“Royalty-Free” Music Supplied by YouTube Results in Mass Video Demonetization
torrentfreak.com
torrentfreak.com
Basically, I recorded myself playing a song that was written 133 years ago, whose composer died 118 years ago.
The copyright claim is that I used a melody owned by ASCAP, ICE_CS. But the melody is long in public domain. It is impossible for this melody to be copyrighted. (Also, just to cover the bases of "what if...", I want to clarify that the melody has been correctly identified as the melody written (and published) 133 years ago.)
And yet, they have claimed copyright on my music and monitized it. I, on the other hand, can't monitize it at all because my channel is very small.
This is theft.
It's theft and someone should be criminally prosecuted.
You gave them the video and they said they do not want the video -- for whatever reason. You don't have a right to upload content to YouTube. You do have a right to your property, your video and music you've created. They didn't take it from you. They aren't making money on it and not paying you. You don't have a right to force YouTube to display and distribute that content on their website.
Imagine if Columbia records was forced to distribute any and all music sent to it on a demo tape. Columbia saying, "No, we won't distribute this" is not theft.
Columbia would be within their rights to say, "Your music sounds too much like Taylor Swift to us. Sorry. It's too big of a risk for us to distribute it."
That's exactly what YouTube is doing. They are saying, your music is too much of a risk for us to distribute based on our algorithms.
You can still go to Vimeo or soundcloud or build your own website to distribute your music, just like the aforementioned artist that sounds too much like Taylor Swift could go to Arista or upload it to youtube or or soundcloud.
ed: You’ve edited your comment but I was referring more to the GP case where they say
> And yet, they have claimed copyright on my music and monitized it.
That is exactly Youtube making money on the video and not paying the owner
>And yet, they have claimed copyright on my music and monitized it.
By "they," I think he meant: ASCAP, ICE_CS, not YouTube. The problem is that ASCAP, ICE_CS has claimed copyright to something, which they are right to do and that is their performance of the public domain work. Since it sounds like the same work that the GP uploaded, the GP's music was locked.
I am no fan of YouTube's profiting off copyrighted material, I think it's unethical, and in this instance I do not believe that is what they are doing. I believe they have written algorithms to prevent copyright infringement and it is over-fitting on the GP's works.
The GP said they are "claiming copyright on my music" but I don't see any evidence for that. I do see evidence that ASCAP, ICE_CS claim copyright on their performance of the same music as the GP.
Yes, the solution is to have a person in there to be smarter than the AI, but YouTube has said it's not worth it to them to do that and so I believe that is their right.
In this case, the GP's claim is that ASCAP, ICE_CS is doing something wrong, but I don't think that is the case. I think everyone here is doing something right and a bad thing has come from that.
Theft is wrong. There is no wrongdoing here.
Yes, I agree, if ASCAP, ICE_CS laid claim to the GP's work, then that needs to be fixed. I would suggest any money paid to ASCAP, ICE_CS for that video be returned to the GP, with interest paid by ASCAP, ICE_CS and perhaps some punitive damages so they don't make the same "mistake" again.
To be fair, or give the benefit of the doubt, this could be a Hanlon's Razor scenario where ASCAP, ICE_CS just doesn't understand how to do it right. Or they could be too heavy handed in which case the punitive damages should soften their hand.
Arbitrarily cutting off people's livelihoods is completely unacceptable. It should be innocent till proven guilty. The burden of proof should be on the one making allegations.
It's not only a copyright infringement for the one making the video, it's one for Youtube too for sharing it.
It still is, Youtube isn't forced to remove the content or sharing the monetization. They just prefer this to the alternative of being responsible for sharing that content.
What's needed is laws that absolve Youtube of copyright infringement outside of the content they produce themselves, and instead shift the blame to the content owner.
We'll get Youtube's attention and rich people will get civil forfeiture laws repealed.
(Which does not excuse YT or the claimant in the least for this BS)
It seem ridiculous that (it seems) the Youtube provided royalty free tracks aren't explicitly stored in the Content ID system as un-claimable songs. It would probably require modifications to privilege those matches before others but if you can't even count on music provided by YT I don't see how any creator could feel safe using any music in their work.
https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/7299936
https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/7100415?hl=en
Their support is so bad they literally stole $75m from their own customers while support repeatedly said checks were coming and it was nobody's job to fix it until they were being sued.
https://marketingland.com/class-action-lawsuit-accuses-googl...
