Role-playing game Undertale celebrated its fifth anniversary last week with an orchestral performance of the game’s soundtrack. Many tuned in for the nostalgia, and to share their favorite memories of the game.
However, for a time after the video was posted, some viewers noticed that one song from the soundtrack, “Waterfall,” had been copyright claimed by a company called TuneCore, on behalf of a YouTube channel called Osirois.
According to Osirois, this claim was unintentional, and was later removed. Osirois does not own the rights to the song, but has produced a cover of it on their channel.
Also last week, YouTube channel Literally Satan had several videos of the popular song “Baka Mitai”, from the “Yakuza” video game series, copyright claimed. However, the company claiming their videos, Believe Music, was claiming the videos fraudulently, as they do not own the rights to “Baka Mitai.”
These are just recent cases in an issue which has plagued YouTube for many years — companies fraudulently copyrighting a user’s video for a song they do not own. Sometimes, this is purposeful, but sometimes YouTube’s Content ID algorithm will improperly identify a song as belonging to someone else, and will place a copyright strike on their behalf.
When this happens, your video can be blocked in certain countries, all ad revenue can be paid to the copyright “owner” instead of the person who made the video, or the video can be blocked altogether.
If Content ID claims your video, you can dispute it. In the dispute, you are allowed to state your case as to why you believe your video falls under Fair Use or why it should not be copyrighted. Then, the company that Content ID believes “owns” your video can decide whether to drop the claim or keep it up.
If they decide to keep it up, you can dispute again, but doing this puts the video at risk of being taken down altogether, and if this happens, your channel will get a copyright strike.
If a company places a copyright strike on your video, your video will be taken down from YouTube, and you will have three options: wait 90 days for the strike to expire, contact the company that claimed your video and ask them to retract their claim or submit a counter notification. The third option is a legal one, and submitting a counter notification requires you to include your complete address and full legal name.
A video on YouTube can only have one copyright strike on it at a time, but if your channel gets three copyright strikes, your account can be deleted, your videos will be removed, and you will be unable to create new channels.
The major issue with YouTube’s copyright system is that it places the power in the hands of the company making the claim. The original poster of the video is completely powerless in the copyright system.
In two cases, YouTubers have had to resort to outrageous methods to protect their videos.
In 2018, Danny Gonzalez’s video on the Billion Surprise Toys videos was claimed by BST. They removed the claim after Gonzalez posted on his Twitter that he was “reviewing (his) legal options.”
“We are well within the rights of fair use and BST is totally abusing the system,” Gonzalez said.
In January, Ymfah released a video in which he described how to take advantage of the Content ID system: use a distribution company to automatically copyright videos using your own custom outro, then have Content ID claim your own videos so that you receive your own ad revenue. As he points out in the video, having only a small bit of copyrighted content in the video can cause your video to be claimed.
Sure, creators shouldn’t have their work stolen, and I understand that YouTube’s copyright system was put in place to prevent that sort of thing, but at this point it’s become more of a burden than a boon. When a system hurts creators so much that they need to resort to unorthodox methods to get around it, shouldn’t the system be rewritten with them in mind?
Categories: Opinion
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