@NotTheDr01ds okay, thanks! :)

What's wrong with this guy? He has converted a huge number of threads from various SE sites (AU and U&L included) to videos. Text videos! Like they are literally the text of the questions and answers. He also begs for patreon support. Is this legal?

I just had this question in the reviews. I passed, as it well worded, a relatively rich context is provided, and OP lists the solution attempts that he/she has already tried. However, most of the question is lumped into a single paragraph.

While breaking it up might improve readability, it seems readable as-is. I wasn't sure whether or not to edit just to break it up. I was hoping to get some advice on the matter from some more experienced AUers. Any suggestions?

@BeastOfCaerbannog wow! At least he gives credit, I guess? Could be seen as free promotion? Not sure if fair use under the guise of 'educational' applies here..

@NateT @BeastOfCaerbannog has just done a great job of breaking it up into paragraphs :)

@BeastOfCaerbannog :/

Awesome. Wasn't sure. Next time I'll know. Thanks to you both.

@NateT Indeed it seems like an OK question with quite a bit of information provided, and rightfully should be approved. You are right thinking that it could benefit from splitting the text to multiple paragraphs. As a matter of fact, I edited to do just that (along with some other small fixes). I broke the text up to one paragraph detailing the OS's setup, one where the problem is stated, and one that shows what the OP has tried to solve their problem.

@NateT all good! thanks for reviewing

@NateT It seems that the license covers him.

Also, I suppose that he's created a crawler or something that takes the text of Q&A's and then he automatically converts them to videos. It doesn't seem humanly possible to me to upload all this content in just a couple of days.

I didn't notice the timeline! Just rewatched it. It's the same intro in every video. As you said, the whole thing could be automated. I'm curious to see how much he has this time next month. Maybe we should all just give up SE and sub to this guy! /s ... /s/s

Or maybe it is just pre-filler until he gets his own content up. We once had a local radio station play back-to-back "Tie Me Kangaroo Down" for 3 weeks straight while they prepared for launch. I couldn't stop listening. I was disappointed when they finally launched.

lol

@BeastOfCaerbannog AU and U&L do not own the copyrights to any Questions and answers that appear on these sites. These copyrights are owned by the people who wrote them. The people who wrote the questions and answers might be able to sue the guy, if the could find him. He is welcome to anything I have written. Free software, free information, it's all the same to me.

Why don't you try to sue him? Maybe AU will sponsor the suit and you can make big bucks.

@C.S.Cameron by posting on SE sites we give them a nice creative commons license which allows other people to copy / redistribute the information provided attribution is given in the proper manner

@C.S.Cameron Obviously I'm not against free software and free information, otherwise I wouldn't be active here. I asked if it's legal because I wasn't aware of the license. As it seems what he does is perfectly legal, but, in my opinion, also unethical, as he (ab)uses multiple websites, not for sharing information or trying to help in his own way, but to upload content to YouTube with the absolutely minimum effort in order to find patreons to support him financially.

@C.S.Cameron I don't think that this kind of irony is polite, be it against me or anyone else. And it's neither the first time that such irony from you is directed against me. We don't know each other and we are more or less here for the same purpose, to help people, so I would request that you try to contain the irony.

@BeastOfCaerbannog yeah... videos can be more accessible than SE posts for some folks, but what's the point of making videos of text

@Zanna Exactly.

Videos are continuously uploaded BTW. I don't know if YouTube has a restriction in that.

@C.S.Cameron I think it would be great if you would try to assume good intent behind things people say. Such assumptions are often correct, and even when wrong, can have good effects :)

@BeastOfCaerbannog wow... what a waste of energy

@Zanna Yeah. :(

I think that this kind of behavior is actually spam. I will report it as such.

makes sense

I reported it. I will update if I have any news.

:)

:)

@C.S.Cameron "AU will sponsor the suit" 😂😂 I don't think that will happen..

@BeastOfCaerbannog reported the channel in YouTube or reported this issue to SE?

@RandomPerson In YouTube.

I will try to clarify the issue about the licence. The content in Ask Ubuntu/SE is licensed under CC BY-SA. BY means attribution and SA means share-alike. This means that when someone else uses your content, credit must be given to the creator and adaptations of the work must be shared under the same terms (i.e. CC BY-SA).

And here's the sad news:

CC BY-SA allows for commercial use.

So, people can use our content for commercial purposes :(

If our content was licensed under CC BY-NC or CC BY-NC-SA or CC BY-NC-ND, others can't use our content for commercial purposes.

For more information about the licences, check this:

creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses

@BeastOfCaerbannog oh.. OK.

@BeastOfCaerbannog I can't understand how the person managed to get 24.2K subscribers..

@RandomPerson Yes. Legally the guy is covered. Ethically, at least for me, he's not, as he abuses the license and the websites, YouTube included. From what I noticed a new video gets uploaded every 10 seconds. With that amount of uploading he abuses the servers of all websites and probably the feeds of users.

@BeastOfCaerbannog yeah..

@RandomPerson When I first messaged here about him, he had 24.1K.

@BeastOfCaerbannog what the heck? Then bots are subscribing to their channel I guess 🤦🏽‍♂️🤦🏽‍♂️

it's bots all the way

It's the only explanation. I mean I cannot believe that someone would watch one of his videos and then subscribe.

pretty much all the videos have zero views

and there's one more thing to look into.. the person might not be legally covered. If you check the description of the videos, the person has first mentioned the patreon link and then the attribution. So those who don't click "Show more" in the description, they will never know that this content has been taken from SE.

and the attribution links in the description are not hyperlinks 🤦🏽‍♂️🤦🏽‍♂️🤦🏽‍♂️

but the patreon link is a hyperlink

Also, does the user mention anywhere in the video about attribution?

@jokerdino These are the freshly uploaded ones. He has some videos about 2 years old with around 20k views.

@RandomPerson In the video, no.

and I don't understand why the user is thanking the StackExchange network in description🤦🏽‍♂️

@BeastOfCaerbannog 😡

@RandomPerson Everything is probably automated.

:(

Did that person use your questions/answers @BeastOfCaerbannog?

I have no idea. Even if they used them, it's not that which I'm concerned about, but the bad use of the license.

@BeastOfCaerbannog no doubt

Starboard filled with emoticons.. haha..

@BeastOfCaerbannog hmm..

@RandomPerson Looks happy! I like it!

:)

support.google.com/youtube/answer/…

what that person is doing is video spam

"Auto-generated content that computers post without regard for quality or viewer experience."

"Massively uploading content that you scraped from other creators."

Here's what we can do:

support.google.com/youtube/answer/…

indeed... that's the conclusion BeastOfCaerbannog arrived at

@Zanna In India, we have Covishield (a version of version of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine), Covaxin and Sputnik V for now. More vaccines choices will be available by the end of the year I guess.

Random quote:

When there is oppression and dictatorship, by not speaking out, we lose our dignity.

― Asma Jahangir

@RandomPerson Thanks! I hadn't read these articles, but that's exactly what I did! So anyone feel free to report the channel.