YouTube Finally Working to Fix Their Broken Copyright Claim System
YouTube is taking a huge step in the right direction with copyright claims made against videos on the platform. Currently, any individual or company can file a copyright claim on nearly any video on YouTube and start earning revenue on it – or worse, take the video completely down for an extended period of time. Most of this system is completely automated, leaving you to fill out forms and hope for the best. This process can last well over a month as you wait for the third party to reply, all the while the video can be monetized and the creator will earn none of it. For the YouTubers that are trying to earn a living creating content, this can cut their income off. To make matters worse, if a user receives three strikes on their channel, it will be permanently shut down.
Suffice it to say, YouTube’s copyright system is completely broken and unfortunately has been abused far too often. This has led to a ton of content creators on the platform to stand up and bring awareness to the issues that have become more prevalent over the past few years. One of the biggest issues is fair use, which is the legal use of copyrighted content for the purposes of critique, news, teaching, research, or parody, without the need for permission or payment to the copyright holder.
The Nostalgia Critic was one of many YouTubers who vocalized their opinions on how the copyright system on YouTube is broken and is being abused. In particular, his video on Fair Use details everything that is wrong with the current system. This call to action from the larger channels on YouTube seems to be finally getting YouTube on the right path. Even last year, they posted a complete writeup on their support for Fair Use explaining that they would be doing more to support it on their platform.
So with that overly verbose preface, I’ll finally get to the point. YouTube is in the process of implementing a system that places the ad revenue earned during the copyright claim period in escrow while the dispute is being processed. This means that the person or company filing the claim will not earn advertising revenue on the video unless the claim is settled in their favor. Conversely, if the YouTube creator wins, they will receive the revenue if they monetized the video. This is a long overdue process that should, in theory, reduce the number of companies that file bogus copyright claims against content that they don’t own with the purposes of earning revenue.
We’ve personally dealt with one of these “companies” a few years back, but won all of our claims. The unfortunate thing is that many channels never dispute the claim and these “companies” have been able to siphon money for something they’ve never owned nor produced.
If you would like to support fair use, you can do so by visiting this link:
https://www.takedownabuse.org/
Sources:
http://youtubecreator.blogspot.com/2016/04/improving-content-id-for-creators.html
http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2015/11/a-step-toward-protecting-fair-use-on.html
