There could be valid reasons for fighting downloaders, for example:
- AI companies scraping YT without paying YT let alone creators for training data. Imagine how many data YT has.
- YT competitors in other countries scraping YT to copy videos, especially in countries where YT is blocked. Some such companies have a function "move all my videos from YT" to promote bloggers migration.
> Like Google has been doing to the entire internet, including people’s movement, conversations, and habits… for decades?
Yes, but if you allowed to index your site (companies even spent money to make site better indexable), Google used to bring customers and AI companies bring back nothing. They are just freeloaders.
Music labels publish the music on YT in exchange for ad revenue, they won't be happy if someone would download their music for free, and making music is expensive, google how much just a single drum mic costs and you need lot of them.
YT shares income from subscriptions with music labels? I didn't hear about this, and even if they shared the download must be paid much higher than a view because after downloading a person could potentially listen for a track hundred times in a row.
Why is this being downvoted? Are people really gonna shoot the messenger and fail to why a company may be willing to protect their competitive position?
- AI companies scraping YT without paying YT let alone creators for training data. Imagine how many data YT has.
- YT competitors in other countries scraping YT to copy videos, especially in countries where YT is blocked. Some such companies have a function "move all my videos from YT" to promote bloggers migration.