Google don't need a comprehensive plan to end false copyright claims on YouTube

There's been a lot of noise online about false copyright strikes and video takedowns on YouTube. Content creators are losing what is often their only source of income to copyright trolls who make claims on their videos, oftentimes having their channels shut down entirely.

These copyright trolls aren't overzealous white knights, protecting the rights of copyright holders. They're opportunists taking advantage of a broken system that allows them to profit from this kind of activity.

How do they profit from false copyright claims? When you make a claim on a YouTube video, from the moment you make the claim, you receive all ad revenue from the video. It doesn't matter if eventually the claim is successfully disputed, because you get to keep the money. Usually it takes so long to get a claim taken down that by the time the ad revenue starts going to the content creator, it's already past the video's most popular--and profitable--period, and the content creator's ability to profit from their work is severely reduced.

Obviously this is a serious problem that not only affects content creators, but also affects Google's ability to profit, as video makers lose confidence in their ability to make money on YouTube, and go elsewhere.

But Google don't need a comprehensive plan to deal with this problem before they take action. An action that can be taken immediately is to stop giving claimants ad revenue when they make a claim. Put the money into an account where it is held until one party or another wins the dispute. This immediately removes the profit motive for copyright trolls, and cuts Google's workload immediately, also restoring content creator's faith in YouTube.

I'm far from the first person to suggest this. I just think that this doesn't need to  be part of some sort of grand plan on the part of Google--it's something that can be done in the interim, while they figure out how to deal with this issue completely.

It's like replacing soda with water while you wait to see a nutritionist to sort out your new diet. You don't need to know exactly what you're going do in the future, but you do know it's probably part of the solution you'll come up with in the end, and will have immediate and long-term positive effects.

An incredibly late--I mean, in-depth--review of the HTC One M9

The HTC One M9 came out about three months ago, so I'm way overdue for this review. Hopefully my extended experience with the device will make this review far more useful than your average "hands-on", and mean I don't have to come back with any more updates.

On the Outside

The One M9 is a nice-looking phone. Really nice. It is, in my opinion, the best looking flagship out there right now. The photos of the different variants had me hunt down the grey variant specifically, but after denting it and getting it replaced with the silver and gold variant (my experience you can read more about here), I can safely say that of the two variants, the silver and gold is much, much nicer.

Which makes it so much more of a shame that the case I bought for the phone is so ugly. But at least I know the case will hold tight to my phone when I need it the most. The dual-body design of the phone creates a sort of lip for the case to hold onto. In order to verify for this review that the case would actually come off, I had to pry it off with a library card. Rest assured that if you buy a case, it's not just going to create more pieces for you to pick up after you drop the phone. If you do decide to go caseless, however, be sure to carry a rabbit's foot or something on your person, because if the phone lands in just the right spot, that lip is going to dent like it's made of butter. The dent in my M9 caused the screen to come loose from the enclosure, and it wouldn't pop back in as easily as it popped out.

My non-premium (and hopefully theft-deterring) case matches well with the very non-premium pocket extensions I made to my jeans in order to accommodate the phone. It's really big. HTC appears to have dedicated an extra 9mm of bezel on the bottom of the phone to accommodate a logo on the front. If they insist on having a logo on the front (in addition to the one on the back), I'd rather they print it on the bottom speaker grill and cut out all that extra bezel. Even if it means 1mm of extra thickness, the phone will still fit far better in my pocket.

I wasn't kidding about those pocket extensions.

The M9 feels fantastic in the hands, with or without a case. It's quite grippy, but if you have quite dry hands, you risk it sliding right out.

The buttons all on one side are a welcome feature--especially from a phone where I regularly turned off the screen when trying to turn up the volume--I just wish it were easier to tell them apart without looking. Maybe the SD card slot--an excellent inclusion, and a deal-breaker for many--could have been moved elsewhere to allow the volume buttons to be moved further up the phone.

The notification light is a nice feature, but not as well implemented as it could have been. It's hidden in a hole in the speaker grill, meaning you need to look at the phone at the right angle (or in the dark) to see it. There's a constant noficiation when you're charging, so it's completely useless when your phone is on charge, as it will always be orange (or green, if it's fully charged).

