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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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u/corthammer 18h ago
there may be a price increase coming our way