show in a way that we want to evolve it. There's one really nuanced thing we talked about yesterday, which was the distinction between a creator and a creative. And that we feel like now we want to include creatives in our audience. Yeah, so creator being someone who makes their money from posting on social platforms, probably from advertising. Like, you know, we've spent the last few years talking about YouTubers. But we've noticed a couple of things.

4:27There's an influx of listeners and people watching our channel who are just creatives, people who work in the industry. But don't necessarily - They also could be freelancers. Yeah, like the reality is a freelance creative, someone who is doing video, photo, graphic design as their job, They're using social to get work. And the distinction actually between a creator and a creative is that a creator is an independent media company who creates a format or a type of media and self-advertising to make their money. A creative is someone who has a skill or a craft and sells that as a service, right?

5:05And so it's a really interesting distinction, but I think the expansion of the creator economy in the coming year will be actually an adjustment to the creative economy. So as an example, a music video director is a creative. They're using their skill. They're selling it as a service. They're not necessarily looking for a brand deal, right? There may be someone who listens to the show and connects with the people we speak to on an emotional level or even the way we talk about storytelling. but maybe they don't necessarily want to go towards brand deals or something like that. So the experience of having Emma on the show, we should talk about that.

5:43It was a really, really cool day. You know, Emma came to the studio and we got to hang out actually just for a while, got to hang out all day. And I think that really helped us when we got into the interview too, of just feeling really comfortable and just having our longest conversation ever that was recorded. Yeah, I had some nerves in the morning, but it was kind of hard to be nervous once she got here to the studio because we really got along so well. And it was hard to even know when the podcast recording started and when it stopped. She just hung out for the majority of the day and we were talking the entire time.

6:21What was the most surprising takeaway from that conversation for you? The most surprising takeaway? I think actually some of it was the conversation we had with her early in the episode when she's talking about rejection and how she has this relationship with her parents where it was actually a very comfortable one. Like she wasn't afraid of the rejection from her parents. Like they were very supportive. Yeah. But on the contrary, in school, whether it was with friends or specifically with boys, there was like this sense of rejection and how that shapes her and her work. Yeah, I find in all of our conversations with creators, you know, myself included, I think a lot of people who pursue this career, I said this on the show, but, you know, have a relationship with control and wanting to control their ability to get approval or validation.

7:16And I think YouTube is this quantifiable metric. Rick. It's been interesting how our show has evolved into going much more into like the psychology of what it is like to be a creator. I've actually really enjoyed that a lot. For me, it was the conversation around acting. I think that was really fun to recognize like, oh yeah, some of these people are going to join the true entertainment industry in a way over the coming decade that's going to be so unique. And we are going to see them in movies. And it's going to be it's going to be this convergence event of what we considered to be the internet creative economy and just the general entertainment sector that is we talked about this with mr beast but like there is going to be a convergence event it's probably going to be slow and gradual but it's all going to come into to one yeah it really makes you think about you know it feels like she's so established and she's been around for so long but she still is very young she's 22 what is it like when she's 30, 40?

8:16What is it like when Jimmy, Mr. Beast is 30, 40? Logan Paul? Logan's, I think, close to 30. Sure. And what's it like? He's on the precipice of becoming a billionaire and wrestling in WWE. It's pretty wild. He's evolved to a pretty unbelievable place. And it's going to be fascinating to see what is a young industry full of young people really start to grow out. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. When you visit the doctor, you probably hand over your insurance, your ID, and contact details. It's just one of the many places that has your personal info. And if any of them accidentally expose it, you could be at risk for identity theft.

8:55LifeLock monitors millions of data points a second. If you become a victim, they'll fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Save up to 40 % your first year at lifelock.com slash podcast. Terms apply. So, one thing that was anticipated, but really interesting to see, and it's our first big subject on the show today, is when we put out our episode with Emma, the one thing we were cognizant of was that it was going to be clipped. And specifically, it was going to be clipped on TikTok. And within, I think, around three or four hours, like every hour after we pressed publish on the episode, I checked TikTok and searched Emma Chamberlain.

9:33Once I think the third hour hit, it was flooded with clips. By last night, I saw a clip that had 3 million views. By this morning, that same clip has over 5 million views. And that clipping page has a few other clips that have half a million views, half a million views. And if you search Emma Chamberlain on TikTok, you'll see our interview with her. And it is just clipped to the tune of probably 10 million views in 24 hours. And there was a conversation on Twitter that was taking place this week around the concept of ethical clipping. So here's the question. It comes from Musa. It says, if any YouTubers would like to debate the topic of ethical clipping, DM me.

