Did Mark Zuckerberg steal Richard's Books?

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Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde.

And me, Richard Osman.

Hello, Marina.

How are you, Richard?

Yeah, I'm all right.

I'm not too bad.

How are you?

I'm not too bad, thank you.

I'm not too bad.

We've got a full banquet to discuss today.

Have we just...

Can I fill in a couple of things before we do that?

Firstly, on our bonus episode when we were talking about the Bee Gees walking out on Clive Anderson, I said that Barry Gibb had had been walking up and down outside Clive Anderson's dressing room, punching his fist into his hand.

It was Robin Gibb.

It was Robin Gibb doing that, not Barry.

It's a great episode, that, if you haven't heard it.

Also, when we talked about Will Smith and the Wolverhampton Halls, he's playing,

and you suggested maybe we do a sitcom because he's playing there.

Joe Pasquale is playing there.

Jeremy Kyle is playing there.

Dara O'Breen wrote in to say if it helps Marina's sitcom, the Wolverhampton Halls dressing rooms are the only ones in the country that have inbuilt saunas.

Oh my god, well that's a location.

That's a hit, isn't it?

That interior sauna.

Right, I'm already thinking about this.

Great.

Okay, well, I'll keep you posted on how it's progressing as a development project.

This week, what are we talking about?

We are talking about...

We're talking about LibGen and Meta.

LibGen is a database, pirated database of many, many books, millions, that has been...

basically at wholesale scraped by in order to train meta as ai llama 3.

Have meta stolen from us all?

We'll talk about that.

We're going to talk about Last One Laughing, which is a hit for Amazon Prime.

Finally, a comedy entertainment hit on streaming.

Does this change everything?

It just might.

And it's a terrific show as well.

We're going to talk all about that.

And about Million Dollar Secret, which has done a similar thing for Netflix as well.

And we're also going to talk about YouTubers

being brought in by streamers or

channels and whether or not they do bring their audiences,

whether YouTubers are saving TV.

Beast Games, The Sidemen had a show inside on Netflix, and I have seen episode one of an absolutely cursed thing about Jake and Logan Paul called Paul American that is on Macs.

You can't watch it in the UK yet, but allow me to have watched it for you.

Let's talk first, shall we, about Meta, which owns Facebook and what have you.

First of all, The Atlantic, who had a pretty good week.

Yes,

they were the guys who were on the

signal chat.

They were added to the signal chat.

But what they also did was publish a search tool that allows authors to see whether their works, or their books, or even their research papers, are on something called Library Genesis, shortened to LibGen.

It is a

pirated website of 7.5 million books and 81 million stolen research papers.

Yes, it basically comes out of Russia.

Everyone knows that it existed.

If your books are ever pirated in other countries, which they often are, this is often the source, LibGen.

They've been sued a number of times.

They've never paid a penny because it's very hard to work out exactly who they are where they are so it is definitively an illegal operation and it holds copyrighted versions of lots and lots and lots and lots of books and if you've ever written anything at all you can put your name go to the atlantic article which is great and you can put your name in and see if your book is in there now listen that happens there's all sorts of pirate operations out there anytime you do anything in television in film anything someone's going to pirate it however this site was then used by people who possibly shouldn't use it well by meta now there is a case proceeding through the american courts which was brought by um sarah silverman tanahese coates um andrew sean greer and a handful of others they believed that their work had been used in an unauthorized fashion you know basically the copyright had been breached in order to train Llama 3 which is Meta's AI.

Good name for AI by the way, Llama 3.

I will give them that.

I will stand up in court and admit Llama 3 is a good name.

Throw them one bone.

So, you know, if you want to be legally watertight, LibGen have stolen, and Meta have used those stolen goods.

And there's one other website that also, which is called Annie's Archive, which is a very similar thing to LibGen.

It's got most of the same works on it.

And they've used both.

And again, they've been sued McMillan have sued them before and not made any money because they just

go into hiding.

So lots of people are stealing here.

Well, there's a memo cited in this filing

in which a reference to an escalation to MZ.

Now, some suggest this could be Mark Zuckerberg.

So if it's not him, I don't know.

Then wow, everyone's trying to find MZ who did this.

Apparently,

they say

it's quicker and cheaper, and books are much more important than data, just stuff that's available on the web.

So this is the point.

So why are they stealing books?

And the thing is, they're not stealing books so they can do a copy of your book.

They are at the point where...

They can do is what's happening and they will do, but what they were basically saying is we've got to train Llama 3.