Like most other flagships, the HTC One M9 does have a slight camera bulge, which does change the way you put it down, if you don't have a case.

The Camera Experience

The front-facing camera on the M9 is fantastic. Really great low-light performance, making it ideal for video calls where you can't guarantee studio lighting. However the “auto makeup” feature, enabled by default, causes video taken with the front-facing camera to have out-of-sync audio. My solution was to disable this feature, since I don't use it anyway, but this could become an issue for those who do want to use the feature, as they will have to enable and disable this feature in between switching from taking photos to filming video with the front-facing camera.

The rear camera is a bit of a mixed bag at best. While it takes good enough photos to my amateur eye, it doesn't do very well at all in low-light or high-contrast situations. However there are many shooting modes, including a manual shooting mode, so this issue may be resolveable by photography hobbyists who are familiar with this kind of thing. But for the average user who just wants to point and shoot, it really isn't good enough.

Upon reviewing footage taken with the phone, the framerates vary wildly between 20 and 30 frames per second. The GSM Arena page for the M9 lists 1080p@60fps, but this is apparently not enabled by default. I believe that “Fast Full HD” is the option I need to enable to get this framerate and resolution, but this is based only on recording video with this mode enabled and noting that it was much smoother (upon examining the file with my computer, it is apparently only 40 frames per second--where are all my frames going?). The camera app itself does not give any explanation for what this feature does—or indeed, what any feature does. This is an issue that is ubiquitous in the M9's interface, and it will come up more in this review.

The M9 organizes photos in the most irritating way. Rather than organizing everything by camera used, or app used, it organizes many photos into several folders, making it a pain to keep track of how many copies of a photo you have. A selfie will end up in the “Camera shots” folder as well as the “Selfies” folder. A photo sent via Telegram will end up in the “Telegram” folder as well as the “Camera shots” folder, while a photo downloaded via Snapchat will end up in both “Snapchat” and “Pictures”. I'd rather have a folder for pictures taken with the camera, and a folder for each app that allows downloading of pictures. In my case, I'd have “Photos”, “Snapchat”, and “Telegram”. Nice and simple, and saves me deleting the same photo two or three times.

Another issue is that not all images are placed into the DCIM folder on your phone, so you have to go hunting into these weird folders in order to copy everything to your PC. Folders, that as far as I can tell, do not actually exist. Incredibly, incredibly frustrating, making photo organisation a complete mess. The solution here would be to simply organise everything into one folder, perhaps with sub-folders. There are no options to change the way that photos are organised, in the camera app or the gallery app. I'll talk later about HTC's disregard for the phone to PC experience.

Photos are dated down to the time, although videos are only dated to the year. So while you can organise your photos properly according to date, videos only have the year to go on. I'm also confused as to whether the phone needs GPS or not in order to retrieve location data about the photo. It needs GPS enabled in order to retrieve coordinates for sure, but I can't tell whether it applies location data based on IP address or cellular networks when GPS is not available.

An example of the date on a video

An example of the date on a photo

While the camera rotates whether or not auto-rotate is on, the gallery app does not, meaning that if I film a video with my phone and want to immediately review it, I have to enable auto-rotate, or I'll be looking at the video with big black bars on the top and bottom. The simple solution would be to offer a “full screen” button for the gallery app, akin to the YouTube app.

A particularly bad experience I had with the M9's camera app involved it refusing to take pictures of any kind (despite the camera working in Snapchat). I then tried the RAW capture mode, which crashed the phone. Rebooting the phone triggered an “upgrade”, and then everything worked as intended. I hope this is a one-off, because often when you're taking pictures, you can't afford to wait for your phone to restart. If this had happened during some cool show or something, I'd have been out of luck.

The Audio Experience

The microphone on the M9 is good. I've got reports of good quality at the other end of Hangouts calls, and the noise-cancelling mic works as intended. The only problem I have is when I turn my head while on a call in bed, and my voice is cancelled, but I don't think there's anything that can be done about that except to turn and face the phone.

When it comes to phone speakers, there's no competition. The M9 blows its flagship competitors out of the water with its loud and clear front-facing speakers. Gone are the days of cupping my hands over the back of my phone to make sure my friends can hear the video I'm showing them. With the multimedia functions of a phone seeing far more use than the actual phone functions, nice speakers are a necessity, and the competition is severely lacking in that regard.

