But if I make a video that is 90% all my material, and 10% a clip from a film with it's soundtrack changed, why should the owner of the film clip get all the revenue? Also, what if I use two clips owned by different companies, and they both claim all the revenue?
Marc Cawood Both TYT and Liberal Viewer are using copyrighted content for review or commentary, which falls under Fair Use, so no claim can be made against them.
There is so much content out there both online and off, much of it with a less than savory level of quality, and there are only so many minutes in a day. But I always make time to watch, read, or listen to anything sent out into the universe by John and Hank. Why? Because no other individual in my life, has such had such an impact on my education. The things we learn and come to understand thanks to the vlogbrothers and all their various projects, really enhance and inspire my life. So, thank you Green brothers. DFTBA... I want to win the lottery so that I can just hand it over to the two of you so that more projects, and experiences and whatnot could be funded.
This video, along with the one you did on Hankschannel, should be required viewing for anyone even THINKING of starting a TH-cam channel (along with those of us who already have one). Extremely informative, and very helpful. Thanks yet again.
The problem is when those companies abuse the power TH-cam has given them. I sometimes use LYRICS (not a recording, not a video but lyrics) to analyze them in a video and it gets content ID matched. And when I dispute it, the dispute is rejected. When I appeal that rejection the publishing company then releases the claim so that the appeal disappears, and then claims the video again. This has happened multiple times. And there's nothing I can do because TH-cam is almost unreachable to channels of my size, which companies know, so they do it and get away with it.
I still think that if the person wins the rights to their video back the person who falsely got money from a falsely flagged video should need to pay the other person back all the money that they did lose :/
So a machine with access to all the media ever created by mankind is perpetually observing every TH-cam video in existence? ...am I the only one freaking out about this?
***** Also, yeah, it amazes me, but we are one step away from having robot lawyers view humans as "copyright violations" and eliminate us Ultron-style.
I spent the overwhelming majority of my law school career focusing on IP, so I will try not to ramble forever here, but I actually wrote a rather lengthy paper about fair use, so I do want to comment on that. Hank's comment about a judge deciding what is and isn't fair use is accurate, and is sort of a problem. See, right now, there's no disincentive for big-time players to flag anything as violating their copyright, especially if that something happens to be critical (see the Fine Bros. having "Teens React to Miley Cyrus" yanked by her record label). There is technically kinda sorta a penalty for filing a frivolous claim, but it's incredibly rare for a big corporation to actually get dinged on that, and they know full well that the average TH-camr doesn't have the resources to actually pursue a case in court. The ones that HAVE pursued cases (typically backed by copyright revolutionaries with deep pockets) have been pretty successful, but that's just not an option for most people. I would love to see the law change so that there's more responsibility/onus on the copyright claimants, but that seems unlikely to happen since, as Hank said on Tumblr, Congress currently can't agree if flowers are pretty.
The way I understood the "cannot copyright an idea" was that you cannot copy word-for-word Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, because that would be a breach of copyright, but you can take the concept/theme of Romeo and Juliet and make a book based on that. This concept or theme is the "idea" and that cannot be copyrighted.
Fair enough, that's just how it was explained to me. I was trying to start a business when I learned that you cannot protect the concept of the business only the business plan itself (i.e the document).
Fishtownies No. Things get released into the "public domain" after the copyright holder has been dead a certain amount of time (50 years I think) unless the rights have been passed onto the estate (family or company) of the dead person.
I really enjoy how Hank does educational videos in under four minutes when possible and I watched the hankschannel video first so it's most enjoyable to have a more digestible version to show other people
Copyright law is something I've been really interested in for the past several years, so I definitely love this video! I often find myself stumbling when trying to explain how it works, especially on TH-cam, because it is SO CONFUSING, but you explained it very clearly. I'll now hop on over to watch your other video about this.
I pay for royalty free music, whenever I use it on TH-cam or for any purpose beyond my own computers... then, magically, companies like CD Baby, Ioda and others claim the content and, as you so articulately point out, monetize work that is NOT theirs exclusively. While the copyright claim is disputed, they earn money from my videos... after the challenge is met and the claim "released", they do NOT return the money they made in the mean time. How is this not stealing? What would cause real improvement to this process, is if the company who falsely claims rights, were mandated to pay back ALL monetized gains during the dispute period... when the results are in favor of the challenged channel holder. Consider the amount we are talking about as a TH-cam wide dynamic... the money is HUGE... thanks for reading my rant :)
Ironically, I was listening to a podcast, and they were discussing this very fuzzy law, and they put up a small portion of your video. First 5 words out of your mouth and I'm on to you. I got home and watched this video and subscribed. Sci-show forever!
You had it right up until then end... both of our Trailer Round-Up reviews were flagged for trailers which we put in to use as a basis for our critique. Each round-up has about 10 trailers in it. We have been flagged numerous times. We would like to make movie reviews our careers one day, but unfortunately, if every time there is copyrighted material which is clearly under Fair Use and we have to fight EACH AND EVERY claim just to monetize one video, it makes it almost as hard to create content as it does to fight the content ID bots. No, I don't want to create something so that someone else can take the revenue for it. Sorry.
Content ID bots can't detect context. And obviously that's kind of an impossible task, so there should be more leeway when it comes to content claims. More work for the users is not the way to go; it's so scattershot that some claims aren't even tagged right (for instance, I've had songs claimed on videos where it was by the same band, but not the same song). We were even flagged for video by one company and audio by another in the same spot! When we refuted both, the audio claim was released but the video claim was reinstated! AUGH!
***** Please read the above and do more research... some people would like to make (or are making) their money from monetization who utilize clips under fair use... asking them to surrender their revenue "just because" is very insulting.
Jake and Trev Review Everything I totally feel you...I talk more about this in my HanksChannel video but the thing to realize is that you represent a tiny tiny percentage of use cases, and TH-cam needs to create a system that allows it to exist for all of the rest of use cases. HOWEVER you're right that it's a shitty system. If you dispute a claim (especially if the rights holder agrees it was erroneous) you should receive all lost revenue. That (IMO) would be exactly what happened if you took the case to court. This is the kind of thing we should hire a lawyer to present to TH-cam from a coalition of TH-camrs (or the kind of thing MCNs should be using all of their revenue to do for their clients.) TH-cam is caving to the rights holders because they have far more power than we do. The system is designed for them.
***** Thank you for the reply! I definitely agree, but also, some of the biggest TH-camrs are ones that operate under the umbrella of fair use (pewdiepie, angryjoe, etc) and ecen recently Jim Sterling of Jimquisition had a whole strike put on a video made about an independent game that the creator didn't like because of the criticism. I think users that put whole movies and songs up should be stopped certainly, and if assets like songs are utilized, the asset makers should be compensated. We were on Blip.tv for the longest time until it was bought by maker studios, which is a youtybe partner. We were removed because we weren't getting enough views. I guess from my point of view, and plenty of other reviewers and let's players, is that we have a lot more work to deal with on youtube because of it. Thank you again for responding! Your vids are awesome!
Jake and Trev Review Everything ***** This is interesting. My initial impression is that having to deal with the copyright bot is the cost of using TH-cam rather than paying for your own website. This feels like you want the content hosting and storage, video uploading software, and copyright protection that TH-cam provides, without having to pay (money or inconvenience) for it. What are the implications if you paid for the hosting of something like a JandTRE.com or vlogbrothers.com site and uploaded videos there? You wouldn't have to deal with the improper flagging of fair use material by the bot, right? But, on the other hand, you would have to pay the hosting company a fee rather than using TH-cam for free and you would have to pay your own lawyer to defend any copyright infringement claims (regardless of strength) filed against you. Am I missing something here? I do not have a monetized TH-cam channel so I'm not familiar with the business relationship TH-cam has with those types of users.
OHMYGOSH THE PICTURE IN THE BACKGROUND TO YOUR RIGHT IS THAT A CROSSOVER DOCTOR WHO/ TANGLED PAINTING/ DRAWING don't mind me, I'm just fangirling and freaking out over here at it's extreme awesomeness. (The vid was really helpful btw! Copyright is so weird and confusing and loophole-y and bleh.... So thank you for this cool video!)
It is a good system but the problem is that they get ALL of the money from your video. If you make a 10min long video and 90% of the video is original content. Then you should get to keep 90% of the money and they should only get 10% for the 1min their copyrighted material took up.
Well...not really. You stole their content, they can (if they want to) take your video down and give you a copyright strike AND sue you. It is now in their power to charge whatever license they want because you didn't make an agreement before you used their property.
***** But what about when the power is abused? There has been people who've used the copyright system to take down a video, even when they gave permission for the content to be used. There's several Totalbiscuit reviews that were taken down when the review was negative
***** The punishments are the same. They can take down the video, but by getting all the revenue from the video its money-wise the same for the person who made the video. The copyright strike is youtube so lets ignore that ( I know its a real thing but its not a legal thing). Can they sue you for more than the video made? Im not a lawyer but i don't think so. So them taking all the revenue is basically what would happen is a worst case scenario court case. Its basically like losing a court case without having a judge look at anything. If your in the wrong then thats fine but if you think it was fair use then you get screwed.
***** The power is being abused the system. there are numerous cases of cross claims where people that have licensed material from others get flagged as the proper owner rather then the actual owner. Also there are tons of issues with gaming videos which are crucial I dare say to youtube's revenue. If say a company like mojang choose to content claim everything related to minecraft rather then their nice open policy of allowing and even encouraging the community to post videos think of how screwed up that would be for the people creating content using the game as more of a production tool.