And the best way to do that is via prose, and that's via prose from as you say from articles, from books, from all sorts of things.

And they've started looking into licensing these things from publishers.

That's the first thing they did.

They said, oh, look, there's all these books.

Let's look at how expensive that might be, how easy that might be.

And in all these internal communications, it becomes apparent that it is not particularly cheap and it's not particularly easy.

In the communication, someone says, look, it is really, really important for Meta to get these books ASAP.

another person on the email chain said look I've spoken to publishers and this seems unreasonably expensive it said and also so sorry you've had to pay for something and also incredibly slow so that's the situation they were in and so they're going well what do we do and then someone with the initials m z we don't know who it is but certainly escalated to a man with initials or could be a lady

it could be uh has apparently has has then given the go-ahead to scrape libgen which as we say is a deeply deeply, deeply illegal website.

And there are even people saying on these email chains, torrenting on my company laptop feels a bit wrong.

But it's like, don't worry, MZ, whoever he may be, whoever he may be, might be, or she could be, has approved this.

Clearly, this has occurred.

And Meta are now saying, oh, it's fair use.

Now, fair use is a sort of technical term.

They say that anyone uses, you know, authors are influenced by others, authors all the time.

Whatever Lama 3 does with this is going to transform the work so it will become something new in the same way that you know you're influenced by a midsummer night's dream, but you're not actually stealing Shakespeare, which is another reminder that these are the worst people in the world.

Yeah, because by the way, what they're saying, by the way, is true.

I mean, you can, if you know, I can read an Ian Rankin novel and write a Ian Rankin novel.

You know, I would never do it as well as him, but I can ape it in the same way that he could do the same to me.

That's all doable.

You can't copyright an idea.

If you want to write a book about four pensioners in a retirement home, you know, solving murders, you absolutely can.

You can do it.

You can't copyright an idea.

You can't copyright a vibe.

But what you can do is copyright the texture of your book.

Okay, that's what you can do.

And that's what everyone does.

Are all your books on this web?

Oh my god, all of them.

Every single one is on libjection.

Every single British one.

Mine are as well.

Everybody's books.

You'd have been gutted if they weren't.

If you put your name like it, oh.

Everybody's books are on there.

And also the foreign language versions are on there.

There's the Danish version there, the German version, the Catalan.

I mean, there's lots and lots of versions.

There's even even like when zandra and i used to do point this christmas cash in books even even they are there um i'm glad that they've been using to train uh ai so the argument is i have a copyright in my book if you want to quote my book other than in a review if you want to quote my book or use a chunk of my book or use the artwork of the book or anything like that you ask my agent if it's for a charity or something we'll just say yes and you can have it but we have to say yes we have to have permission and if it's for commercial use we'll say yes or no and we'll then charge you.

Now, Meta have taken the copyright and the text of my books and of everyone else's books.

They have not asked,

if they had asked, I would have said no.

They have not paid, definitely, and they are doing it definitively.

I mean it's absolutely out of the question.

They've done it for their own commercial gain.

Well that's what's interesting because actually copyright theft or copyright breach or whatever is generally a civil matter.

But it becomes a criminal matter if it's large scale and the material in our country, in the UK, and the material is used in business with the intent to profit.

Then it can become a criminal offence, supposedly punishable by up to 10 years in prison or an unlimited fine.

And that's under something called the Digital Economy Act.

I'll tell you what, whoever, we don't know who MZ is in this email chamber, whoever that person is must be worried.

There is a police intellectual property crime unit

within the Met.

Actually, they sit in the City of London Police.

And they have an ongoing operation which is called Operation Creative, which is about the theft of creative copyright.

People are being stolen from.

And we should say again that

you, J.K.

Rowling, people like that, you're not representative of authors.

Most authors work incredibly hard for very small amounts of money.

I can't remember what they say the average author makes.

About £7,000 a year.

About £7,000 a year, I was going to say.

They've pulled their heart and soul into these things and they are being stolen.

Basically stolen.

And we can see that they're being stolen.

It's off an illegal website.

and they haven't asked, they haven't asked permission and they've done this.

Now, it seems to me when I hear things like, you know, I know I keep coming back to this, but when I hear the culture secretary give an interview about Gino DiCampo, what about giving an interview about this?

It's like there's been a break-in at the houses of all the most famous authors.

And by the way, tons of

lives on your street, yeah.

Every single person.

And they have done this.

Now, the trouble is, is that the government, you know, they're trying to relax laws in this very way.

