I arise again!!!
At least for a little while.
So as of late (since January) I’ve been, together with a good friend, working on some short films (all under 20 minutes) mostly to waste free time on the weekend. This is shitty, 0€ budget and no equipment kind of film stuff, it’s really just to waste time.
This post is to describe my experience with motherfucking Youtube’s “Content ID” thingie.
So, first time…
I upload a video and go to bed, I wake up the next morning turn the computer on check my e-mail and “*something something* Dance all Day”, imagine MFW all the music I used was CC-BY and the music they named was not even in the video, well I tracked down the music they named, listened to it and yes, it does sound like one of the tracks I used…for the first 30 seconds, 30 seconds that are a stock loop on some music making software (it is, I checked with the guy who made the one I used, forgot to ask exactly which music software he used), the one I used was also released two years before the one they claim copyright on (and they are definitely not the same music).
Oh well, mistakes happen, especially on tracks that share the same loops and it is an automated “scanner” that does all the work, so I simply let it be…well, YouTube not giving me a “counter claim” option that read “I did not use your shitty music” also played a part on simply letting it be.
This was maybe a month ago, today, I wake up, check the e-mail and… “*something something* GoDigital MG”, same short film, except it flagged my “Director’s Cut” version, this time claiming copyrights on a Public Domain music I got from MusOpen (Air on the G string, performed by the US air force band), well at least this time it complains about a music that I actually used on the video…that’s a start.
A quick googling and:
1- I was not the first person getting that warning for that same music by that same entity (GoDigital MG).
2- GoDigital MG seems to love claiming copyright on public domain stuff…from what I read, even on original stuff.
Oh, neither GoDigital MG nor Dance all Day give you any way to answer back, except Youtube’s counter claim options…which are mostly invalid (out of 7 options, 5 basically tell you “No, that does not give you the right to use it” the other two are “This shit is public domain” and “I have the license to use it”)
I couldn’t use any of the options…in the Air on the G String case, “This shit is public domain” does say that all the content on the video must be public domain, I used both P.D., CC-BY music and my own original content, so it isn’t.
On the other case, I could think about using “I have the license to use it”, but I don’t…well, I have for the music I used as it is CC-BY and I credited the artist, but I don’t for the music they claimed…mostly because it’s not on the video, there’s something that sounds like it for 30 seconds.
If, it seems, the “Content ID” system is abused by copyright trolls 100% of the time (my experience, both warnings were wrong, one music was P.D. the other wasn’t even there) why isn’t there a tighter control by youtube/google on those claims?
Easy answer…YouTube is in it for the money! The copyright trolls get to run ads on the videos if they choose to, YouTube gets a certain % of the ad income (not sure how much, heard it was 15%).
Well copyright trolls/youtube, you, my friends, have messed with the wrong guy!!! Why? Simple…my videos get at most 30 views, the ad income of that is probably less than the bandwidth cost of serving the ads and streaming the video.
That is all.
Signed, a disgruntled youtube user who is careful enough to only use CC-BY/Public Domain music on his videos specifically to avoid this kind of shit and still has to put up with it anyway because the whole copyright system is completely crazy and extremely easy to abuse.