10:19I genuinely believe it is a win-win in every regard and completely ethical from all angles. So there was a lot of debate on this tweet. and someone, I believe it may have even been Musa, posted a portion of the conversation that we had with Jimmy about this. And I want to play it for you right now. Yeah, let's play it. Which is wild. That's an encouragement to everyone watching to clip this. Yeah, spread these clips. Do it. Do you care if they re-upload it on TikTok? Guys, easy way to make money. Get the clip in. They gave you permission. I want to see TikToks. I want to see shorts. I want to see reels every single moment.

10:58Subtiles. Make the subtitles better. There's someone clipped, like, just, like, took a two-minute segment of the video and put it on TikTok, and it had 40 million views on TikTok. And these guys are just, like, so many of the comments are, like, where do I find this? What is this? And people are just, like, it's Mr. Beast. And then, like, they'll respond, like, two hours later, and they'll be, like, wow, I just watched 10 of his videos. Where has this been? And I see stuff like that all the time. So Shortform's, like, great. That's where when I hear creators are, like, striking other people that do re-upload their videos or whatever, I'm, like, you're crazy.

11:28This is a funnel to your content. That's like undervaluing brand. It's undervaluing. Like if I was like, hey, I'll give you some free billboards, you know, and put them everywhere. Exactly. And you're like, no, no, no, take them down. Exactly. I love it. Clip my videos. React to my videos on your Twitch stream, your whatever stream. Clip my videos. Put it on TikTok. I don't care. Just make sure you get views. So during our conversation, Jimmy asked us, are we okay with people clipping the episode? And we said, yeah, we're fine with that. And then he encouraged everyone to clip it. People did clip it.

11:58And it showed up. everywhere. But even in that clip, he talks about how there's an opportunity to make money. Like there's not necessarily a hobby for people to clip their favorite moment and put it out on YouTube or TikTok or Instagram. There's a business to this. You can make money from other people's videos. Yeah. So I feel partially responsible for this because of that video and us, you know, saying that we're okay with it. There was a comment on this tweet that said, I'm sure Colin and Samira would be unhappy if they were still broke and someone stole their content and made thousands of dollars without giving them a single cent.

12:36Yeah. Yeah, that is true. And that is a really important consideration here. You know, I'll zoom out and say that by the time this clipping thing became big enough, yes, I felt established enough and comfortable enough with our business that I'm okay with other people clipping. But this time last year, we actually invested in an editor to help us clip. And then actually, even throughout this year, we're investing in editors to help us clip our own episodes because I was seeing that our clips were going so incredibly viral across platforms that I was like, maybe we should control that. We should be clipping and we should be responsible for these clips.

13:18What I found in this process for us was that clips were a great way to build our brand, like clips on the internet, having 10 million views of our show was a great way to build the brand of the Colin and Samir show. When we tried to clip ourselves, I really didn't have much passion for clipping. So I didn't put much into it. And we were worse at clipping than the general population of clippers. And so for me, I'm like, yeah, clip our show. That's fine because it builds the brand of our show for it to be more popular. And if it supports you in some way, that's okay with me. And that doesn't mean that you can feel totally differently if you're listening to this or watching.

14:04Yeah, totally. And a lot of people did. Yeah, I'd actually like to hear a lot of perspectives from different levels and different types of creators because I'm not suggesting my perspective is correct. I'm just saying that where we are today, I also don't think it's possible or worth our time to try and control people clipping. What are we supposed to do if we were not cool with that? What are we supposed to do with the hundreds of TikToks that got uploaded yesterday? Contact each of them individually? Yeah, it's not worth our time. We have no control over that. We have no control over that. And I don't think TikTok has content ID.

14:40Sure, I could go through the exercise on YouTube, but then you have these people putting like video game, you know, gameplay below a clip. And you're like, how do you content ID that? That's like, there's nothing you can do about that. Maybe we would have had more of a problem if we were better at clipping. If we were choosing the same clips that other people were choosing and getting less viewership, I'm sure we would be angry because we were investing in that. The reality is, I remember our destroying episode. We put out three clips. All of them did terribly. They bombed. And then we look at this other account.

15:14And we're like, how did we miss that moment where he's talking about a hundred thousand dollar check showing up at his mom's door from his ad center? And it did seven million views. And it did seven million views. How did, clearly we're doing something wrong because we totally missed that that would be an interesting clip. Yeah. My mind doesn't work like that in short form clips. And again, like my vantage point is that the more of us out there, like seven million views on us interviewing, destroying is still building the brand of the Colin and Samir show. and we know how to build a business around the Colin and Samir show.