And because they're going to say that they want there to be an exception for text and data mining.

Peter Kyle, the technology secretary, says that

this would really help and we're not going to move forward with AI unless we allow this.

And obviously, masses of creators were opposed to this.

And the console perception period ends.

And it seems they're going in one direction.

I have to say, after this, I mean, where are they?

This is a genuinely awful thing to have happened.

Yeah, I agree.

And listen, I get it.

If I'm a government, I get it because you have to attract as much AI money as possible.

It's not going away.

It's not going anywhere.

If you're Meta, which has got a market capitalization of over a trillion dollars,

I get that you have to keep up with the other AI companies.

Those magnificent seven companies, they literally, virtually every single gain in the stock market in the US and the UK last year came from AI-related companies.

This is an absolute train.

And Chris Lahane, who is the, I think he's

the global affairs chief of open AI, who are also not blameless in this, but we're concentrating on Meta for now.

He said, well, no, look, you sort of have to let us do this because, you know, the Chinese are doing it and the Russians are doing it.

So, you know, you're going to have autocrats stealing your stuff or us.

Well, it's a lot of people.

And he did it.

And people were very upset when they felt that DeepSeek had copied

it.

They were really upset about it.

It's like, oh, my God, did someone scrape your work without permission?

I can't bear it for you.

I get all of it.

I absolutely understand all of it.

I understand why culturally it's happening.

I understand for business reasons why it's happening so anytime you mention this at all it gets obfuscated by a million people coming in and saying yes but yes but yeah you know but people can copy people and you know we do have to get on with ai so forget all of that not interested in any argument at all around it because there's a million arguments we can have and a million brilliant things that ai is going to do so i'm not interested in any of it what i'm interested in is that meta and there's an email chain that said it said we want to have books it is expensive and time-consuming to do so.

And they then scraped copyrighted works from lots and lots and lots of British and American authors, but let's worry about British people for now.

Listen, if Meta have been unlucky, I apologise to them if this is just a mere misunderstanding.

But it really, really, really looks like you've scraped stolen material.

There are greater crimes in the world as well.

You don't need to tell me that.

That's absolutely fine, but we're an entertainment podcast and we're talking about books.

And in the world of books and in the world of authors, and there doesn't seem currently to be any redress for that, and there should be.

Are you going to do something?

Are you going to, are you going to

know what to do?

Could you do?

I know.

Because you could spend your entire life taking meta to court.

And I mean,

this is the culture we currently live in.

In that people can sort of do whatever they want if they have enough size and enough scale and are then brazen enough to say, no, no, no, no, it's fine what we did.

No, no, sorry, you've misunderstood what we've done.

They've done it now.

They've done it.

They've done it now.

That's the trouble with all of these things is that, you know, you can't sort of remove the inputs because it's done and it's trained.

and you know they're doing it to lots of other industries by the way but as i say we're an entertainment podcast so it's it's it's interesting to talk about this specific example of what they've done what are we to do and it feels like there's absolutely nothing we can do it feels like there's going to be no recourse at all harper collins they were offered two thousand pound for a three-year license to ai their works and some authors took them and i don't blame i i would take that money they're not looking for most books because they want to copy books they're looking for books because they want their language model to be good and books tends to be the best place to find good prose you You know, that's what they're doing.

And if you can make some money out of it, then make some money out of it.

Please, God, make some money out of it, because most of us are going to not make a single penny.

By the way, I do understand, you know, you've you've you've got to be on the AI train, but you mustn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

And that's why occasionally you d you do have to as creativists just say, no, look, we do get it and we want as much AI money in the UK as we possibly can, and you know, it's going to decimate so many of what we currently know as the the creative industries, but it's also going to create other interesting creative industries and we'd rather that was in the uk than it was elsewhere so i absolutely understand it the society of authors has put together a letter which i've signed i never sign open letters but this i just thought yeah listen we've all been uh robbed from uh and kazu ishiguru uh signed the letter so i thought well if kazu ishiguri signed a letter then uh i'm gonna sign it as well but what can they do what can any of us do apart from try and put a bit of pressure on the government but i just the case that's proceeding through the u.cours is significant and clearly it's only because of discovery during that case that we know about this.

Would you consider being part of a sort of class action here?

Yeah, yeah, of course.

You've signed an open letter now.

That's the thing.

I signed an open letter.

I'll do anything now.

But what's the end game?

You know, they are not going to pay a significant amount of copyright money to

half a million different authors.

You know, that's not going to happen.

So what is it that we can do?

