According to the Wall Street Journal, Ray William Johnson may be the first YouTube millionaire that isn’t already a famous musician.
Under the name RayWJ, the 30-year-old now has 1.5 billion views of his videos on YouTube, and is expected to be bringing in about $1 million per year from YouTube’s ad revenue share and from sales of his merchandise.
Johnson is famous for ranting about other videos (somewhat like the shows “The Soup” or “Tosh.0″) and for bringing in famous comedians to guest star in videos. The viral star’s twice-weekly show averages around 10 million views per week.
Because of his popularity, RayWJ is a YouTube partner that makes somewhere between $3000 and $9000 per every 2 million views.
For now, Johnson still calls his videos a “hobby.”
Result for: musician
The German top court has ruled this week that Internet users must password-protect their Wi-Fi, or face a fine if someone accesses their connection and then downloads music or movies illegally.
Those with unsecured connections face up to a 100 euro fine if “a third party takes advantage” and is then caught doing so.
“Private users are obligated to check whether their wireless connection is adequately secured to the danger of unauthorized third parties abusing it to commit copyright violation,” reads the court decision.
With that being said, the court did say the users were not responsible for the illegal content downloaded by those accessing their unsecured connections.
Additionally, the court said users would only be expected to add a password when they first set up their router, and not need to constantly update to the latest protections as they become available.
The ruling followed a lawsuit filed by a musician who sued an individual user for illegally downloading his music. The user proved he was away on vacation when the music was downloaded, but did admit he had unsecured Wi-Fi.
Result for: musician
Rock star Bono, of the group U2 made some interesting quotes today, in regards to illegal file sharing and the music and movie industries.
“The only thing protecting the movie and TV industries from the fate that has befallen music and indeed the newspaper business is the size of the files,” says Bono, adding that in just a few years, bandwidth will be so abundant, and connections so fast that entire movies can be downloaded in under a minute, regardless of size.
“A decade’s worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators — in this case, the young, fledgling songwriters who can’t live off ticket and T-shirt sales like the least sympathetic among us,” he added.
Bono does believe that Internet content can be tracked, and cited the US’ effort to stop child pornography as well as China’s to suppress online gaming and pornography.
“Perhaps movie moguls will succeed where musicians and their moguls have failed so far, and rally America to defend the most creative economy in the world, where music, film, TV and video games help to account for nearly four percent of gross domestic product,” Bono concluded.