I'm doing an EPQ (like a mini dissertation for a levels) on copyright within music and academia and I have to say this video explained the basics of law surrounding copyright better than most other sources i've used. Huzzah to you and thanks for the help :)
This is insane. I get really worried about even quoting movies in my videos. I realize that is fairly fair use, but I still get afraid. Thanks for making another video about this Hank.
In which ***** discusses what intellectual property is, and how copyright is increasingly being policed by dumb robots that don't have very much to do with the law, but have everything to do with it just being REALLY COMPLICATED and there being terrifyingly massive amounts of media to regulate. What to do about copyright claims: How to Deal with Copyright Claims (And More) What is (and is not) Fair Use: fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/what-is-fair-use/
This has been an issue on TH-cam for years, especially when people abuse the DMCA by falsely claiming copyright infringement on videos that are within the rights of fair use.
Hank, I'm the Copyright Manager for a music publishing company. Well done on explaining the this topic in under 4 minutes. If you ever do a long-form video on the topic and want any consult, this nerdfighter would be happy to assist.
***** It's so sad that you're completely right abut that. I love Nintendo and it hurts me to see them do things like that that i feel ultimately just hurts them.
The sad thing is, there are many games I've bought purely because I saw a let's play or let's look at of it. They are really only shooting themselves in the foot right along with the youtube videomakers.
shivore Other game producers give free game to you tubers exactly because of the free ad a good lets play is making. To top it off: Some publishers even give the youtubers activation codes which the youtuber then can and will use as a gift for their subscribers. Goes which kind of games gets more coverage? And it isn´t even about the free games, it is just the recognition and thrust between game developers and youtubers: If someone gives you free copies for your subscribers, you know for sure that they will not sue you. On the other hand, look at Mojang/Minecraft. TH-cam did ask them, if they would like to get a split of the ad-revenues of Minecraft footage. Well: Hard decision. Mojang has to pay their staff monthly, so getting a steady stream of income sounds great. Because of the community, they did not opt-in, so they get no split, but... Seeing it from a business perspective, it was tempting for Mojang. So: Seeing the perspective of gamers, lets players and game developers it gets complicated pretty quickly.
***** I don't think that's actually true. Once you make a video on it, if you do something to the video or audio to change it in some way ( as video game commentators do with their commentary) it is essentially treated as a different thing. It's like how a parody is not the same thing as the original song. There are a lot of people who think that it is within the right of the video game debs to copyright commentated video of their game though, and this causes a huge issue for video game commentators. It basically means that a video game dev can decide whether or not they want the video up, because while it is legal, to prove that your video isn't fucking with copyright law you would have to take it to court, or get it viewed by a human moderator. Getting your video viewed by a human moderator is, of course, pretty much the only way that you can remove your video from it's flagged status because court is expensive; even then it's unlikely that your video will ever get moderated unless you are a big you tuber. As you said, there are a lot of videos on youtube and not enough people to actually see them.
This reminds me of "How Frozen should have ended". HISHE had to re-upload the video with different lyrics, because it was taken down when Disney claimed it was a "performance" of their song. Really... how fucking high in the air can your nose go.
My cat Hana just passed away today. I don't know, I wanted to tell it to TH-cam somehow and I felt this was the most appropriate channel to communicate with it that I care about... I'm pretty sad... Rest in peace, Hana, I'll always remember you. I love you.
That's so sad! I'm sorry your cat died. I've never had a pet die because my moms allergic to cats and dogs, and our hamsters only a year or two old, but that's really sad.
I just watched your video about copyright claims on youtube so this fits in well with that and is helping me make a bit more sense of it all! I have a few videos that I thought the songs were royalty free but they still have copyright claims on them!
Copyright is actually much more complicated than that. What you are talking about (and you briefly mentioned it) is how copyright is enforced on youtube. As a musician involved with the music business and a teacher, I find this field fascinating and very complicated. To my knowledge, chord changes are not subject to copyright. As you illustrated in a previous video there are a plethora of pop tunes that have the same set of chore changes. Melodies, however are subject to copyright. A great example of correct procedures in this process is Weird Al. He parodies songs, often using exact melodies and chord progressions and gets all the proper permissions.
But what about situations when groups claim copyright unfairly, knowing that it's not theirs to claim, then just sit and collect the money for the weeks or months it takes for an appeal to go through while the content creators who rely on that income get nothing? Has that situation changed at all since I heard about it a few months ago?
TH-cam is policing that...the problem is that the number of people who dispute copyright claims is tiny...so it's hard to get good data on who's faking it and who isn't. There aren't /that/ many people with access to the ContentID system though, so they're doing a better job. Outright fraud is pretty uncommon...especially because the legal repercussions are pretty significant.
I can remeber Nerdcubed complaining that he'd had a video with content from Portal flagged for copyright (valve allow their content to be used fairly freely), and when he emailed Valve about it transpired the channel that had made the claim wasn't them.
***** A lot of gaming channels I watch have a lot of problems with false copyright claims. They are smaller channels so there are no legal repercussions for the companies making these false claims. There was one person who was falsely claiming the music being used in almost all of someone else's videos.
One of the problems I've heard of with TH-cam's contentID matching is that there are some really sketchy claims going out. Five different people/companies claiming they have ownership of a song, or a youtuber with direct permission of the musical artist to play their music still getting flagged. What's worse is that, even if a youtuber were to appeal, the claimers get 30 days to make a decision: 30 days that a youtuber loses monetization is a HUGE problem, considering most of the content that a youtuber creates is immediately watched by their fans. I agree that such a big task can only be taken on via technology, but this system needs some heavy fixing before it can ever truly be effective.
The one major thing that bugs me about copyright on TH-cam is that, for example, a good friend of mine spend two months working on a video. The video had exactly 15 seconds of a copyrighted work in it. The video was almost 20 minutes long. What happened is exactly what you said, the copyright holder chose to make money off of the video and she got annoyed. She didn't dispute it because we're not adults but I think that just because there were a few seconds of a copyrighted work it doesn't mean that they can make money off of something like that. Ugh, copyright.
I agree with it being a technical marvel, but it affects so many creators negatively. I make classical music videos occasionally, and because someone else in history has also recorded works by Mozart or Bach (would you believe it!), so begins the long and only occasionally resolved process of disputing a claim!
What makes the situation more bizarre is that people have no idea how games factor into this which is why there is so much confusion with game companies taking down videos of their footage.
This video really made me wonder how those youtubechannels filled with covers of popular songs get revenue/are allowed to sell their covers on iTunes...
They make deals with the rights holder. It's not actually that hard. There are services that let you buy the right to cover songs...it's usually about 15 cents per sale, so the cover artist still make the majority of the money.
Thanks for this video. I plan on watching the one on your other channel as well. This summer our family started live streaming soccer matches for our local NPSL team. We did it through TH-cam and had a quick lesson in content violation policies at the first game. The stadium was playing music, it was being streamed through our feed, and we got hit with a notice of violation. We learned to mute that part of the stream. We found a royalty free version of the National Anthem for our home team to use so we didn't have to mute that, but it was a lesson to think about. I'm still thinking about it and wondering how people pay for rights to cover a song or use it in the background or whatever. I like using the TH-cam royalty free stuff on my own videos (little home movie type things). But the whole topic is something I thought a lot about this summer.
In regular conversation about a week ago, I mentioned that intellectual property law was a hobby of mine (reading and discussing, not practicing) and was more surprised than I should have been with the blank stares that followed.
Yeah--I know the feeling...After working with the HPA at LeakyCon, I'm excited to be doing something about the issue of Net Neutrality with my students this year. Bringing it up with teachers as we get ready for the school year to start has brought on those same blank stares.
Swedish universities use a similar system when it comes to research papers and reports. It compares all the submitted papers to all published material it has in its database, which by now contains basically everything. It then marks all passages that are similar or identical to already published texts, before sendig it off to the teacher. The teacher then makes the decision whether it's plagiarism or not. It's an amazing system.
That was really helpful! Thanks for taking the time to explain it briefly. I love watching something and at the end having the light bulb of understanding come on. :)
The problem is that this system is EXTREMELY exploitable, because guess what. Anyone can claim to be the copyright holder, go in and claim the revenue from a monetized video because "they are using my copyrighted material unlicensed without my permission" and then take the revenue share 100%. Does that person actually need to have the copyright to that content? No But it would take weeks for TH-cam to release that and in the worst case scenarios the scammers are not just claiming revenue, they're not trying to scam but to actually go after somebodies livelihood and send a copyright strike. 3 strikes and you're out from TH-cam, TH-cam don't need to confirm the strikes. So Unless you take an active stand against this and decide to go against this unfair treatment, TH-cam's not going to care. And it will take weeks in order for things to settle in and if you're someone working full time on TH-cam those are weeks spend getting your job back, in the mean while you're not earning revenue and the new videos you posted 85-95% of the view spike from the release will not be generated until you've taken the rights to your video back.
