YouTube Changes Copyright Monetization Policy

YouTube is changing its copyright enforcement policies around music to help create a healthier ecosystem for YouTube creators and rights holders. Copyright owners will no longer be able to monetize creator videos with very short or unintentional uses of music via YouTube’s “Manual Claiming” tool. Instead, they may stop monetizing of the video or block the content from the platform.

This is an important change by YouTube. Effectively removing the ability for a third party to monetize a youTube video containing a small amount of copyrighted work. In the past, many YouTubers have had 2-hour videos claimed over under 10 seconds of copyrighted music. The rights holder in these cases would often claim the revenue from the entire youTube video.

Some YouTubers like TheFatRat who creates electronic dance music have had songs they owned claimed by others. This change by YouTube will make it much harder for third parties to steal, content monetization outright. And it may also reduce the number of copyright claims where fair use would likely be raised as a defense.

As YouTube stated in the blog post announcing this change “One concerning trend we’ve seen is aggressive manual claiming of very short music clips used in monetized videos. These claims can feel particularly unfair, as they transfer all revenue from the creator to the claimant, regardless of the amount of music claimed,”

Claims created by the Content ID match system, are not impacted by this policy. The most egregious abuses of the YouTube copyright system are likely to come from manual copyright claims, however, and we at DCC think this is a positive development.  Read the full YouTube announcement.

Even more YouTube Copyright News

YouTube is going after an alleged copyright troll using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s (DMCA) provisions, alleging that Christopher Brady used false copyright strikes to extort YouTube creators, harming the company in the process. Now, YouTube is suing Brady, using the DMCA’s provisions against fraudulent take down claims, seeking compensatory damages and an injunction against future fraudulent claims.

The lawsuit, first spotted by Adweek reporter Shoshana Wodinsky, alleges that Brady sent multiple complaints claiming that a couple of Minecraft gaming YouTubers — “Kenzo” and “ObbyRaidz” — infringed on his copyrighted material in January. (Their legal names were not listed in the lawsuit.) YouTube removed the videos that Brady claimed were infringing on his copyrighted material, as the company does whenever a claim is submitted. Full Story on TheVerge

Welcoming The New Era

YouTube’s copyright system has been the wild west for some time. Originally the abuse was creators posting copyrighted works in ways that couldn’t be defended as anything other than piracy. Now, it’s turned to companies using the YouTube copyright system to pad revenues and silence critics, often by ignoring fair use.  Some have have used the copyright system to remove valid criticism by filing false take downs.

Thanks to Landon at Strange Little Onion for sending the news tip.

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