15:46So that's what I think is a positive there. Now, I do want to play this because I did see this on TikTok. Is this, this might be from, I don't know who this is from. In the life of a$10 ,000 a month TikTok clipper. First thing I do when I get into my office is write out my daily goals. Today, I wanted to hit a million views and make$1 ,000 at least. After that, I go and sit at my desk and I pick up my phone to get started with my shift. Today, I wanted to clip Neon Stream since he's been getting a lot of views recently. First thing I do is go to his YouTube channel and start screen recording his content.

16:12Then I crop it and take it into CapCut. After doing this, I put some GTA gameplay at the bottom and use the auto-caption subtitle tool to make some subtitles for me. Then I load up my TikTok page to see how much we made. And one of my videos yesterday has made$1 ,500. Great start. Then I go and check on my employee, Dan, who also makes clips for these pages for me. He was just watching NBA, so I had to whip him back into work. So this is kind of a wild moment in time where this is like an entrepreneurial side hustle that people are suggesting, or even main hustle that you can make$10 ,000 a month screen recording other people's content, putting it into CapCut, putting GTA gameplay below it, and you can make$1 ,000 in a day doing that.

16:53Again, we're living in this world where the clips that would go viral are from creators that are big enough that they don't, it's not worth their time, right? Like streamers like Kaisenot or Neon, like they actually would prefer if they were everywhere. It is interesting, though, because, you know, someone added to this tweet, like added context using the Twitter sort of editing tool. And it reads, there is no ethical clipping. This is intellectual property theft. It is illegal under World Intellectual Property Organization treaty. This treaty applies to Twitter slash X through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

17:38And yet, at the same time, there are a lot of channels that clip. I'm looking at social media money right now on Instagram, who clips so much of our stuff and actually is hired to clip for different podcasts. But his most recent post is him holding a YouTube play button. A 100 ,000 subscriber YouTube play button, which is just so interesting. that he's rewarded the same way by the platform financially and in terms of those types of awards. Yeah, yeah. I said this to YouTube CEO Neil Mohan when we interviewed him. I said, he was talking about YouTube guidelines when it comes to clipping. And I was like, yeah, well, creator cultural guidelines are different than YouTube guidelines.

18:24And they're all really hard to enforce. Now, on this topic of what you're talking about with like this account, Social Media Money, who gets to 100 ,000 YouTube subscribers by clipping other people's podcasts. He also gets hired by other podcasts too. I think he's pitched us his service before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where he's clipped our stuff and then been like, do you want to hire me as your clipper? It's a great way to get hired. It's a good way to get hired. Now, we are joined by Content Closet creator, Tejas Halor, who's sitting at the table right now. Tejas, say hello so everyone knows your voice.

18:55Hello, hello. So one of your friends - You've been here the whole time. He's been here the whole time. I didn't know when I was going to patch him in, but here we are. I have a question for you because you're friends with Omar Raja. Omar Raja started a account called House of Highlights that grew to what? 15 million followers on Instagram? I think it's like 50 million right now. But I'm saying by the time he sold it to Bleacher Report. And the reason I bring that up is because is that any different, right? Like House of Highlights was a UGC sports clips page where he's taking content from the NBA or from other places and growing an audience and growing a business on Instagram by posting clips that he doesn't own, right?

19:36Like, is that any different from what we're talking about right now? And that is like a big success in the world of sports, House of Highlights. Absolutely. All those accounts, right? ESPN, SportsCenter, Bleach Report, they're all doing that. What I do know of this is every video that they post of a UGC, they're actually asking for permission of. Today. Today. Today. Today. All these accounts, Jerry Media, Barstool, the way they started was just by reposting. Also something we did with Lacrosse Network, right? When we first started, like how do you grow a page? You curate. You curate. You build the audience first.

20:10So like curation is a big part of the creator economy. And, you know, I think like the sports leagues had big problems with this early on because they were like, hey, what's going on? We sell media rights. Like we cannot have you just clipping and posting. But I just wonder in today's world, is it actually just for the people at the top, is it just mutually beneficial, right? Like even Emma Chamberlain's show on Spotify, it's video podcast on Spotify. It gets re-uploaded to YouTube all the time. Spotify has an exclusive deal with Emma. Do they care? Probably not because that's discovery. in their investment, right?