Your last paragraph is a bit mistaken. You should watch the video on Hank's personal channel for more detail. But you're absolutely right, the system is extremely exploitable. Public domain footage is automatically claimed by publishers who use that footage in their otherwise copyrighted work. Content is falsely deliberately claimed in some cases by deliberately fraudulent companies when it in fact belongs to someone else. And sometimes, sometimes public domain content is claimed deliberately by a rights collecting society that is responsible for collecting the rights to material, and the content _in their database_ is an explicitly public domain work. That last example is something I've had to deal with. I recorded myself playing a piece of classical music (ergo, public domain stuff), and I get a copyright notice from "One or more music publishing rights collecting societies". i.imgur.com/bSNL0.png
Jim Cullen The point is that calling a system this broken and flawed which is misused in so many cases daily, a miracle is kind of like calling the invention of the machine-gun a miracle. Sure it was a effective tool but it still led to some bad stuff. And just think about this for a second. A gaming company want to spread the news about their new game, since Internet and TH-cam this has dramatically changed and they can now upload it and share it on social medias and hope that fans and watchers do their part in the sharing. Let's say someone like Totalbiscuit is on a gaming podcast and are talking about gaming news and happen to showcase the new trailers and talk a bit about the game and its prior history and his personal hopes, thoughts and ideas on the game and the genre. Its clear to everyone that this is good, this is free commercial and free sponsorship for the company. And in most case gaming publishers wouldn't bat an eye, they would be thankful that a podcast that gets 9-15 thousands people watching live and some 120-300k view on their vods are highlighting their games in a manner that gives them their viewers eyes for a couple of minutes. After all that trailer was uploaded to generate awareness of the game. Yes something as small as a 2-3 minute game trailer shown during a 3 hour podcast gives those publishers the right to 100% of the revenue stream of that podcast. And in the case of some japanese publishers (namely Square Enix and Nintendo, and on occasion Sega of Japan) they have actually claimed 100% of the revenue stream. The problem is that this system doesn't actively support fair use because when it comes to Games reviewers and critiques need to be able to utilize trailers, gameplay-footage to showcase and tell the viewers about the game at hand. But if some publishers are trying to use a copyright system to try and for example silence critique then its a system that needs to be overlooked or drastically changed because the entire gaming medium is still very new. If I upload a movie to TH-cam that's clearly piracy because viewing a movie is how you consume that type of media. But that is not the case of games, you play and interact with games, watching a game will never be the same as playing it, even when it comes to the most cinematic types of games, and if it ever does feel like you're watching a movie, then that is no longer a game by definition. TL;DR The main problem I have is that big time Publishers like Nintendo, Sega and Square Enix are actively trying to take down content on TH-cam via Copyright claims which they don't necessarily and in some cases undoubtedly don't have rights to take down.
Bloodstainer I agree that TH-cam's current system is completely broken, but the example of the situation with Nintendo is, in my opinion, a poor one. It's very hard, in my opinion, to claim TotalBiscuit's videos are fair use. The entirety of the video is nothing but content made by someone else. Sure the audio is partly his, but a part of fair use is the amount that the work relies upon the copyrighted material. TB relies too much on the actual game's content. Someone who did the same talking but mostly showed his own face, cutting to game footage or screenshots to demonstrate a specific point, could make a reasonable fair use claim. No, in the case of game publishing content on TH-cam, the problem lies with the game content holders. Legally, they're totally in the right, but it shows a total lack of understanding of how the modern world works. They really need to learn to move on with the times and allow people to share footage of their gameplay freely and without hindrance.
Jim Cullen Critique and reviews goes under fair use. I don't think any judge would go against that notion. But some of the older industries don't want to learn because by learning they will have to adjust to a world where they no longer earn the same amount of money. You can't sell a game on PC any longer for $60 nor can you sell a CD for $25 because who would buy that with access to iTunes and Spotify? Who would pay for a game when you can get Witcher II right now for less than 5$ with the current 75% discount on Steam. The point is that there is such a lack of communication and misunderstanding between some companies and their consumers. And I'm so tired of this entire copyright debate that I just wish all the companies that doesn't adjust to the changes the internet era brought upon their market, I hope they disappear and die out.
Bloodstainer I agree completely that the companies' business models are completely out of touch with modern reality. You won't find me disagreeing with you there. And yes, critique and reviews are well within fair use. But let me take it to the extreme. Say you just show an hour's worth of gameplay, and then at the end you give two sentences' worth of review. That's obviously not fair use, right? Obviously, there's a line somewhere. Most people should agree, I think, that when you show as much actual gameplay footage as TB does, that this is clearly not within fair use. If he wants to make that claim, he needs to increase the ratio of his content to theirs significantly.
Copyright holders should get a percentage of the money of a video for the amount of their work in it. 30 seconds of a movie should not give a copyright holder all the money of an hour review, they should get their fair share which would be like 1/120 of the money.
Ah, Hank, not to be a stickler, but we are fast approaching the end of the summer, and I can't help but notice the lack of a Harry Potter song. Please do that. That is some of the best things.
On that note, I was very pissed off the find a "Don't forget to be awesome" sign for sale, next to a bunch of copies of TFIOS, at Books A Million the other day.
A thought that has been popping into my head a lot lately: "What if copyright just went away?". Would it really be such a bad thing? If someone makes a thing, and someone else goes "I can utilize that thing to make a different thing", why is that not ok? Copyright effectively exists for the sole purpose of making sure certain revenues go into the "right" pockets. It is an completely financially driven concept, which is bafflingly counter-intuitive to the creative process. It's a limiter that exists for all the wrong reasons, and I kinda really want to see it just not exist anymore. Is that crazy?
A flaw in the system is that sometimes things get taken down even if the owner of the item used is the one using it in the video. According to comments on the video, GEMA (Germany's copyright organization) blocked a video on CinemaSinsJeremey's channel due to music used in the video--music that Jeremy recorded on his guitar right in his own living room. He got punished for using music that he owned because he used music that someone owned (even though that someone was himself). Pretty big flaw.
I was wondering on your last video if you actually were violating the terms of copyright but since I was very confused about the copyright terms on youtube, I refrained from asking in the comments. Thank you for clearing this up, this made everything less confusing.
Thank you Hank, for making this video. I went to the copyright panel at VidCon and I learned so much about Content ID and disputes over fair use etc. but so many people are unaware of how it all works and if you're putting content on TH-cam, I think everyone should familiarize themselves with this. However what are your thoughts on the fact that Content ID claimed videos can be monetized by the copyright holder for up to 30 days while the dispute is ongoing? TH-camrs can lose a lot of money to a large production company or record label for an entire month (when they're probably getting the most views), even if their content falls under fair use. This seems like a shame. I have heard people suggest holding account where the monetized amounts are held until the dispute is decided. Thoughts?
My only real issue with copyright - is that it has been extended to the point where it's no longer for the benefit of the people who create things but for the benefit of corporations.
The word "parody" means something different to us than it means legally. If I were using that song to parody the idea of the song itself (like if I re-wrote the words to mock the original meaning or intent of the words) then that would be fair use because the work was being used to comment on the work. What I did was just take an instrumental track and write new, unrelated words. We call that a "parody" these days, but it isn't parodying the work, it's just writing new words to an existing song, which is definitely illegal.
Mehr un Nisa Naghman it's illegal if he had monetized it for his own gain. It's monetized for Calvin Harris by the YT robot and therefore not technically illegal.
2:51 i wish those big music companies would do the third thing instead of the second thing. it's getting old seeing good fanmade music videos get taken down. (and yes, this is personal as well cause mine got taken down - and it had 19k views as well. and i spent an entire day making it. grrr.)
This seems oddly in support of the current content ID system which doesn't have an effective dispute system... There are countless numbers of incorrect strikes against channels under fair use. Not to say that there aren't also countless correct strikes. But in the case of a court you can point it out and someone with real authority can say yes or no but youtube seems at least to circumvent that whole authority and impose their own.
I am in favor of ContentID because, without it, there would be no TH-cam. The dispute process does need to be reformed, but that's not going to happen until we start actually understanding what we're asking for.
***** Have you watched 'downloaded'? (Story about Napster on Netflix) I am curious about how much further along ContentID would be if the music industry got ahead of the issue back when Napster came out. they fought it tooth and nails, but imagine if they didn't? Imagine if they started to build ContentID back before TH-cam. Our digital world would be so different...
Can someone please explain to me how beauty channels (Bethany Mota, for example), are allowed to use copyrighted music in their monetized videos? They only use about 20 seconds per song, does that make it okay? It doesn't really seem fair that they constantly use copyrighted music and still continue to monetize their videos.
I had a video that I used 7-8 seconds of a song, and it got flagged. Now I only use TH-cam's free music, but I know what you're talking about because I have seen these vids with copyrighted music that are monetized.
Michelle Phan is being sued for 7.5 million by a company who has signed artists music that she uses so it's not always monetized legally or done through the right channels cause the artist had no problem with her using his music but the label did.
Plus, Hank talks about how the rights holder can choose to monetize that video for themselves rather than take down the video. So, just because you are seeing an ad on a video using a copyrighted song does not mean that the revenue from that ad is going to the video creator. It could be going to the rights holder, like in the Calvin Harris example.
Ashley McCoy True but most likely if most of their videos are this way then it's probably a copyright issue and they are monetizing for their own gain, either illegally or legally having gone through the right channels previously before using the songs in a vid.
Speaking of copyright, my father's side of the family is convinced that one of their ancestors invented the very first bicycle, but that the idea was stolen. My mother's side of the family is convinced that their ancestors invented the very first bicycle...