You know, I would be comfortable if

we were able to sue and get a very, very large amount of money which goes into some sort of trust, some sort of charitable trust, and, you know, work for authors and work for the, you know, people trying to get into the publishing industry, you know, something,

some big kind of amount of money that could do some good.

But yeah, watch this space and, you know, anyone who is interested, you know, do get in touch with us.

But it feels like an impossible task, I would say.

But, yeah, you know, just like someone who goes into a bank with a gun and steals a load of money.

I mean, that's what someone had done.

I'm aware that copyright theft is is different to bank robbery.

I'm using it as a hypothetical example.

Let's chase the bank robbers.

And, you know, listen, I'm very, very comfortable with late stage capitalism.

You know, always have been.

I mean, that's, you know,

my whole life has been spent, you know, working in places where there's IP and there's copyright and all that stuff.

And I've exploited my own stuff, you know, many times.

So I'm happy to do it.

I understand how people do it.

I understand how the industry works.

I get all of that stuff.

Well, we have got something celebratory you'll be glad to hear

complimentary after the break.

Should we go to some advertisements?

Yeah, let's do that.

Come on, capitalism.

Do your best.

This episode is brought to you by Sky, where you can watch unmissable shows, which includes the new season of the multiple Emmy Award-winning Hacks starring Gene Smart and Hannah Einbinder.

We love Hacks so much.

Absolutely love it.

I'm so looking forward to this new series.

For people who don't know Hacks, Marina, talk us through it a little bit.

It's focused on the relationship between the older comedian who's played by Gene Smart, Deborah Vance, who's one of those real old showbiz troopers.

She plays Vegas.

She sort of does residency.

she's sort of, yeah, almost like a Joan Riversy type character, old school.

She's the boomer, and Hannah Einbend is a kind of Gen Zero.

It's really interesting on the stuff between the ages.

Yeah, so she plays Ava Daniels, who's essentially becomes Deborah Vance's writer.

So she writes for very cool things.

She's also been cancelled for a joke at the start.

So we start in the culture war and we continue in it.

But what I love about the show particularly is the absolute reverence for comedy and the graft and the craft of it, and what a tough kind of man's world it remains, definitely, definitely.

And so, how hard it is to be a woman in that male-dominated industry.

Yeah, amazing on Showbiz, amazing on comedy, amazing on the industry, but also just the relationship between the two of them is a really lovely generational sort of thing.

It's like a sitcom thing.

It's very dramatic, but a lot of comedy in there as well.

They've got some terrific guest stars in this season.

They've got Helen Hunt, Tony Goldwyn, Eric Balfour, and obviously the returning cast who are peerless.

Yep, the mix of comedy and drama is spot on.

You can watch season four of the Emmy Award-winning hacks right now on Sky.

Welcome back, everybody.

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I'd love to celebrate something which is something of a hit for Amazon Coin.

Last one laughing.

Last one laughing.

The world of comedy entertainment has been absolutely eviscerated recently.

It's one of the areas that's absolutely disappeared.

And, you know, panel shows, those sorts of things have absolutely gone.

And Amazon launched Last One Laughing, and yet it is a palpable hit.

It's a format where essentially you must not laugh.

Jimmy Carl.

They put a selection of comedians, and by the way, the cast list is incredible.

Yeah, it's great.

In a sort of studio house, as it were, for this, we'll come to this bit because this is genius, for honestly like half a day.

Yes, and they've got six episodes

out of this.

And the point is not to laugh.

And they have to do various turns.

They're involved in various challenges.

And they're not allowed to laugh at each other.

And this is extremely difficult because people like Bob Mortimer.

I mean, these are people.

Lou Sanders.

They just can't not be funny.

What's wonderful about it, actually?

First of all, you're right.

It's a new way of using comedians in a way that we haven't seen before.

throws up all these pairings that you haven't seen before.

I mean, I would now take a Richard Iowadi and Bob Mortimer buddy anything.

Couldn't be a cop show.

Just whatever they want to put them in together.

It's absolutely brilliant.

But this is based on a format that's been around a long time right it's been really successful all around the world's a show originally it was called it was it was so in the moment it's called last one laughing uh it originally had the title hitoshi matsumoto presents documental which uh they changed the title for the uk uh when it said from the japanese for the japanese so that that's a japanese show the format very very similar funny people six hours a few tasks a few challenges last one who doesn't laugh wins it has been enormously successful around the world this show it's become last one laughing in australia and canada and ireland and all sorts of places in 23 23 territories but um amazon prime decide to do the uk version of it and it's definitely a punt you know there's been all sorts of these shows that have that have come out and done nothing but the top 10 in streaming this week is all uh it's four episodes of adolescence and six episodes of last one laughing there might be a reacher in there as well but it's an antidote to to um adolescence i would say it's one of those shows that in certain territories has not worked at all and in certain territories italy is is a very good example it's huge and in and in the uk it's become huge as well.