The One M9 seems to have an issue with OGG audio files, high-bitrate audio files, or both; as playback of my high-bitrate OGG stutters so badly it's unlistenable. Converting my music to MP3 solved this issue, but it would be nice to be able to keep everything in my preferred format.

“HTC BoomSound with Dolby Audio” is some sort of audio ”enhancement” software that comes with the HTC One M9. For use with the speakers it has two modes—music mode, and theatre mode. Music mode appears to just leave the audio as-is. Theatre mode is a waste of time. For use with earbus, there are three modes for different kinds of HTC earbuds, a mode for “other”, and an off button. When I first listened to music on the M9, I thought “Jesus these earbubs are terrible. I should have taken my Sony pair with me.” Then I realised that “HTC BoomSound with Dolby Audio” was on, turned it off, and thought “Oh, these earbuds aren't that bad. I still should have brought my Sony pair, though.” The moral of the story is that you should turn off HTC's audio software, and that the earbuds that come with the One M9 are just okay.

YouTube cards cause the top menu and home buttons to appear on-screen during the video, which is a pain. It could be Google's problem for all I know, but somebody needs to fix it.

The Battery Life

The battery life on this phone is good. I've never reached the end of the day with zero percent, although I've come close once.

The redundant power saver notification.

The phone has two battery-saving modes: a normal power-saving mode, and an extreme one. Regular battery-saving mode has a minor but noticeable effect on performance in my use case, and a slight but noticeable effect on heat. Unfortunately, this power saving mode has a constant notification to let you know that power saving mode is on, even though you can see this in the drop-down menu anyway. This notification cannot be disabled. Extreme power-saving mode basically turns your phone into a dumbphone with a really nice screen. I used it once on the aforementioned close-call with zero percent, but I found myself turning it on and off constantly so I could take pictures of stuff I saw, so I personally will choose to carry around my external battery instead.

The Bloatware

Alas, despite its high cost, the M9 still comes with bloatware as if it were some $20 phone that needed some way to subsidise its cost.

Aside from all of HTC's own bloatware, the M9 also comes with third-party bloatware, such as Skype and Polaris Office. The original variant I purchased also came with a bunch of Telstra bloatware. The Facebook bloatware is removable; but it's the only piece of bloatware that is removable.

Bloatware is a severe disappointment. Users should not have to root their phones in order to get rid of software they don't want. And to be honest, I'm going to include most of HTC's “useful” software in the category of bloatware. If you want to give your Android phones a custom skin, fine. But I draw the line at irremovable non-stock software. One piece of software, “Zoe”, even has the cheek to offer an uninstall option that simply replaces it with the “stock version”. In other words, it's irremovable.

One perplexing piece of bloatware is “Kid Mode”. It comes with the phone, but when you click on it, it simply gives you a message assuring you that an update to Kid Mode is on its way. I personally can't wait for the update to finally come through so I can hand my $900 smartphone over to a toddler.

Sync options

Syncing is a pain in the ass on the HTC One M9. More specifically, not syncing. There are just too many options, and I have no idea what syncs to what, and it honestly feels like the phone wants to sync whether or not you want it to. I got tired of the Google Drive prompts, prompting me to sync this, that, or the other to Google Drive. Even now I have no idea what syncs to Google, what syncs to HTC, and I think something may be syncing to Samsung in there somewhere. This is seriously unnerving, especially when the same company offers data storage options (Google Drive) and data sharing options (Google+) at the same time.

I've had some serious issues with trying to connect the HTC One M9 to my computer, as well. The first variant I had simply refused. It would appear as a CD, and a prompt would appear on my phone, telling me to install HTC's sync software in order to use my phone with my PC. This meant that the only way to transfer files manually from my phone to my computer or vice-versa was to eject my SD card, insert it into the computer, do the transfer, then put the SD card back into the phone. A total pain in the ass. HTC's helpful response to this issue was to “contact Ubuntu for drivers”. Fortunately my replacement model doesn't have this issue to the same degree, but it's still sporadic as hell. Sometimes the phone appears on the computer, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it appears as a CD loaded with software, sometimes both the CD and the phone appear at the same time. Really disappointing Linux support from HTC.