+HankGreen OMG THE POSTER BEHIND YOU ITS RAPUNZEL AND THE TARDIS SQUUUUUUUUUUUUUUEEEEEE! (Sorry for the epic fangirl moment I'm obsessed with Disney and doctor {among other things} and when my fandoms are put together I just can't. I LITERALLY CANT! {even though that is physically and emotionally and mentally impossible- right?})
It's worth noting that copyright is NOT as automatic as one would like in the United States of America. It IS automatic everywhere else due to the Berne Convention, but the USA is not a signer, so it has its own system. To have an enforceable copyright, you must register your potential IP with the Library of Congress. You can register multiple items per submission and save a few bucks, and the fee is nominal (between $40-100, last I checked). This means that if and when your copyright is challenged, abused, or otherwise violated, you can bring it to court and claim of due diligence. However, this has created a complicated situation where Berne Convention copyright is... less copywritten in the USA. Non-Americans wishing to enforce copyright within the USA are advised to register their works with the Library of Congress, as not doing so makes their claim far weaker in the eyes of the American court system. For example, if your copyright is violated by an American and you are non-American, and your case is processed by, say, a Canadian or European court, then no problem. Berne Convention will likely be upheld and you don't have to worry about the Library of Congress. More often, it goes the other way because the Library of Congress requires more due diligence. If you're processed by an American court, then you will definitely want Library of Congress registration on your side, especially because it protects you from the OTHER party if they've made a similar registration but at a later date. So yeah, America... makes things complicated.
As a followup to this, can you guys talk about the damage Disney and others have done to the public domain by continually lengthening copyright claim limits? If the terms hadn't been forced to change by huge companies, characters like Mickey Mouse, Superman, and Batman would be in the public domain, as would the works of Hemingway and many others.
I think that the best way to deal with the content ID system is to make disputing the claim easier, and to increase communication between TH-cam and content creators. Instead of being aloof and making creators afraid (especially those that live off of TH-cam) they could make it more transparent and easier to deal with. An alternative, though, is to create jobs for people to look through videos that have been content ID matched and check the validity.
I really liked this super video. I posted a video with a song and 2 weeks later it is telling the watchers what the song is. Particularly interesting because it was google related and shared internally. I couldn't figure out why no one at google cared I'd ripped off the song in the video. Now I know. Thanks Hank
Here's a good compromise: have the Content ID software report questionable content to one of many lawyers that TH-cam can and should hire, and have them review the content and decide whether or not they should consider it a legal use of another's intellectual property and make legal arrangements accordingly.
An interesting video. There certainly could be more said on copyright as there is just more than just youtube mucking it up. ie: A "famous" cosplay sells "cosplay wings" which are crafted wings that people wear by straps. This cosplayer has felt that when they go to conventions they can hand out "cease and decist" orders based on copyright to stop other people from selling them and this be the only person selling wings at those conventions. Only under the rules of copyright this isn't how it works, she can only prevent people from selling designs that she specifically copyrighted. Still they have done this, likely in an attempt to do away with competition, but thankfully other conventions haven't simply told people to stop selling their cosplay wings that are of clearly of different designs and attached by other methods than straps. If they had patented their idea they could have the grounds to deny others selling cosplay wings completely, but as they have not and there is no way of proving that they were the first to make them now an attempt to patent the idea now likely wouldn't hold water.
YES!!!!! I FINALLY DID IT!!!!! I have watched every single vlogbrothers video in order!! From the first brotherhood 2.0 video to this one!!!! And it only took me (just under) 3 months!!! FRENCH THE LLAMA!!!! so does this mean I'm a nerd fighter now? WAIT! NO!! I if it's question Tuesday I don't want that to be my question! I've watched them all and no one has ever asked this... Who? What? Where? When? And most importantly....Why?... 😜 anyway you guys have changed my life! Thanks for all you guys do and hank... Start doing your happy dance more, it's been years... Lol
Yeah, it's not the best solution, but I thought it was still a step up from a few years ago when record companies like UMG and Warner Bros. (especially them!) went freaking nuts on ALL the videos that contained artists' copyrighted songs, forcing the removal of a lot of my favorite videos and the termination of those TH-cam channels. Or the videos would be muted. Not fun for the people whose videos gained massive popularity, but because of whatever song they used, their muted/removed videos would have made them lose viewers and subscribers. Not that my middle-school AMVs were particularly popular (30k views at most?), but even I had to take them down because I didn't want my channel to be terminated. When TH-cam started being somewhat lenient on content again, I was like, "thank you for once -_-"
Considering that twitch implemented a similar program to the one youtube uses that it put mute flags on twitches own content by their staff. These content ID bots aren't designed well enough to work properly. It's basically just a way to keep them from getting sued by the few people that ruin everything for everybody. back when youtube instituted this current system stampylonghead who does gaming content for younger viewers and has 3.5 million subs almost lost his channel to the copyright strike system because of content flagging and automatic claims by companies that have no business claiming stuff. It's essentially like city of new york putting a copy claim on every internet video that has the city of new york in it.
It's not the only possible solution, but rather it is the status quo, and we have not witnessed a second generation to copyright (at least on the internet). Copyright can be improved with automated monetization. TH-cam can detect copyrighted material, but the trade is disconnected, so the people who made the material get no money, but if a system were to be made that gives royalties (like 10%) to all copyrighted material from monetized content, copyright is a happy world. In this kind of society, people would want to get their videos being used in others. This solution is also great because the only actual copyright problems are when 100% of the content is copywritten, in which can be flagged and sent to a human moderator who verifies to a reasonable degree, and notifies the copyright folks.
IMPORTANT: Just to clarify. Hank says that just by creating an original work it is protected by copyright. While you can say that it is and even put the copyright symbol on it, don't try taking anyone to court if they use your work (photos, videos, etc.). Without registering your work (prior to the infringement), federal court will throw your case away.
You know what's odd? The fact that there are some people do upload movies and albums onto youtube without any hassle and they can be up on youtube for years, but if some people upload a video that's legit fair use and they're talking about the subject and they're video is pulled almost right away.
Good video! Copyright has always confused me, because so many people post movie clips or songs and things like that. Also, if, for example, a Comedian is on stage and someone takes a video of it, is it okay for that to be posted, because it's the Comedian's act, but the filmer's video. (Sorry if filmer isn't actually a word)
I think Content ID is a brilliantly smart idea as it does allow a fairly easy manipulation of copyright law that works pretty much everywhere and allows for the difference between fair use and fair dealing etc. The only issue I have is that it could be made smarter especially when it comes to the situation of Let's Plays.
This was a great follow up after watching the Hank's channel video last night. What happens if you use two copyrighted songs in one video? Who would claim it?
But if I make a video that is 90% all my material, and 10% a clip from a film with it's soundtrack changed, why should the owner of the film clip get all the revenue? Also, what if I use two clips owned by different companies, and they both claim all the revenue?
There must be some ruling on this as TYT and LiberalViewer do this all the time.
Marc Cawood Both TYT and Liberal Viewer are using copyrighted content for review or commentary, which falls under Fair Use, so no claim can be made against them.
Im wondering this also.
There is so much content out there both online and off, much of it with a less than savory level of quality, and there are only so many minutes in a day. But I always make time to watch, read, or listen to anything sent out into the universe by John and Hank. Why? Because no other individual in my life, has such had such an impact on my education. The things we learn and come to understand thanks to the vlogbrothers and all their various projects, really enhance and inspire my life. So, thank you Green brothers. DFTBA... I want to win the lottery so that I can just hand it over to the two of you so that more projects, and experiences and whatnot could be funded.
This video, along with the one you did on Hankschannel, should be required viewing for anyone even THINKING of starting a TH-cam channel (along with those of us who already have one). Extremely informative, and very helpful. Thanks yet again.
The problem is when those companies abuse the power TH-cam has given them. I sometimes use LYRICS (not a recording, not a video but lyrics) to analyze them in a video and it gets content ID matched. And when I dispute it, the dispute is rejected. When I appeal that rejection the publishing company then releases the claim so that the appeal disappears, and then claims the video again. This has happened multiple times. And there's nothing I can do because TH-cam is almost unreachable to channels of my size, which companies know, so they do it and get away with it.
I still think that if the person wins the rights to their video back the person who falsely got money from a falsely flagged video should need to pay the other person back all the money that they did lose :/
Yes, absolutely, that's the biggest current flaw in the system.
Oh. my. God.......he replied to you..... Well, I'm jealous :P
So a machine with access to all the media ever created by mankind is perpetually observing every TH-cam video in existence?
...am I the only one freaking out about this?
It doesn't scare me...it amazes me.
No. I am kinda um, freaked out by this. Then again I find it amazing. I am half and half
Kaylee Touw Glad to know that someone else sees the terror of AI-run media production.
***** Also, yeah, it amazes me, but we are one step away from having robot lawyers view humans as "copyright violations" and eliminate us Ultron-style.
I believe the system only scans new videos as they are uploaded and is not "perpetually observing every TH-cam video in existence."
I spent the overwhelming majority of my law school career focusing on IP, so I will try not to ramble forever here, but I actually wrote a rather lengthy paper about fair use, so I do want to comment on that.
Hank's comment about a judge deciding what is and isn't fair use is accurate, and is sort of a problem. See, right now, there's no disincentive for big-time players to flag anything as violating their copyright, especially if that something happens to be critical (see the Fine Bros. having "Teens React to Miley Cyrus" yanked by her record label). There is technically kinda sorta a penalty for filing a frivolous claim, but it's incredibly rare for a big corporation to actually get dinged on that, and they know full well that the average TH-camr doesn't have the resources to actually pursue a case in court.
