[RNCTX]

Patreon IS VERY MUCH subcontracting hosting, and quite nefariously at that.

If Patreon is charging users for access to content, Patreon is obligated to serve it to those users, which in turn means Patreon is obligated to provide the hosting. Content creators on Patreon aren't users, they are content creators. The end user is the user. The end user is the one paying the money here.

If Patreon wants to, in turn, bill content creators for that hosting that's between them and the content creators, but the end user has absolutely ZERO reason to care whether Joe Schmo YouTube influencer paid his video hosting bill.

If I am a user and I've paid for content on Patreon which disappears, my legal recourse is with Patreon, not the content creator. I didn't pay the content creator, Patreon took my money and if the videos aren't there, Patreon has failed to provide the service for which the money was paid. Whether or not the content creator has a claim against Vimeo or Patreon is immaterial to this.

This isn't rocket science, I don't know why you are struggling to figure it out. Replace "Patreon" with "Netflix". Imagine Netflix's customers paying for access to their movies and TV shows, but Netflix decides that movie producers have to pay for the hosting because they don't like the size of their AWS bills. When the movies disappear because the movie producers don't like the size of the AWS bill either, do you think Netflix would get away with keeping the money but telling their own end user "oh sorry the movie producer was supposed to pay the AWS bill for their film's downloads, but they didn't pay the hosting bill so it disappeared, not my problem."

Or if you prefer, replace "Patreon" with "Cambridge University Press." Imagine you bought a book from said book publisher's website, and it never arrives in the mail. When you inquire about where your book is, Cambridge University Press says "oh yeah we have rights to print and distribute that book, but printing presses cost a lot so we told the book author to just print them himself. If he didn't pay for the printing and send it to you, that's not our problem, piss off."

Obviously these are ridiculous scenarios, and would land Netflix and/or Cambridge University Press in their attorneys' offices to take a look at the claims filed against them bright and early tomorrow morning if they tried to do such things.