And that all comes down to how well it is made.

This one is just so beautifully put together.

It's made by Zeppatron and

Initial.

And Zeppatron and some of the gang there, Ruth Phillips, Chris Cohen, Richard Cohen, who've made Cats Does Countdown, Would I Light Two, those shows, they know what they're doing.

They're trusted by this group of people, which is why you've got such a great cast.

This cast is absolutely A-list.

It is.

So Jimmy Carr is hosting with Racing Connotty.

And they've gone for the rather likable, silly side of comedy, people who actually are funny in normal, everyday conversation, and people who they know can make each other laugh as well.

It's sort of amazing because actually the circuit can be so hateful.

Yes.

And they all really love and respect each other.

But imagine, they think, oh my God, you're going to be such a problem because I'm just not going to be able to keep a straight face.

There's wonderful things all the way through where Bob Mortimer will start a conversation with Lou Sanders saying and Lou has to walk away

because she knows he's trying to...

Yeah.

Because they're all trying to get each other to laugh all the all the way through but what happens when you get a very smart production company like um zeppatron and initial who make it and what happens um amazon prime's head of unscripted cat lynch as well is also knows how to make these shows so what you get is just little things if you watch the irish version it's graham norton hosts it and again it's a great show but he is by himself and the first two episodes no one gets knocked out so it's just graham sitting there so by having a eurovision chat exactly having to having two presenters immediately they can can be laughing all the way through and chatting.

Loads and loads of format points which aren't in other ones, the head-to-heads, which are which are particularly brutal in terms of

making people laugh.

Can I just say, it is so gripping this, by the way.

You feel like you're actually watching, like a lot of these things, like a lot of unscripted programming, you end up feeling when it works well that you're watching something with the structure of a drama.

Because you are watching, waiting for Denoumans, you're waiting, you know, like, can Richard Iowade be broken?

Yes, yes, you know, know and so you're waiting to see it it that's what works really really well and it is a real antidote to

i suppose you know the kind of criticism at the end of so many panel shows and all that sort of thing is that there's a smugness it may be studio laughter maybe it's whatever and obviously there's none of that here so it's a real it feels very different very paired back in a completely odd way yeah it's very very funny and there are moments as soon as someone gets knocked out or gets given a yellow card if you laugh once you get a yellow card if you laugh twice you get a red card and in those moments where people have been given the cards, all bets are off.

And so they are chatting and laughing.

So, you know, when the game is not on, they can laugh.

So you can see how much in normal life they would be laughing at each other.

And then the second the green buzzer goes and they're on again, you just see like Rob Beckett almost like swallowing his tongue.

Rob Beckett almost completely shuts down in this because he just gets to the point where he goes, I cannot engage with anybody here.

And the producers are very, very good at forcing people to engage.

And there's a you can play a joker at any time, and your joker is you put on a performance.

You bring your little suitcase of tricks.

Yes, exactly.

And everyone has to sit and watch.

You're not allowed to turn away.

You have to watch.

And Bob's and Joe Wilkinson's

are especially brilliant.

About the NI or

an LI.

I can't actually not laugh just thinking about it.

But that's the other thing, is that it is in a very modern way, it is incredibly suited to going viral.

That these little moments that can be clipped and put on social media, which I have seen all week.

That I think is very interesting.

The other thing I will say is

maybe it's just me, maybe it's places I walked, maybe it's buses I saw.

I've never seen an ad spend like it.

Seriously, I was there's a really cursed travelator under the ground at Waterloo Station and I went on it twice in a week.

And the entire travelator all down the side is massive pictures of every single person's head.

And it was the last one laughing.

I was like, wow.

My children were like, oh my God, I've seen so much advertising for this on YouTube.

Everyone had to go to the show.

And by the way,

advertising is meaningless if you don't have a good show.

Oh, no.

Yeah, but they've really gone all out.

It's amazing.

People know that this thing is happening.

The virality of it, the natural virality of those moments is sort of perfect.

But can we go back again to the fact that it's basically six hours?

They're all in there for six hours and they've got six episodes out of it.