The ones that HAVE pursued cases (typically backed by copyright revolutionaries with deep pockets) have been pretty successful, but that's just not an option for most people. I would love to see the law change so that there's more responsibility/onus on the copyright claimants, but that seems unlikely to happen since, as Hank said on Tumblr, Congress currently can't agree if flowers are pretty.
I totally agree, and I'd love to see a strong federal anti-slapp law. But yeah, good luck getting something like that through this Congress.
The way I understood the "cannot copyright an idea" was that you cannot copy word-for-word Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, because that would be a breach of copyright, but you can take the concept/theme of Romeo and Juliet and make a book based on that. This concept or theme is the "idea" and that cannot be copyrighted.
Your main point is correct, but copying Romeo and Juliet word for word is okay because that work is in the public domain.
Fair enough, that's just how it was explained to me. I was trying to start a business when I learned that you cannot protect the concept of the business only the business plan itself (i.e the document).
Swkoll i'm going to use that argument next time i pirate something off the internet. IT WAS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN!
Fishtownies No. Things get released into the "public domain" after the copyright holder has been dead a certain amount of time (50 years I think) unless the rights have been passed onto the estate (family or company) of the dead person.
Steven James Fishtownies was joking.
I really enjoy how Hank does educational videos in under four minutes when possible and I watched the hankschannel video first so it's most enjoyable to have a more digestible version to show other people
Copyright law is something I've been really interested in for the past several years, so I definitely love this video! I often find myself stumbling when trying to explain how it works, especially on TH-cam, because it is SO CONFUSING, but you explained it very clearly. I'll now hop on over to watch your other video about this.
I pay for royalty free music, whenever I use it on TH-cam or for any purpose beyond my own computers... then, magically, companies like CD Baby, Ioda and others claim the content and, as you so articulately point out, monetize work that is NOT theirs exclusively. While the copyright claim is disputed, they earn money from my videos... after the challenge is met and the claim "released", they do NOT return the money they made in the mean time. How is this not stealing? What would cause real improvement to this process, is if the company who falsely claims rights, were mandated to pay back ALL monetized gains during the dispute period... when the results are in favor of the challenged channel holder. Consider the amount we are talking about as a TH-cam wide dynamic... the money is HUGE... thanks for reading my rant :)
Ironically, I was listening to a podcast, and they were discussing this very fuzzy law, and they put up a small portion of your video. First 5 words out of your mouth and I'm on to you. I got home and watched this video and subscribed. Sci-show forever!
You had it right up until then end... both of our Trailer Round-Up reviews were flagged for trailers which we put in to use as a basis for our critique. Each round-up has about 10 trailers in it. We have been flagged numerous times. We would like to make movie reviews our careers one day, but unfortunately, if every time there is copyrighted material which is clearly under Fair Use and we have to fight EACH AND EVERY claim just to monetize one video, it makes it almost as hard to create content as it does to fight the content ID bots. No, I don't want to create something so that someone else can take the revenue for it. Sorry.
Content ID bots can't detect context. And obviously that's kind of an impossible task, so there should be more leeway when it comes to content claims. More work for the users is not the way to go; it's so scattershot that some claims aren't even tagged right (for instance, I've had songs claimed on videos where it was by the same band, but not the same song). We were even flagged for video by one company and audio by another in the same spot! When we refuted both, the audio claim was released but the video claim was reinstated! AUGH!
***** Please read the above and do more research... some people would like to make (or are making) their money from monetization who utilize clips under fair use... asking them to surrender their revenue "just because" is very insulting.
Jake and Trev Review Everything I totally feel you...I talk more about this in my HanksChannel video but the thing to realize is that you represent a tiny tiny percentage of use cases, and TH-cam needs to create a system that allows it to exist for all of the rest of use cases.
HOWEVER you're right that it's a shitty system. If you dispute a claim (especially if the rights holder agrees it was erroneous) you should receive all lost revenue. That (IMO) would be exactly what happened if you took the case to court. This is the kind of thing we should hire a lawyer to present to TH-cam from a coalition of TH-camrs (or the kind of thing MCNs should be using all of their revenue to do for their clients.)
TH-cam is caving to the rights holders because they have far more power than we do. The system is designed for them.
***** Thank you for the reply! I definitely agree, but also, some of the biggest TH-camrs are ones that operate under the umbrella of fair use (pewdiepie, angryjoe, etc) and ecen recently Jim Sterling of Jimquisition had a whole strike put on a video made about an independent game that the creator didn't like because of the criticism. I think users that put whole movies and songs up should be stopped certainly, and if assets like songs are utilized, the asset makers should be compensated. We were on Blip.tv for the longest time until it was bought by maker studios, which is a youtybe partner. We were removed because we weren't getting enough views. I guess from my point of view, and plenty of other reviewers and let's players, is that we have a lot more work to deal with on youtube because of it. Thank you again for responding! Your vids are awesome!
Jake and Trev Review Everything ***** This is interesting. My initial impression is that having to deal with the copyright bot is the cost of using TH-cam rather than paying for your own website. This feels like you want the content hosting and storage, video uploading software, and copyright protection that TH-cam provides, without having to pay (money or inconvenience) for it.
What are the implications if you paid for the hosting of something like a JandTRE.com or vlogbrothers.com site and uploaded videos there? You wouldn't have to deal with the improper flagging of fair use material by the bot, right? But, on the other hand, you would have to pay the hosting company a fee rather than using TH-cam for free and you would have to pay your own lawyer to defend any copyright infringement claims (regardless of strength) filed against you. Am I missing something here? I do not have a monetized TH-cam channel so I'm not familiar with the business relationship TH-cam has with those types of users.
i love the way vlogbrothers actually care about giving us informational videos! i actually learn stuff for once
I know! They have entire channels devoted to it now.
OHMYGOSH THE PICTURE IN THE BACKGROUND TO YOUR RIGHT IS THAT A CROSSOVER DOCTOR WHO/ TANGLED PAINTING/ DRAWING don't mind me, I'm just fangirling and freaking out over here at it's extreme awesomeness.
(The vid was really helpful btw! Copyright is so weird and confusing and loophole-y and bleh.... So thank you for this cool video!)
I love it when you enthusiastically explain really complicated things to me :) Thank you!
You explained in 4 minutes what it took my English professor 72 minutes to explain.
It is a good system but the problem is that they get ALL of the money from your video. If you make a 10min long video and 90% of the video is original content. Then you should get to keep 90% of the money and they should only get 10% for the 1min their copyrighted material took up.
Well...not really. You stole their content, they can (if they want to) take your video down and give you a copyright strike AND sue you. It is now in their power to charge whatever license they want because you didn't make an agreement before you used their property.
*****
But what about when the power is abused? There has been people who've used the copyright system to take down a video, even when they gave permission for the content to be used. There's several Totalbiscuit reviews that were taken down when the review was negative
***** The punishments are the same. They can take down the video, but by getting all the revenue from the video its money-wise the same for the person who made the video. The copyright strike is youtube so lets ignore that ( I know its a real thing but its not a legal thing). Can they sue you for more than the video made? Im not a lawyer but i don't think so. So them taking all the revenue is basically what would happen is a worst case scenario court case. Its basically like losing a court case without having a judge look at anything. If your in the wrong then thats fine but if you think it was fair use then you get screwed.
***** Okay that's understandable. So is there an easy way to make an agreement with them, for small amounts of their content?
***** The power is being abused the system. there are numerous cases of cross claims where people that have licensed material from others get flagged as the proper owner rather then the actual owner. Also there are tons of issues with gaming videos which are crucial I dare say to youtube's revenue. If say a company like mojang choose to content claim everything related to minecraft rather then their nice open policy of allowing and even encouraging the community to post videos think of how screwed up that would be for the people creating content using the game as more of a production tool.
THANK YOU for clearing this up. I've read little bits and pieces about copyrighting and trademarking, but this perfectly summarized it all!
I'm doing an EPQ (like a mini dissertation for a levels) on copyright within music and academia and I have to say this video explained the basics of law surrounding copyright better than most other sources i've used. Huzzah to you and thanks for the help :)
This is insane. I get really worried about even quoting movies in my videos. I realize that is fairly fair use, but I still get afraid. Thanks for making another video about this Hank.
You should check out Hank's video on Hankschannel if you haven't already. It goes into much more detail.
I have, but thanks for the reminder. I should rewatch it. :)
Always something I've been curious about. As I've watched TH-cam develop from 2005, I feel like copyrighting has become more and more confusing.
In which ***** discusses what intellectual property is, and how copyright is increasingly being policed by dumb robots that don't have very much to do with the law, but have everything to do with it just being REALLY COMPLICATED and there being terrifyingly massive amounts of media to regulate.
What to do about copyright claims: How to Deal with Copyright Claims (And More)
What is (and is not) Fair Use: fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/what-is-fair-use/
Love it guys!
This has been an issue on TH-cam for years, especially when people abuse the DMCA by falsely claiming copyright infringement on videos that are within the rights of fair use.
You really had to pay Calvin Harris?
you should have made this a longer video because it was educational and interesting and awesome!
Hank, I'm the Copyright Manager for a music publishing company. Well done on explaining the this topic in under 4 minutes. If you ever do a long-form video on the topic and want any consult, this nerdfighter would be happy to assist.
