Anyone who has been wasting time reading my drivel on this blog will know that I have been somewhat irritated by the lack of response from YouTube regarding spurious copyright claims on videos. I had given up for a while but felt that I simply couldn't let them get away with it!
Anyone else who has found their way here might be familiar with the copyright claims being slapped on their own videos, and how annoying that can be.
Copyright claims can have the following effects:
You are unable to monetise your video, or have to share the monetisation with the claimant.
You are forced to have adverts show on your videos when you don't want them.
You may struggle to upgrade your channel to include certain features, such as live broadcasts.
Your video(s) may be blocked altogether in certain regions.
To my delight and amazement I discovered that a fair bit of work has gone into solving the issue:
Could it be that easy?
Certainly looks like it!
YouTube have, rather quietly, introduced this "Remove a Song" tool to remove the music from your videos without affecting the rest of the audio.
So now we just hit "Save" and let the gremlins cast their magic.
And when the processing is finished...
Success! Well, almost. One video failed.
But let's not forget what has happened here: YouTube have managed to remove the music from the video without affecting the rest of the audio. It's very impressive and not something I would know how to do myself. My planned solution was to simply mute parts of the track, but now that isn't necessary. Yes, one failed, but the service is still in beta. Hopefully this will be one of the features that remains on YouTube. Some other features have quietly come and gone with time.
Of course if you want to do covers of songs then removing the music probably isn't an option. But that's up to you. In that case you may be able to share the advertising revenue, or simply be given permission from the copyright owner.
My videos no longer have copyright claims against them. Hurrah!
I have had to do a lot of research on this damned problem to fight the copyright claims on my videos, which I really shouldn't have to do. They don't even receive that many hits but the lack of response pissed me off. I think I have found an answer on how these wallies came to their conclusion.
This is somewhat crucial to my story: my video, Sunderland Airshow 2012, was of course recorded in 2012, which was seven years after the expiration of the copyright, under the old rules, on The Dam Busters March, which appears in the video. Presumably this was overlooked by the original claimant in my story.
The general idea behind the Directive is that recording artists aren't paid for long enough for their work and they should be paid for even longer. The texts leading up to, and included in, the Directive suggest that this will help poorer performers receive adequate compensation for their work, whereas nobody really cares how hard-up the millionaires think that they are. The E.U. have, at times, been criticised for making some rather ridiculous suggestions and recommendations, some of which end up being law. I'll let you decide if this one is a sensible one or not....
....I digress.
The Directive wouldn't have affected me at all if it was not applied retroactively. From the rather in-depth Impact Assessment:
It appears that a partially retro-active extension, with a specific cut off date, would be the simplest solution as regards the legal and administrative aspects and would bring the most benefit to right holders from the start.
The Impact Assessment explains what it means by the term partially retro-active but it could be inferred that I am affected by this.
I certainly don't know enough about law to give any kind of in-depth analysis of what this all means, but I did wonder if this did not violate Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights (codified in U.K. law under the Human Rights Act 1998):
No one shall be held guilty of any criminal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a criminal offence under national or international law at the time when it was committed.
I would suggest that the E.C.H.R. only applies to government bodies, though there have been a number of high-profile cases in the U.K. in which the E.C.H.R. has been deemed to apply to businesses (mainly the press). Crucially, though, Article 7 states that it applies to criminal offences, and any legal matters arising from my circumstances would almost definitely fall under civil law. Indeed, there was no criminal act or intent (not on my behalf anyway).
So there we go. Not very technical but it almost concludes the story so I thought I should share.
After writing that I realised that YouTube, in fact, don't even get involved. Their Content ID system finds a match, and a copyright claim is automatically triggered by the system on behalf of whoever claims to own the copyright, even when they don't.
The result being that they then start receiving revenue for your video.
Now, if you're idiotic enough to steal another person's copyrighted material then that's your tough luck, but if the person making the claim in the first place has no claim at all then they're effectively stealing from you, and that is a criminal offence.
I'm sure YouTube users are familiar with the blanket copyright notices that are sent whenever music is added to a video.
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?