It's amazing.

I mean, that's the dream because if you look up Big Brother or something, you've got to be

in a house for kind of 10 weeks or something.

Yeah,

it's six hours.

It's 52 cameras.

So it's not a cheap setup.

There's 52 cameras in there.

I was talking to Ruth Phillips and Cat Lynch about the show and how they put it together.

There are spotters in the gallery.

There are 10 spotters for each of the contestants.

And the job of the spotter is literally, they've got a camera trained on their contestant the entire way through just to see if somebody just walks into a corner and starts laughing.

So they've got these people doing that, but it's, you know, everyone working on it is a traditional, proper comedy entertainment

production person, and there's been so little workaround.

And so to have this and to have it as a hit, and to have comedy really, really working on streaming is such a treat for everybody.

And with a show that is so big-hearted, and so good-natured, and so silly, and so uncynical, and it's not sort of pranks or, you know, people being mean to each other.

It's just a lovely, big, dumb, silly show.

But yeah, listen,

I feel like it costs a lot of money.

I'll say that, not just in marketing.

You can see, and also that caliber of talent,

that's not coming cheap either.

No.

But, you know,

they only have to be there for a day.

They'll definitely have a season two.

I mean, yeah, I mean, without doubt.

And I'm already looking forward to it.

I couldn't, I just, when I watch it, I would be laughing within a second.

The minute Bob Mortimer walks through that door, they everyone's just like, oh no,

they're like, God, here we go.

But, you know, they, they, again, they cast it very well.

They made sure that various people had their absolute nemesis there.

It's lovely.

All of those, you can see.

And they all have a very different comic energy.

It does make you really think about the business and how people, I mean, she's got such a chaotic energy.

I've been on her podcast.

I absolutely love you, Lusanda.

She knows this.

And it's such a chaotic energy that it's very, very difficult to deal with.

So really interesting to see if script, if formatted entertainment can really start working on the streamers.

It's worked a lot in the form of dating.

So dating shows have been very, very popular on streamers, but less so in the world of formatted entertainment.

Netflix have also got Million Dollar Secret out this week.

Again, it's a bunch of people.

They all go to a really beautiful villa on a huge lake in Canada.

It's gorgeous.

And one of them, they all go to their rooms, they will open up a trunk, and one of them's got a million dollars in there.

And essentially, it's who ends up with that million dollars.

So it's got that kind of Traitors vibe.

People say it's a rip-off of Traitors, but

Fortune Hotel.

It's very similar to that.

But to all of those people, I say genuinely that The Traitors is a format.

Every single company in Britain had a version of The Traitors and has done for 10 or 15 years.

It's the oldest format.

in the world.

Every production

office, yeah, everyone plays it.

Everyone goes, how can we do this as a series?

So when Traitors is a hit, everyone's gone, well, should we re-pitch that thing?

We've had for years and years and years.

And so they haven't actually, Million Dollar Secret has a couple of things which the Traitors doesn't have.

For example, the person who's got the million has to perform certain tasks during the day.

So there are clues.

But yeah, Last One Laughing and Million Dollar Secret, I thought, great.

You know, both ideas coming out of the UK, both employing lots of UK talent as well.

And, you know, hopefully

it means there are sunnier uplands ahead.

But I would recommend both.

I mean, certainly for a laugh, Last One laughing is really, and you can really watch it with the kids, you watch it with the family.

It's just proper old school silly.

So congratulations to everyone involved in that.

Now, should we wind up talking about YouTubers on TV?

There is that sense that

in order for streamers or any form of more conventional broadcast to kind of not lose out to YouTube, they've got to sort of import the stars of a completely different medium, really,

and give them shows.

And we've obviously seen Mr.

Beast's Beast Games, which was for Prime, which was the biggest prize ever, and they're bringing it back.

It's going to be three times the prize money.

Yeah, secretly, not as big a hit as they say.

Well, that's really interesting.

Let's come to that.

Okay, there's Max, HBO Max, is their sort of streamer, have got something called Paul American, that's Jake and Logan Paul, that I've seen some advanced copies of.

It's now out in the US.

It's so accursed and awful.

Talk us through it.

It's a sort of supposedly a kind of fly-on-the-wall documentary about their lives or whatever it is.

You know, they keep calling it controversial.

They keep telling you what it is.

We're the testosterone

Kardashians.

We are America.

It's so controlled by the creator and the front person.

And they're telling you what it is.

There's never a moment.

There's sort of a...

