it has emerged on Do Androids Dance that SoundCloud has apparently granted Universal Music Group (one of the "big three" record labels alongside Warner and Sony) the right to remove content that it believes infringes its copyrights, without any involvement from SoundCloud itself in the process at all. 

Same as Youtube then, my opinion is not to trust any website with a commercial interest.

If it ends up with .com and offers some kind of premium account or monetization of content, you know they will end up fucking you in some hole one day.

I don't expect anything from them, Soundcloud included, if they turn stupid like Youtube is right now, fine, I'll find another website, or make one myself.

Wait, what does YouTube do wrong?

- Forcing you to monetize your videos if you want to use all the integrated editing tools

- changing the suggestion to what you have already seen, or are supposed to like according to them, instead of showing new/trending videos

- chasing hard all video makers who uses any little ounce of copyrighted material even if they do it for journalism / constructive criticism / original art production except... if they already famous, monetized and so already gives enough money to YT for them to accept the complaints of copyright owners.

- forcing ads with time limits before you can skip (thanks Higgs, there's AdBlock)

I can think of more if you want but it's time for bed here.

I see. You're right that those are all questionable tactics. Is Vimeo better? Is anyone better?

Vimeo *seems* to be really interested in original artistic production, when YT is mainly interested in mass culture producers who will bring lot of views to the platform.

So yeah, for me they seem to be better. But you can never trust an organization with a commercial interest.

What happen very very sadly very very often on the web, is that little students start awesome projects with awesome ideas, very opened, very pro original content.

And then one day the website skyrockets, and becomes financially extremely interesting.

Creator becomes greedy, or isn't interested anymore and sells the project to a major company.

And that's when all the users get it in the ass: add invasion, freemium systems, content restrictions, copyright nazism, private information marketing etc...

I'm a bit worried with imgur, I know Yahoo already tried to bought them for a couple of billions.

I hope Alan will resist the big money.

I see your points. It's sad how things go.

Here is Alan's intention...

https:[email protected]/startup-growth-at-imgur-374c80a06862

...so you tell me.

Apparently he seems to be willing to make it a successful company by himself and not selling which is reassuring.

It's also reassuring to have an actual maker (programmer, engineer) leading the company and not a guy with "business managing" diplomas/background who never produced any single concrete thing in his professional life.

Lot of high-tech companies are doing bad and will end terribly wrong because they are now being led by business men who have no idea how to do the bottom core job of the company and who only look at financial results. A good example of a powerful shit manufacturing company is Electronic Arts in video games.

____________________

| Q: Can I create a Medium account if I don’t want to sign up with Facebook or Twitter.

| A: No.

Sigh...

Yeah, that's weird of Medium.

I'm still not sure about Imgur. They did take a $40 million investment so there's that.