And then we get into the subject of Video Game walkthroughs and copyright stuff and that gets so much worse...
Basically, the rights holder has the right to claim it, but unless they're Nintendo, they don't.
***** It's so sad that you're completely right abut that. I love Nintendo and it hurts me to see them do things like that that i feel ultimately just hurts them.
The sad thing is, there are many games I've bought purely because I saw a let's play or let's look at of it. They are really only shooting themselves in the foot right along with the youtube videomakers.
shivore
Other game producers give free game to you tubers exactly because of the free ad a good lets play is making. To top it off: Some publishers even give the youtubers activation codes which the youtuber then can and will use as a gift for their subscribers. Goes which kind of games gets more coverage?
And it isn´t even about the free games, it is just the recognition and thrust between game developers and youtubers: If someone gives you free copies for your subscribers, you know for sure that they will not sue you.
On the other hand, look at Mojang/Minecraft. TH-cam did ask them, if they would like to get a split of the ad-revenues of Minecraft footage. Well: Hard decision. Mojang has to pay their staff monthly, so getting a steady stream of income sounds great. Because of the community, they did not opt-in, so they get no split, but... Seeing it from a business perspective, it was tempting for Mojang.
So: Seeing the perspective of gamers, lets players and game developers it gets complicated pretty quickly.
***** I don't think that's actually true. Once you make a video on it, if you do something to the video or audio to change it in some way ( as video game commentators do with their commentary) it is essentially treated as a different thing. It's like how a parody is not the same thing as the original song. There are a lot of people who think that it is within the right of the video game debs to copyright commentated video of their game though, and this causes a huge issue for video game commentators. It basically means that a video game dev can decide whether or not they want the video up, because while it is legal, to prove that your video isn't fucking with copyright law you would have to take it to court, or get it viewed by a human moderator. Getting your video viewed by a human moderator is, of course, pretty much the only way that you can remove your video from it's flagged status because court is expensive; even then it's unlikely that your video will ever get moderated unless you are a big you tuber. As you said, there are a lot of videos on youtube and not enough people to actually see them.
This reminds me of "How Frozen should have ended". HISHE had to re-upload the video with different lyrics, because it was taken down when Disney claimed it was a "performance" of their song. Really... how fucking high in the air can your nose go.
Great video Hank. You always make stuff so clear to me. Even weird, complicated legal, copyright stuff.
My cat Hana just passed away today. I don't know, I wanted to tell it to TH-cam somehow and I felt this was the most appropriate channel to communicate with it that I care about...
I'm pretty sad...
Rest in peace, Hana, I'll always remember you. I love you.
That's so sad! I'm sorry your cat died. I've never had a pet die because my moms allergic to cats and dogs, and our hamsters only a year or two old, but that's really sad.
Thanks.
I just watched your video about copyright claims on youtube so this fits in well with that and is helping me make a bit more sense of it all! I have a few videos that I thought the songs were royalty free but they still have copyright claims on them!
Copyright is actually much more complicated than that. What you are talking about (and you briefly mentioned it) is how copyright is enforced on youtube. As a musician involved with the music business and a teacher, I find this field fascinating and very complicated. To my knowledge, chord changes are not subject to copyright. As you illustrated in a previous video there are a plethora of pop tunes that have the same set of chore changes. Melodies, however are subject to copyright. A great example of correct procedures in this process is Weird Al. He parodies songs, often using exact melodies and chord progressions and gets all the proper permissions.
But what about situations when groups claim copyright unfairly, knowing that it's not theirs to claim, then just sit and collect the money for the weeks or months it takes for an appeal to go through while the content creators who rely on that income get nothing? Has that situation changed at all since I heard about it a few months ago?
TH-cam is policing that...the problem is that the number of people who dispute copyright claims is tiny...so it's hard to get good data on who's faking it and who isn't. There aren't /that/ many people with access to the ContentID system though, so they're doing a better job. Outright fraud is pretty uncommon...especially because the legal repercussions are pretty significant.
I can remeber Nerdcubed complaining that he'd had a video with content from Portal flagged for copyright (valve allow their content to be used fairly freely), and when he emailed Valve about it transpired the channel that had made the claim wasn't them.
***** A lot of gaming channels I watch have a lot of problems with false copyright claims. They are smaller channels so there are no legal repercussions for the companies making these false claims. There was one person who was falsely claiming the music being used in almost all of someone else's videos.
Robert Cook a procrastinator!
One of the problems I've heard of with TH-cam's contentID matching is that there are some really sketchy claims going out. Five different people/companies claiming they have ownership of a song, or a youtuber with direct permission of the musical artist to play their music still getting flagged. What's worse is that, even if a youtuber were to appeal, the claimers get 30 days to make a decision: 30 days that a youtuber loses monetization is a HUGE problem, considering most of the content that a youtuber creates is immediately watched by their fans.
I agree that such a big task can only be taken on via technology, but this system needs some heavy fixing before it can ever truly be effective.
The one major thing that bugs me about copyright on TH-cam is that, for example, a good friend of mine spend two months working on a video. The video had exactly 15 seconds of a copyrighted work in it. The video was almost 20 minutes long. What happened is exactly what you said, the copyright holder chose to make money off of the video and she got annoyed. She didn't dispute it because we're not adults but I think that just because there were a few seconds of a copyrighted work it doesn't mean that they can make money off of something like that. Ugh, copyright.
I just got to say, I love seeing the Ian Fleming Bond novels on that shelf behind you.
I agree with it being a technical marvel, but it affects so many creators negatively. I make classical music videos occasionally, and because someone else in history has also recorded works by Mozart or Bach (would you believe it!), so begins the long and only occasionally resolved process of disputing a claim!
John Green is a genius, a guy so young wrote such an amazing book.
I think that if the Green brothers ever made a podcast it might be the single greatest thing ever!
What makes the situation more bizarre is that people have no idea how games factor into this which is why there is so much confusion with game companies taking down videos of their footage.
This video really made me wonder how those youtubechannels filled with covers of popular songs get revenue/are allowed to sell their covers on iTunes...
Covers can fall into creative use. But often there should be some sort of permission granted or royalty paid to the original artist, IIRC.
They make deals with the rights holder. It's not actually that hard. There are services that let you buy the right to cover songs...it's usually about 15 cents per sale, so the cover artist still make the majority of the money.
Ohhh okay, that makes sense! Thanks!
*****
Do you have the names of some of these services?
nadiact1000 Loudr is a company that helps cover artists monetize.
Thanks for this video. I plan on watching the one on your other channel as well. This summer our family started live streaming soccer matches for our local NPSL team. We did it through TH-cam and had a quick lesson in content violation policies at the first game. The stadium was playing music, it was being streamed through our feed, and we got hit with a notice of violation. We learned to mute that part of the stream. We found a royalty free version of the National Anthem for our home team to use so we didn't have to mute that, but it was a lesson to think about. I'm still thinking about it and wondering how people pay for rights to cover a song or use it in the background or whatever. I like using the TH-cam royalty free stuff on my own videos (little home movie type things). But the whole topic is something I thought a lot about this summer.
In regular conversation about a week ago, I mentioned that intellectual property law was a hobby of mine (reading and discussing, not practicing) and was more surprised than I should have been with the blank stares that followed.
Yeah--I know the feeling...After working with the HPA at LeakyCon, I'm excited to be doing something about the issue of Net Neutrality with my students this year. Bringing it up with teachers as we get ready for the school year to start has brought on those same blank stares.
Loving the hand gestures/arm flailing.
"...so that they can have bigger and more fancy yacht parties." One of my favorite Hank quotes.
Am I the only one who is freaking out because of that tardis paint in the back?
probably not. The artist who created it is Karen Hallion and that particular print (and a few of her other works) are available at dftba.com.
dftba.com/product/14q/Rapunzel-and-the-Doctor-Shirt
Swedish universities use a similar system when it comes to research papers and reports. It compares all the submitted papers to all published material it has in its database, which by now contains basically everything. It then marks all passages that are similar or identical to already published texts, before sendig it off to the teacher. The teacher then makes the decision whether it's plagiarism or not. It's an amazing system.
That was really helpful! Thanks for taking the time to explain it briefly. I love watching something and at the end having the light bulb of understanding come on. :)
The problem is that this system is EXTREMELY exploitable, because guess what. Anyone can claim to be the copyright holder, go in and claim the revenue from a monetized video because "they are using my copyrighted material unlicensed without my permission" and then take the revenue share 100%.
Does that person actually need to have the copyright to that content? No But it would take weeks for TH-cam to release that and in the worst case scenarios the scammers are not just claiming revenue, they're not trying to scam but to actually go after somebodies livelihood and send a copyright strike.
3 strikes and you're out from TH-cam, TH-cam don't need to confirm the strikes. So Unless you take an active stand against this and decide to go against this unfair treatment, TH-cam's not going to care. And it will take weeks in order for things to settle in and if you're someone working full time on TH-cam those are weeks spend getting your job back, in the mean while you're not earning revenue and the new videos you posted 85-95% of the view spike from the release will not be generated until you've taken the rights to your video back.
Your last paragraph is a bit mistaken. You should watch the video on Hank's personal channel for more detail.
But you're absolutely right, the system is extremely exploitable. Public domain footage is automatically claimed by publishers who use that footage in their otherwise copyrighted work. Content is falsely deliberately claimed in some cases by deliberately fraudulent companies when it in fact belongs to someone else.