It's the exact opposite of Last One Laughing, which is actually funny people in a room together wondering what's going to happen.

next.

There are moments where you think, I would love to know, can we stick with this?

And any good documentary would have stuck with it.

There's a point where they say about their own children, Jake and Logan Paul, you know, there's more to life than marketing your kids.

And their parents, who are also in the documentary, say, no, there's not.

And you're like, oh, I'd like to sort of, but we don't explore it.

Of course not.

Jake's girlfriend keeps telling him he's being his character.

And I thought, oh, that's interesting.

No.

Yeah.

Don't be interested by it because you're not going to go anywhere with it.

You're going to have to wait 20 years for that documentary.

Yeah.

Yes.

And I should think it'll be very dark.

The Sidemen as well, who have a hugely successful YouTube channel and they do lots of things.

They do sort of spoof game shows.

They're from the UK, the Side Men.

They're from the UK, the Sidemen.

They include, I don't want to say musician, KSI after the last effort.

So I think I'll just have to call it, yeah, YouTube boxer, KSI.

Yeah, Britain's got talent judge, KSI.

Yeah.

Anyway, they met via sort of multiplayer group.

They started, you know, they moved into a mansion.

They started on Grand Theft Auto, right?

They were like a little social group.

Yeah, they were on a social multiplayer group for Grand Theft Auto, one of those rock star groups.

And they met that way.

And now they do.

They actually recently, you know, they sold out Wembley again to do their charity football match not so long ago.

But the reason we're talking about them in this particular segment is because they had Inside, which is a sort of version of Big Brother.

Everything these people produce as well is incredibly derivative.

In the way that Mr.

Beast thing was for just so based on Squid Games, it did well for Netflix.

Actually, I don't want to say that it did too well.

It did okay.

But there is this sort of thing, and rather like Beast Games, which you alluded to, Beast Games was the idea that, you know, this is the man with the more,

he's a million miles ahead of anyone.

And if we get him on our platform, then all his followers will come.

Now, the trouble with Amazon is that we never really, they call it like a date dote because we don't know what counts for Amazon views.

But we do know some things.

There's a very good guy who writes about things like this called Entertainment Strategy guy.

He's got a stub stack.

I recommend following him if you're interested.

He's very interesting.

He said, what do we actually know about?

We know that they'll tell you how quickly it got to a certain number of views.

So we can compare, like with like on Amazon's release data.

So we know Red One, that rock Christmas movie, got to 50 million viewers.

We don't know what a view is, but we know whatever it got to 50 million of them in three days.

They'll tell you which territories it's number one in.

And by the way, if you spent that much money on a TV show and spent that much, but you would

expect to be number one you would expect to be number one in in most territories in the world.

So Red One got to 50 million views, whatever a view is, in three days.

Fallout got to 65 million views in 16 days.

Beast Games got to 50 million in 26 days.

Now, that is interesting.

That doesn't, you know, this is not like, you know, this is not like Fallout or Reach of this show.

It's just a kind of what my children will call pretty mid.

It sits in the middle of things that Amazon Prime may.

It's not, you know, it's not a flop, of course, it's not, but it's not very, very expensive.

Enormously expensive.

Now, so the idea that YouTubers can save TV TV, I think is you just, people are saying sort of, oh, pay me according to my YouTube numbers.

Now, that's starting to look a bit stupid.

Why should we?

Because when you come to our platform, it doesn't mean that you bring all these supposed 350 million.

In fact, what it is making people do is say, well, can you explain to me YouTube's numbers actually now?

And so people are saying, what is a view?

It's not a complete watch.

What does it count?

How much of it is AI scraping the content?

They think a huge amount of YouTube views is AI scraping it.

Like entertainment strategy guy, if he wants to,

he tried to break down recently something when they say, okay, if they say, oh, it's got a million views,

and sometimes that's put against like American broadcasting and said oh my god this has got X million views it's so much more popular than something that's on NBC last night well he said okay if it says it's a million views 500k would be international so it doesn't even count 250k of them are bots

125k of them maybe watched a clip only maximum 125k people watched it all the way through even if it's a short thing so we don't really know what these things mean but just putting these people on to your more conventional form of content delivery, you know, your streamer or

the PSBs, you can't compare it, and they don't bring 350 million subscribers or whatever people thought missing.

Well, that's it.

That's that's you know, the proof is in the pudding, and you're always looking to try and bring audiences to your platform, always, always, always, or to your format.

And if it works, it'll work.