Isn't that protected use anyway?
1. False Positive -- Video is brought down despite it being technically legal. Creator is mad, but YouTube suffers no more liability.
2. False Negative -- Big corporate lawyers sue YouTube for hundreds of trillions of dollars for copyright infringement. Also, these corporate lawyers would very much prefer it if you didn't believe in fair use at all. They will try to convince the court that fair use isn't a thing for weird technical reasons, and they might succeed.
So naturally the system is tuned to error on the side of generating excessive false positives. Unfortunately the enforcement side doesn't seem to understand how bad the false positive problem is and hits creators with draconian punishments for errors on YouTube's part.
Solution: Create a law that makes it possible for the creator to sue YouTube for a false positive for the same sum that a media company could sue YouTube for for a false negative. This would counterbalance the scales of both types of errors.
I can understand tuning the detection algorithm but to balance the dispute process needs to take this into account. The fact that it doesn't shows where Youtube stands on the issue.
Remember, these are the people who sued individual Napster users for $1.9 million for sharing a single album, and won.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42580523
> A musician who made a 10-hour long video of continuous white noise - indistinct electronic hissing - has said five copyright infringement claims have been made against him.
If you believe in music copyrights at all, this looks like an open and shut case of infringement to me. Plus "Dreams" is a godawful piece of music.
That said, YouTube represented this as safe to use, so it seems to me that the onus should be on them to work out a license and pay the associated costs. I'm sure Google can find enough change in their couch pillows to pay off the rightsholders.
There are some that truly don't believe that sampling copyrights should be a thing. They think it's just a way to stifle creativity. One could also argue that Dreams is so completely derivative that is bears little to no resemblance to the original recording it samples, and as such does not infringe on any intellectual property.
> Plus "Dreams" is a godawful piece of music
You opinions on a piece have no legal bearing on what does or does not constitute copyright infringement. The comment was completely unnecessary and uncalled for.
That's why I said "if".
> One could also argue that Dreams is so completely derivative that is bears little to no resemblance to the original recording
That's not what "derivative" means.
> You opinions on a piece have no legal bearing on what does or does not constitute copyright infringement.
Maybe not, but in light of your general point about "stifling creativity", it might be worth pointing out that this is hardly a good piece to highlight said creativity.
This is the crux of the issue... As someone who's dabbled in video creation, I have other things to do than look around for "safe" music to use. If I can't even take YouTube's own word on what music I can use, what the hell is there left?
Then fair use isn't always considered too, like if you were walking and a little bit of music was picked up in the background of your vlog, say maybe from a car driving by blasting loud music.
I know with the DMCA there's legal penalties for filing false ones, but Content ID isn't considered a DMCA, so why it doesn't count as a strike unless you disputed it and then the company can then create a DMCA actually reviewing. Really feel like automated technology for policing isn't really ready yet, even flaws in red light cameras.
> I own the copyright and will use an automated system to spam massive amounts of complaints to anything that even remotely looks like my content without even thinking about whether it's fair use
> sending these complaints costs nothing for me and require lengthy appeals and manual review for the affected party who will likely face reductions in revenue in the mean time
> if someone successfully appeals the complaint I'll just send it again until they tire of it because I suffer no consequences
If the regime had to pay for false-positives then there could be balance. Who has the power to pressure youtube to be better?
In a world where distribution is free and frictionless the only thing to create and manage is scarcity.
For example, how exactly do you catch videos using copyrighted material and deal with disputes when thousands of hours of video are uploaded every hour? Doing this manually is likely infeasible. But algorithms are error-prone, as YouTube exemplifies very well. Or how exactly do you stand up to these massive billion-dollar media companies without going bankrupt during your first court case? Which (I think) is why YouTube currently simply goes along with whatever these companies demand.
Criticizing YouTube is easy. What is hard is coming up with better solutions that could actually be implemented in whatever YouTube could potentially be replaced with.
I would argue if they can't responsibly handle it then perhaps they just shouldn't be doing it. They want to have their cake, and eat it too while passing the negative outcomes on to everyone else. Maybe videos shouldn't be public the moment they're uploaded to allow for adequate review, since they clearly have trouble as is. There's a solution.
Anonymous, encrypted, censorship-resistant peer-to-peer networks.
Think torrenting + youtube + blockchain had a baby.
also: friendly reminder that peertube exists.