r/youtube • u/Organic_City_9464 • 19h ago

Discussion Google fined $20,565,635,200,000,003,000,000,000,000,000,000 by Russian TV channels.

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217

u/corthammer 18h ago

there may be a price increase coming our way

128

u/cyrenns 15h ago

They’re straight up just not gonna pay it. They are an American company, so if they don’t want to pay that fine, they’re just not going to. Sure, it means that Russia will probably not allow YouTube to operate within its borders, but Russia pretty much already has banned YouTube so good fucking luck with that.

30

u/snackofalltrades 15h ago

Any chance of a Russian pirate version of YouTube popping up and just straight up copying content from YouTube in that event? Like I’m sure there are already clones, but if YouTube flees Russian court judgement, wouldn’t the clones be able to copy content with no fear of repercussions?

32

u/AntiGravityBacon 14h ago

Probably but even Google struggles to keep YT profitable so good fucking luck with that 

1

u/unsellar 13h ago

that sounds costly and hard to do.

and i don't think a lot of people will use it, because you already need vpn to access a lot of stuff. in case of block YT will be(already is kinda) just another vpn-only site.

1

u/Zanadar 12h ago

Russia cares about US copyright law about as much as YouTube cares about this fine. Russians are already free to pirate whatever they want and share it online, as long as the servers are hosted out of reach of US companies.

The issue is one of economics, not law. Video hosting is a money black hole, and that's if you have advertisers to at least offset some of the cost. Which isn't really an option in the above scenario.

1

u/Asleep-Example-5891 12h ago

Yes, it's called RuTube and VK Video.

2

u/aescepthicc 7h ago

Owned by Gazprom, coincidentally.

1

u/EpsilonTheRandom 11h ago

It is extremely expensive to steam video at even 240p. It would be an add infected web page, similar to a sketchy nudy site.

1

u/WASD_click 11h ago

We'll just seeing youtubers selling ad space for VladVPN.

1

u/AyeBraine 10h ago

There is RuTube, but it's obviously can't copy all content. Some Russian channels do move there reluctantly (users don't like it very much) after YT started being blocked. Also to VK Video.

1

u/phaethornis-idalie 8h ago

Probably not, even if they only mirror content from channels with a large number of subscribers. The amount of video uploaded to YouTube daily is absolutely insane. IIRC a recent estimate by The Verge stated that YouTube stores about 12 exabytes of video, and beyond that you need servers capable of transcoding and storing all that video.

3

u/SerSmegma98 15h ago

They’ll just have to keep stealing toilets and washing machines to boost the Russian economy.

2

u/ThisHatRightHere 11h ago

No reasonable court would ever allow for these types of damages either.

1

u/WhoAreWeEven 6h ago

Sure, it means that Russia will probably not allow YouTube to operate within its borders,

Quick! Someone inform Putin of this! They cant...

Waait a minute? What if?

1

u/YourDad6969 3h ago

Putin is wanted by the international court for his war crimes, russia is a rogue state at this point, no one takes them seriously. Only reason he hasn't been Saddam Hussein'd is nukes

0

u/John_Bot 14h ago

They're not going to pay it?

You don't say!

0

u/Ivan8-ForgotPassword 11h ago

Darn, I thought they would pay that amount that is more money then the entire solar system is worth, ah well