And sometimes, sometimes public domain content is claimed deliberately by a rights collecting society that is responsible for collecting the rights to material, and the content _in their database_ is an explicitly public domain work.
That last example is something I've had to deal with. I recorded myself playing a piece of classical music (ergo, public domain stuff), and I get a copyright notice from "One or more music publishing rights collecting societies". i.imgur.com/bSNL0.png
Jim Cullen The point is that calling a system this broken and flawed which is misused in so many cases daily, a miracle is kind of like calling the invention of the machine-gun a miracle. Sure it was a effective tool but it still led to some bad stuff.
And just think about this for a second.
A gaming company want to spread the news about their new game, since Internet and TH-cam this has dramatically changed and they can now upload it and share it on social medias and hope that fans and watchers do their part in the sharing. Let's say someone like Totalbiscuit is on a gaming podcast and are talking about gaming news and happen to showcase the new trailers and talk a bit about the game and its prior history and his personal hopes, thoughts and ideas on the game and the genre.
Its clear to everyone that this is good, this is free commercial and free sponsorship for the company. And in most case gaming publishers wouldn't bat an eye, they would be thankful that a podcast that gets 9-15 thousands people watching live and some 120-300k view on their vods are highlighting their games in a manner that gives them their viewers eyes for a couple of minutes. After all that trailer was uploaded to generate awareness of the game.
Yes something as small as a 2-3 minute game trailer shown during a 3 hour podcast gives those publishers the right to 100% of the revenue stream of that podcast.
And in the case of some japanese publishers (namely Square Enix and Nintendo, and on occasion Sega of Japan) they have actually claimed 100% of the revenue stream.
The problem is that this system doesn't actively support fair use because when it comes to Games reviewers and critiques need to be able to utilize trailers, gameplay-footage to showcase and tell the viewers about the game at hand. But if some publishers are trying to use a copyright system to try and for example silence critique then its a system that needs to be overlooked or drastically changed because the entire gaming medium is still very new. If I upload a movie to TH-cam that's clearly piracy because viewing a movie is how you consume that type of media. But that is not the case of games, you play and interact with games, watching a game will never be the same as playing it, even when it comes to the most cinematic types of games, and if it ever does feel like you're watching a movie, then that is no longer a game by definition.
TL;DR The main problem I have is that big time Publishers like Nintendo, Sega and Square Enix are actively trying to take down content on TH-cam via Copyright claims which they don't necessarily and in some cases undoubtedly don't have rights to take down.
Bloodstainer I agree that TH-cam's current system is completely broken, but the example of the situation with Nintendo is, in my opinion, a poor one.
It's very hard, in my opinion, to claim TotalBiscuit's videos are fair use. The entirety of the video is nothing but content made by someone else. Sure the audio is partly his, but a part of fair use is the amount that the work relies upon the copyrighted material. TB relies too much on the actual game's content. Someone who did the same talking but mostly showed his own face, cutting to game footage or screenshots to demonstrate a specific point, could make a reasonable fair use claim.
No, in the case of game publishing content on TH-cam, the problem lies with the game content holders. Legally, they're totally in the right, but it shows a total lack of understanding of how the modern world works. They really need to learn to move on with the times and allow people to share footage of their gameplay freely and without hindrance.
Jim Cullen Critique and reviews goes under fair use. I don't think any judge would go against that notion.
But some of the older industries don't want to learn because by learning they will have to adjust to a world where they no longer earn the same amount of money. You can't sell a game on PC any longer for $60 nor can you sell a CD for $25 because who would buy that with access to iTunes and Spotify? Who would pay for a game when you can get Witcher II right now for less than 5$ with the current 75% discount on Steam.
The point is that there is such a lack of communication and misunderstanding between some companies and their consumers. And I'm so tired of this entire copyright debate that I just wish all the companies that doesn't adjust to the changes the internet era brought upon their market, I hope they disappear and die out.
Bloodstainer I agree completely that the companies' business models are completely out of touch with modern reality. You won't find me disagreeing with you there.
And yes, critique and reviews are well within fair use. But let me take it to the extreme. Say you just show an hour's worth of gameplay, and then at the end you give two sentences' worth of review. That's obviously not fair use, right?
Obviously, there's a line somewhere. Most people should agree, I think, that when you show as much actual gameplay footage as TB does, that this is clearly not within fair use. If he wants to make that claim, he needs to increase the ratio of his content to theirs significantly.
Copyright holders should get a percentage of the money of a video for the amount of their work in it. 30 seconds of a movie should not give a copyright holder all the money of an hour review, they should get their fair share which would be like 1/120 of the money.
great video thank you! I have been wondering about this for a while now and much of the information on copyright is insanely complicated.
Ah, Hank, not to be a stickler, but we are fast approaching the end of the summer, and I can't help but notice the lack of a Harry Potter song. Please do that. That is some of the best things.
On that note, I was very pissed off the find a "Don't forget to be awesome" sign for sale, next to a bunch of copies of TFIOS, at Books A Million the other day.
I AM DRINKING OUT THE EXACT SAME SHAPED GLASS YOU PICKED UP AT THE BEGINNING THIS IS MY FIRST EVER COMMENT ON A VLOGBROTHERS VIDEO I AM SO EXCITED
So my video of "the thomas the tank engine" theme song over the opening clip of "Jaws" is fair use? Hooray!
The way I put it, as soon as you put something out for the public, the public gets to do whatever it wants with it
Thank you for making the extra long copyright breakdown on your 2nd channel. It was very informative. Peace & Love
This whole time I've been seeing The Fault in Our Stars everywhere, I had no idea that John wrote it! I'm going to have to check it out now.
Hank! We saw you at Out to Lunch at Caras park on Wednesday!.....but we were too afraid to come up and ask for a picture...:(
A thought that has been popping into my head a lot lately: "What if copyright just went away?". Would it really be such a bad thing? If someone makes a thing, and someone else goes "I can utilize that thing to make a different thing", why is that not ok? Copyright effectively exists for the sole purpose of making sure certain revenues go into the "right" pockets. It is an completely financially driven concept, which is bafflingly counter-intuitive to the creative process. It's a limiter that exists for all the wrong reasons, and I kinda really want to see it just not exist anymore. Is that crazy?
A flaw in the system is that sometimes things get taken down even if the owner of the item used is the one using it in the video.
According to comments on the video, GEMA (Germany's copyright organization) blocked a video on CinemaSinsJeremey's channel due to music used in the video--music that Jeremy recorded on his guitar right in his own living room. He got punished for using music that he owned because he used music that someone owned (even though that someone was himself).
Pretty big flaw.
I was wondering on your last video if you actually were violating the terms of copyright but since I was very confused about the copyright terms on youtube, I refrained from asking in the comments. Thank you for clearing this up, this made everything less confusing.
Vlogbrothers, one of the few channels that will teach me stuff that I actually enjoy listening to.
The problem is that a lot of companies abuse that system to claim stuff that's copyright free, creative commons content or public domain...
Thank you Hank, for making this video. I went to the copyright panel at VidCon and I learned so much about Content ID and disputes over fair use etc. but so many people are unaware of how it all works and if you're putting content on TH-cam, I think everyone should familiarize themselves with this.
However what are your thoughts on the fact that Content ID claimed videos can be monetized by the copyright holder for up to 30 days while the dispute is ongoing? TH-camrs can lose a lot of money to a large production company or record label for an entire month (when they're probably getting the most views), even if their content falls under fair use. This seems like a shame. I have heard people suggest holding account where the monetized amounts are held until the dispute is decided. Thoughts?
My only real issue with copyright - is that it has been extended to the point where it's no longer for the benefit of the people who create things but for the benefit of corporations.
Wasn't that video a parody so really he had a right to monetize it?
The word "parody" means something different to us than it means legally. If I were using that song to parody the idea of the song itself (like if I re-wrote the words to mock the original meaning or intent of the words) then that would be fair use because the work was being used to comment on the work. What I did was just take an instrumental track and write new, unrelated words. We call that a "parody" these days, but it isn't parodying the work, it's just writing new words to an existing song, which is definitely illegal.
Oh I see, that makes total sense. Thanks for the explanation and keep up the amazing work!
***** So what you did was illegal? Did you know about that before you did it?.. i don't get it :/
Mehr un Nisa Naghman it's illegal if he had monetized it for his own gain. It's monetized for Calvin Harris by the YT robot and therefore not technically illegal.
***** I'm not sure that it is illegal, considering Weird Al kind of bases his career and doing exactly that.
Thanks for explaining this to us, Hank! The topic about copyright is a bit fuzzy.
2:51 i wish those big music companies would do the third thing instead of the second thing. it's getting old seeing good fanmade music videos get taken down.
(and yes, this is personal as well cause mine got taken down - and it had 19k views as well. and i spent an entire day making it. grrr.)
This seems oddly in support of the current content ID system which doesn't have an effective dispute system... There are countless numbers of incorrect strikes against channels under fair use. Not to say that there aren't also countless correct strikes. But in the case of a court you can point it out and someone with real authority can say yes or no but youtube seems at least to circumvent that whole authority and impose their own.
I am in favor of ContentID because, without it, there would be no TH-cam. The dispute process does need to be reformed, but that's not going to happen until we start actually understanding what we're asking for.