And there will definitely be YouTube talent who go to streamers or go to terrestrial broadcasters who make great television and become stars for many years to come because it's just a different way of bringing people through.

But yeah, as you say, I've yet to see it expand either the fan base of the YouTuber or expand the fan base of the platform.

They seem to be quite discreet units, those two things.

When YouTubers are taking the money, I don't think they're that bothered about being on those platforms, but the money they're being offered is so completely ridiculous because it's that thing when someone doesn't understand something, they get frightened by it and offer it a lot of money.

Yeah.

Because then maybe it will come, maybe it will

bring bring them some magic.

You never know.

And also, there's a lot of people in your organisation who need to have meetings with people in other organisations, and eventually something happens in one of those meetings and it ends up on TV.

See, sidemen have done all sorts of things.

They've used they've done the wheel, they've done the chase, and so you know, those companies will let the sidemen come in and film, and you know, which feels like it should work for both groups of people.

I don't think the sidemen doing the wheel has particularly done a lot for the wheel.

If you know what I mean, it probably did something for the sideben, so it's certainly

expensive.

There's all sorts of things going on now.

They just did supermarket sweep as well.

So, if you're a Fremantle or these companies have got lots of IP,

you're sort of going to team up with this gang.

But at the moment, the big sort of breakthrough thing, in the same way that last one, Laughing has really broken through this week.

And Mr.

Beast sort of broke through, but only because

by brute force,

it's hard to see the thing, the thing that's organically come out of youtube uh and has succeeded on a platform that isn't youtube they don't need to um succeed on a platform that isn't youtube that's the weird thing

youtube is is the biggest platform of them all but there's something terrestrial about streaming that that that youtubers want it gives them some sort of i think it gives them money honestly i feel like they don't care that much about it and i think they're very exposed when they go on it because people actually look at what they're doing then and then they say oh this is so derivative it's not good there's a way of being on camera that works on YouTube.

But when you see it, they're so knowing.

They're so aware of the camera.

Adam Curtis always says that when he's looking for sort of documentary footage, he says, almost anything after the invention of the smartphone is now completely useless because

people are so aware of their life being a performance.

So you never sort of catch people unawares any longer.

They were fun on, you know, the sign in the weirdest is very perfectly watchable.

It's perfectly watchable.

It's interesting.

Beast games never troubled what they call the interest charts, where people search for TV shows that they've heard about and they want to know.

And it's a way of kind of monitoring buzz, I guess, about certain things.

Everyone who knew about it knew about it immediately.

Yeah, they knew about it immediately.

Maybe they persuaded their parents to subscribe to Amazon if they didn't already, but they didn't bring in like these unbelievable numbers of subscribers.

They'll stay in business.

There's a season two of it because why would you not?

Everything corporation, they're the biggest company in the world and they've got plenty of money and it doesn't really matter.

But it's not like Fallout or Reacher or any of their really big shows.

It's just sort of bubbling along somewhere in the middle.

It's not really like Last One Laughing.

No.

You know?

I have got a recommendation.

Oh, great.

Yeah.

It's Graydon Carter.

He's the former editor of Vanity Fair.

It's a memoir called When They Got His Memoir of sort of being a brilliant magazine editor, When the Going Was Good.

Like we you talk about 90s money.

It's really

this is when magazines ruled the world, okay?

And got something that went viral the other week was

there was a sort of preview of it by a guy called Brian Burrow who wrote a book called Barbarians at the Gate and various other things.

He explained that, he said, I don't know if I'm revealing any house secrets here, but it was a point when I was on the payroll and I was required to produce three stories a year and I was paid £498,000 a year.

It's like, sorry.

What?

And that was Vanity Fair, right?

He was on that.

Anyway, but Graydon Carter is

a brilliant raconteur of his own life.

And, you know, you just do so many things.

You come in contact with so many things.

He starts things.

He starts a Vanity Fair Oscar's party all these kind of mad stunts it's it's a real yarn of a of a lost world and that's you know it's it's sad that it's that lost world

of magazines the money used to be in magazines because that's where all the advertising was and that's where all the eyeballs are and you know that's why amazon can now spend all of this money on mr beast because that's where all that money's gone yep it's all there and there'll be the sidemen in 20 years time will be doing an anecdote about getting paid you know four hundred and ninety five thousand dollars a year for doing two viral videos.

Reading one Kit Kat.

Yeah.

What's the name of the book again?

When the Going Was Good.

When the Going Was Good.

Graydon Carter.

Graydon Carter.

Marina, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Question and answer one on the...

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