YouTube is making many changes to its copyright enforcement policies on music used in creators Videos. These changes will result in an increased number of blocked videos (shorter time frame) and overall, a healthier ecosystem in the long term. The copyright owners will not be able to monetise creators videos with very short or unintentional use of music through “Manual Claiming” tool. These copyright owners will have the option to prevent other parties from monetising or blocking the content.
“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,” explained YouTube in a blog post.
To be certain, the changes only involve YouTube’s Manual Claiming tool, which is not how the majority of copyright violations are handled today. Instead, the majority of claims are created through YouTube’s Content ID match system. This system scans videos uploaded to YouTube against a database of files submitted to the site by copyright owners. Then, when a match is found, the copyright holder owner can choose to block the video or monetise it themselves, and track the video’s viewership stats.
To be more specific and make it clear; changes only involve YouTube’s manual Claiming tool, which is not how the majority of copyright claims handled. These claims are instead created through YouTube’s Content ID match system.
This Manual Claiming Tool is only offered to partners who understand how Content ID works and allows them to search through publicly available YouTube videos.
The overall issue with the Manual Claiming policy was it was hurting the creator’s monetisation even when they are using music for little time. Let’s take an example to understand; if a creator is vlogging and walked past a store that was playing a copyrighted song, his video still gets demonetised, and revenue is lost.
Creators are given tools of their own to remove the clip or replace the music with free-to-use tracks. The Manual Claiming Policy requires copyright owners to specify timestamp on the video.
“As always, the best way to avoid these issues is to not use unlicensed content in your videos, even when it’s unintentional music playing in the background,” noted YouTube.
YouTube also urged creators to utilise its resources, like the YouTube Audio Library, and to read YouTube’s dispute process policies before uploading content that the creator believes is a copyright exception due to Fair Use.
YouTube says the changes will apply to all new manual claims, starting in mid-September.
Once enforcement begins, copyright owners who repeatedly fail to adhere to the policies will lose access to the Manual Claiming tool.
🥁New today
A policy preventing Copyright owners from making $ on manual claims for:
🎵Short song clips (ex: 5 sec of a song)
🎵Unintentional audio (ex:🎶from passing cars)Claimants can still block monetization or the video itself, but timestamps help you edit out the claim.
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) August 15, 2019
The response from the creator community, not surprisingly, has been positive as many creators thanked YouTube for listening to them.
