My video, a fly-by of the Lancaster Bomber at the Sunderland Air Show 2012, had the music "The Dam Busters March" playing throughout. The link being, of course, that the Lancaster was used by the real dam busters and used famously in the film of the same name. I did not add this music: it was playing while the video was being recorded.
Within hours of uploading the video I received a copyright notice via e-mail, and had to defend my use of the audio track. There are a few concerns with this that I will highlight in a moment.
My argument was that the movie "The Dam Busters" was actually released in 1955, and under U.K. copyright law the theme to this film is now in the public domain.
YouTube listened. Actually, YouTube have nothing to do with it. The faceless corporation making the claim agreed, and removed said claim.
This is nice, and everything, but if I hadn't bothered to do the research then my video would have been silenced.
- Why do I need to do the research? The people claiming to own the copyrights should know that they have no claim! Claiming that they do is an offence.
- How often does this occur? Are companies creating false claims all the time in order to drive people to their websites to increase revenue?
- Why are YouTube letting this happen? It seems anyone can make a copyright claim, and this certainly isn't the first time that this has occurred.
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