The interface and stock apps

HTC's Android skin/interface is pretty bad, so I'll start with a few good points.

• 

  The always-accessible Play Store button

  The Play Store icon is permanently at the top of the app menu, making it easy to find
• You can customise the buttons at the bottom of the screen
• You can customise the drop-down menu at the top of the screen. The default setup is fine, but I chose to replace whatever “HTC Connect” is with the GPS button, so I don't have to dig through menus to enable and disable it.
• When setting an alarm, scrolling through the minutes column is super fast, and stops automatically at increments of 10, cutting down the time it takes to create an alarm.
• Double-tap to wake
• Swipe up to wake and bring up unlock screen

My main issue with the interface on the HTC One M9 is that it's just plain unintuitive. I won't hold against it the fact that I immediately swapped the keyboard for Swiftkey, since Swiftkey is pretty much the best, but the rest of the unintuitiveness doesn't stop at being not as good as Swiftkey. Buttons are completely meaningless, and never labelled, leaving me hunting for the “share” button, finding it, and asking “How the hell does that symbol represent sharing'?” Notifications appear over the top of the screen, and don't go away for something like 10 seconds, and since none of the settings in the menu have any description, I have no idea if changing it is even an option. The camera buttons have no descriptions either.

Auto-brightness is a little dodgy, and not actually representative of how much light I'm getting in the face. Sometimes I sit with a face full of sunlight, and the screen goes as dark as it can, making it impossible to read.

Notification lights set in Telegram don't appear to actually work properly, but I don't know if this is because of Telegram, HTC, or some sort of Android API issue.

One odd and annoying bug I experienced was re-setting the phone from scratch after failing to return it, and it completely ignored my “update over Wi-Fi only” setting, and completely burned through all my data right there in the mall, downloading and updating apps.

The notes app is much better than the app that came with my Samsung phone, but still leaves something to be desired. For one, it's not particularly dynamic. For example, if you want a note with a check-list, it has to be created with the check-list template. You also can't remove check boxes, for some reason. Meaning if you decide that you're not content with just ticking something off, and you want to delete it from the list, you're left with a blank box creating a ton of whitespace, and making it harder to see everything all at once.

The email app isn't very good. The inbox simply does not go back far enough for anybody to use the phone as their main way to access email. The sidebar is not a list of folders belonging to the open email account, but rather a list of recently accessed folders. In order to put folders there, you need to open them. In order to do that, you need to make an extra click on the folder icon next to your email address—an extra click in an interface that is chock full of unnecessary clicks.

One quick thing, not a big deal--the alarm noises scare the crap out of drivers. Make sure if you're about to get into a car that you turn off any alarms that might go off. They are loud and piercing.

The heat issue

I'm sure a few of you CTRL-F'd your way to this part of the article after being lead here by an internet search for “HTC One M9 overheating” because this really is the “hot” issue with this phone.

The Snapdragon 810 processor that comes with this phone has a heat issue, so the phone gets hot. All the time, doing anything. Taking pictures, using apps, listening to music, charging, turning the screen on. You name it, it makes the phone hot. The power saving mode that reduces performance does very little to reduce the heat that comes from this phone. According to HTC, it should never get “too hot to touch”, but I'd like to know how they define that. I've never received burns from the phone, but I've sure had to put it down after use.

With the heat that comes from this phone during normal use, I would be terrified to play games on it. I'm worried that I'm going to have to run a benchmark and wrap the phone in a towel to get the solder to melt back, or that the heat will rupture the battery or something.

HTC would have been better off going with the 808, which has two fewer high-power cores, but because of reduced thermal throttling, would probably perform about as well, while reducing power use and heat output.

It seems like HTC are constantly releasing updates to try and battle the heat issue, while also maintaining a balance with performance. After some it's cooler, after others it's warmer. Nobody wins either way—you either lose performance or gain heat. But I guess it won't perform as badly with a lower clock as it will thermal throttling.

With the HTC One M9, HTC have egg on their face—and they can cook it on the back of their phone.