20:52I mean, I would imagine Spotify and especially the sports leagues had a similar feeling that you and I did of, oh, they're beating us at our own game. Right, at some point. Instead of competing with them, why don't we just join them? Or just acquire them. Yeah, I mean, let's also talk about NBA Playmakers, right? Which is a program that the NBA, I don't know if it still exists, but it was a program that the NBA did where they essentially allow a very select few YouTube channels to use NBA footage and split revenue with them. I think more stuff like that could emerge. And maybe as we start to see stuff like name, image, and likeness ID, something that we talked about in the published press recently is Metaphysic, Miles Fisher's company, that's now essentially offering name, image, and likeness protection across the internet for creators and celebrities.

21:45So then the question would be like, does our piece of content, does our interview with Emma Chamberlain have ID that then goes across all platforms, right? We are now enforced across all platforms. We're notified and we can either say we'll split revenue with you or something different. The question becomes when it gets altered, the alterations, right? Where GTA gameplay is in it or crazy subtitles, or all of a sudden it's covered in B-roll. But that's where you'd need actually name, image, voice, and likeness. it's pretty complex yeah it does get complex but in an ideal world we are making some revenue from the clips yeah right some of that revenue could be not direct revenue it could be indirect where it's just okay now you know our episode with emma has 250 000 views at this moment but the clips have over 10 million views so does that mean that more people will come to watch the full episode.

22:42Hopefully, hopefully people are aware of it and like, oh, I'm interested in watching more of this. And then again, it's beneficial to us. But yeah, I think if we were just starting out and we were struggling to make money and we made stuff that was, you know, in clips going viral, yeah, it would bother me, but you have no choice. So I think you'd have to learn. If I knew that we were not making money and someone was using our clips and making$10 ,000 a month as that TikTok suggested. That'd be hard. That would be gut-wrenching. Yeah, that'd be really hard. At the early stages of our career when we couldn't figure it out.

23:15That would be really hard. Would you two do anything like what Tyler Oliveira is doing with his videos, where at the end of his YouTube videos, he's offering people, knowing that people are going to clip it, he's offering, I think it's like$500 for the most viewed clip, as long as they put in the description, hey, YouTube, go watch YouTube Tyler Oliveira. My issue with that - I wouldn't do it. Yeah. I wouldn't do that. Is that I don't want to be taking any sort of responsibility for how other people are altering our footage. Because I don't want anyone taking a guest out of context so that it goes more viral.

23:54Yeah. And then at the end being like, go watch the full interview. And then getting to a point where the guest is upset about it. Makes sense. And we actually are the ones responsible for pushing people at scale to do that. You know what I mean? Yeah. I think one of the challenges is like for us, we make decisions not based on virality. Right. And that is confusing to a lot of people who talk to us. But we make decisions based on quality, brand, our own personal values. Right. And again, yeah, I don't want you to be incentivized to take our conversation with, you know, Emma or the AJR brothers or anyone and be like, what's the most clickbaity kind of viral moment of this?

24:40And let's amplify that out of context. I don't want that. I want people to, I want the people who want to watch our show to be ones who want to sit in the conversation for a long period of time and understand the context. So yeah, this is a moment that I don't know what happens to the short form movement. I don't know what happens. I mean, you're a big part of it. Obviously, Tejas. Not clipping. Welcome to creator support. Thank you. But Tejas, I'm saying you're producing short form content. I'm saying this is maybe a larger conversation around the incentive structure around short form content, right?

25:14What I love about short form content, I've said it on the show before, is repeatable formats like what Jack Coyne has done with Trackstar, Jack and his team at Public Opinion. But what I don't like is bespoke viral clips that are just like, how do I put something together that can go super viral? I don't think the incentive structure exists for that to even make sense. Yeah, I said something the other day where I felt like I would rather have 100 ,000 views from people who remember the video the next day than a million from people who don't remember it. Totally. And I think that applies whether it's shorts or long form.

25:54You look at what Jack is doing with Trackstar. It is this repeatable format. There's a brand to it. You remember it and you want to come back for it, even though it's only a minute long. Right, right, yeah. Right, like that's the key is can you get someone to care enough to remember it, to want to come back the next day? Tejas, why are you here in LA? I'm filming with Nickelodeon. That is the, alongside YouTube, that's the other thing I do. and so they i'm filming an episode tomorrow i had to come see the guys how did you get the gig with nickelodeon who knew it was short form short form really short form they saw so i think the way i looked at making tiktoks which i did for the past two years basically full-time um was specifically tiktoks or like shorts real like did you consider them tiktoks i would say i was creating for tiktok reposting everywhere else okay today i'm now creating for youtube i actually barely even open TikTok myself, but I kind of upload everything on TikTok anyway.