My experience with a damaged HTC One M9

Recently I took a trip to Australia. Day one I bought an HTC One M9, as the exchange rate meant it was cheaper to buy it there than at home. Day two the phone got a dent.

A picture of the dent, taken on my S3 Mini. You can also see where the screen pops out.

First thing the next day, I returned to the Telstra store I bought it from, to see what they could do. Warranty replacement would take over a week, which wouldn't do, as I was leaving the country before then. So I asked to use their phone to contact HTC to claim this "Uh-oh" cover I'd heard about. Supposedly HTC would replace your HTC One M9 no questions asked if you broke it or got it stolen or something. So I was bright red, holding the phone to my face with both hands screaming "Uh-oh!" loudly into the handset like a toddler who just watched somebody drop a carton of eggs. The whole time I was thanking goodness that I'd never see these people again in my life.

After putting me on hold to find out why this idiot was screaming "Uh-oh!" at them, the HTC representative came back to tell me that the "Uh-oh!" promotion was only available in the United States. I really should have checked that myself, but I honestly was never planning to take advantage of it. The guy gave me the number of the HTC-authorized repairer in New Zealand, and that was about all he could do.

For the rest of the trip I was a nervous wreck, worrying about insurance and warranties--specifically worrying about dealing with warranty issues on a phone I bought outside of the country I live in.

The first thing I did when I got back into New Zealand was panic and cry like a baby. The second thing I did was call the authorized repairer to find out what to do. They told me that repair was impossible, as HTC only send out replacement parts months after the release of a phone because then they'll know what the repair volume would be like, which I personally don't think makes much sense. Not even a couple of replacement parts? The guy told me he couldn't promise anything, but if I sent the handset in, he could take a look at no cost to see if it would be covered under warranty for replacement. Just for future reference, I asked what a repair for the M8 would have cost. I was told $349. That would have eaten not only the money I saved by buying the phone on my Australia trip, but also the tax refund I got upon leaving Australia, and even then I'd still have $200-ish dollars to pay out of pocket.

The next thing I did was contact my travel insurance, who told me I may have a claim, so I jumped on their website and printed out a frightening 12-page form, which thankfully only had two pages I actually needed to fill out (seriously CoverMore--you need to break that down into more, smaller, forms). I started filling it out, but then called to find out that I needed to get a repair quote before I made the claim.

On Monday I sent the phone to the repairer via courier. On Tuesday afternoon I got a call to confirm that they could cover the phone under warranty, but that the Gunmetal Grey version I'd bought wasn't available as a replacement unit, and that I'd have to get the (in my opinion, tacky) silver with gold-trim version. I was told I could get the Gunmetal Grey version if I went with a different, Australia-based, repairer, but that it would take a lot longer. I was hesitant at first, as the whole reason I'd bought the phone from Telstra was to get--what was in my opinion--the only color worth buying. But after a quick consultation with my friend, whose reaction was "Fuck that, you're getting a case anyway," I decided to go with the silver and gold handset to save myself the headache.

On Thursday afternoon, the replacement unit arrived. It was well-packed, and with some new warranty stickers I hope I never need. The first thing I noticed about the replacement device was that the gold trim isn't really that bright, and actually doesn't look as bad as I thought it was. Under certain light, it looks silver along with the rest of the handset. After holding and using the phone for only a few moments, I wished I'd gotten the silver and gold variant in the first place. It's honestly much nicer to look at.

A horrible photo of the replacement unit, taken with my S3 Mini.

The other bonus of the replacement unit is that it is free of carrier bloatware. Instead, only HTC bloatware remains.

If you've skipped down to the end to learn about my experience, it's this: despite the annoying lack of availability of "Uh-oh!" cover in Australasia (or anywhere that isn't the USA), HTC's warranty support--at least in New Zealand--is almost perfect. I was able to do everything through their authorized repairer, without having to check in with HTC; and I got my replacement unit--albeit in a different color--within four days of shipping the damaged one. I do however worry about how my experience might have gone had I not been willing to settle for a different color handset.

Stay tuned for my full review of the HTC One M9, where I'll cover the good and the bad points of the phone, all from the perspective of an average user who had to pay for their handset and will have to stick with it for the next few years.