***** Have you watched 'downloaded'? (Story about Napster on Netflix) I am curious about how much further along ContentID would be if the music industry got ahead of the issue back when Napster came out. they fought it tooth and nails, but imagine if they didn't? Imagine if they started to build ContentID back before TH-cam. Our digital world would be so different...
***** Very True. Information is the seed from which all strategies take form.
Can someone please explain to me how beauty channels (Bethany Mota, for example), are allowed to use copyrighted music in their monetized videos? They only use about 20 seconds per song, does that make it okay? It doesn't really seem fair that they constantly use copyrighted music and still continue to monetize their videos.
I had a video that I used 7-8 seconds of a song, and it got flagged. Now I only use TH-cam's free music, but I know what you're talking about because I have seen these vids with copyrighted music that are monetized.
They have deals with the rights holders. These days...some companies will /pay/ to have their content in TH-cam videos of popular creators.
Michelle Phan is being sued for 7.5 million by a company who has signed artists music that she uses so it's not always monetized legally or done through the right channels cause the artist had no problem with her using his music but the label did.
Plus, Hank talks about how the rights holder can choose to monetize that video for themselves rather than take down the video. So, just because you are seeing an ad on a video using a copyrighted song does not mean that the revenue from that ad is going to the video creator. It could be going to the rights holder, like in the Calvin Harris example.
Ashley McCoy True but most likely if most of their videos are this way then it's probably a copyright issue and they are monetizing for their own gain, either illegally or legally having gone through the right channels previously before using the songs in a vid.
Speaking of copyright, my father's side of the family is convinced that one of their ancestors invented the very first bicycle, but that the idea was stolen. My mother's side of the family is convinced that their ancestors invented the very first bicycle...
+HankGreen
OMG THE POSTER BEHIND YOU ITS RAPUNZEL AND THE TARDIS SQUUUUUUUUUUUUUUEEEEEE!
(Sorry for the epic fangirl moment I'm obsessed with Disney and doctor {among other things} and when my fandoms are put together I just can't. I LITERALLY CANT! {even though that is physically and emotionally and mentally impossible- right?})
Hank, Hank, you have the same cups as me.
It's worth noting that copyright is NOT as automatic as one would like in the United States of America. It IS automatic everywhere else due to the Berne Convention, but the USA is not a signer, so it has its own system.
To have an enforceable copyright, you must register your potential IP with the Library of Congress. You can register multiple items per submission and save a few bucks, and the fee is nominal (between $40-100, last I checked). This means that if and when your copyright is challenged, abused, or otherwise violated, you can bring it to court and claim of due diligence.
However, this has created a complicated situation where Berne Convention copyright is... less copywritten in the USA. Non-Americans wishing to enforce copyright within the USA are advised to register their works with the Library of Congress, as not doing so makes their claim far weaker in the eyes of the American court system.
For example, if your copyright is violated by an American and you are non-American, and your case is processed by, say, a Canadian or European court, then no problem. Berne Convention will likely be upheld and you don't have to worry about the Library of Congress.
More often, it goes the other way because the Library of Congress requires more due diligence. If you're processed by an American court, then you will definitely want Library of Congress registration on your side, especially because it protects you from the OTHER party if they've made a similar registration but at a later date.
So yeah, America... makes things complicated.
Very informative as always, Hank!
Hank and John Possible Als IceBucket Challenge ?!?!?!?!? And possibly a video informing us about ALS.
As a followup to this, can you guys talk about the damage Disney and others have done to the public domain by continually lengthening copyright claim limits? If the terms hadn't been forced to change by huge companies, characters like Mickey Mouse, Superman, and Batman would be in the public domain, as would the works of Hemingway and many others.
Bigger and more fancy yacht parties sounds like a recipe for disaster.
I think that the best way to deal with the content ID system is to make disputing the claim easier, and to increase communication between TH-cam and content creators. Instead of being aloof and making creators afraid (especially those that live off of TH-cam) they could make it more transparent and easier to deal with. An alternative, though, is to create jobs for people to look through videos that have been content ID matched and check the validity.
I really liked this super video. I posted a video with a song and 2 weeks later it is telling the watchers what the song is. Particularly interesting because it was google related and shared internally. I couldn't figure out why no one at google cared I'd ripped off the song in the video. Now I know. Thanks Hank
Hank, the faces you make are 1/2 the reason I watch your vids. : ) But really, thanks for clearing copyright up of me.
Here's a good compromise: have the Content ID software report questionable content to one of many lawyers that TH-cam can and should hire, and have them review the content and decide whether or not they should consider it a legal use of another's intellectual property and make legal arrangements accordingly.
An interesting video. There certainly could be more said on copyright as there is just more than just youtube mucking it up. ie: A "famous" cosplay sells "cosplay wings" which are crafted wings that people wear by straps. This cosplayer has felt that when they go to conventions they can hand out "cease and decist" orders based on copyright to stop other people from selling them and this be the only person selling wings at those conventions. Only under the rules of copyright this isn't how it works, she can only prevent people from selling designs that she specifically copyrighted. Still they have done this, likely in an attempt to do away with competition, but thankfully other conventions haven't simply told people to stop selling their cosplay wings that are of clearly of different designs and attached by other methods than straps. If they had patented their idea they could have the grounds to deny others selling cosplay wings completely, but as they have not and there is no way of proving that they were the first to make them now an attempt to patent the idea now likely wouldn't hold water.
i could listen to you talk for hours.
TH-cam monetisation is far from the worst part of copyright, for sure. I think copyright ownership should not be inheritable...
Hank! Will we ever get to see you do The Art Assignment?!
I love the vlogbrothers.. but we need more *cynicism*
god. My teacher tried teaching this to us in three WEEKS! I still didn't get it. THEN YOU TEACH ME IN THREE MINUTES!!!!
YES!!!!! I FINALLY DID IT!!!!! I have watched every single vlogbrothers video in order!! From the first brotherhood 2.0 video to this one!!!! And it only took me (just under) 3 months!!! FRENCH THE LLAMA!!!! so does this mean I'm a nerd fighter now? WAIT! NO!! I if it's question Tuesday I don't want that to be my question! I've watched them all and no one has ever asked this... Who? What? Where? When? And most importantly....Why?... 😜 anyway you guys have changed my life! Thanks for all you guys do and hank... Start doing your happy dance more, it's been years... Lol
Yeah, it's not the best solution, but I thought it was still a step up from a few years ago when record companies like UMG and Warner Bros. (especially them!) went freaking nuts on ALL the videos that contained artists' copyrighted songs, forcing the removal of a lot of my favorite videos and the termination of those TH-cam channels. Or the videos would be muted. Not fun for the people whose videos gained massive popularity, but because of whatever song they used, their muted/removed videos would have made them lose viewers and subscribers. Not that my middle-school AMVs were particularly popular (30k views at most?), but even I had to take them down because I didn't want my channel to be terminated. When TH-cam started being somewhat lenient on content again, I was like, "thank you for once -_-"
Considering that twitch implemented a similar program to the one youtube uses that it put mute flags on twitches own content by their staff. These content ID bots aren't designed well enough to work properly. It's basically just a way to keep them from getting sued by the few people that ruin everything for everybody. back when youtube instituted this current system stampylonghead who does gaming content for younger viewers and has 3.5 million subs almost lost his channel to the copyright strike system because of content flagging and automatic claims by companies that have no business claiming stuff. It's essentially like city of new york putting a copy claim on every internet video that has the city of new york in it.
I was so distracted by Hank's shirt that I missed the first 30 seconds of video and had to start over... haha!
It's not the only possible solution, but rather it is the status quo, and we have not witnessed a second generation to copyright (at least on the internet). Copyright can be improved with automated monetization. TH-cam can detect copyrighted material, but the trade is disconnected, so the people who made the material get no money, but if a system were to be made that gives royalties (like 10%) to all copyrighted material from monetized content, copyright is a happy world. In this kind of society, people would want to get their videos being used in others. This solution is also great because the only actual copyright problems are when 100% of the content is copywritten, in which can be flagged and sent to a human moderator who verifies to a reasonable degree, and notifies the copyright folks.
Brilliantly done, sir. and really freaking impressive.
IMPORTANT: Just to clarify.
Hank says that just by creating an original work it is protected by copyright. While you can say that it is and even put the copyright symbol on it, don't try taking anyone to court if they use your work (photos, videos, etc.). Without registering your work (prior to the infringement), federal court will throw your case away.
Hank seems a lot more animated today then previous videos
You know what's odd? The fact that there are some people do upload movies and albums onto youtube without any hassle and they can be up on youtube for years, but if some people upload a video that's legit fair use and they're talking about the subject and they're video is pulled almost right away.
Good video! Copyright has always confused me, because so many people post movie clips or songs and things like that.
Also, if, for example, a Comedian is on stage and someone takes a video of it, is it okay for that to be posted, because it's the Comedian's act, but the filmer's video. (Sorry if filmer isn't actually a word)
I can't believe that 'Dumb Starbucks' and parody law wasn't discussed.
I think Content ID is a brilliantly smart idea as it does allow a fairly easy manipulation of copyright law that works pretty much everywhere and allows for the difference between fair use and fair dealing etc. The only issue I have is that it could be made smarter especially when it comes to the situation of Let's Plays.
This was a great follow up after watching the Hank's channel video last night.
What happens if you use two copyrighted songs in one video? Who would claim it?
that was an epic amount of information in 4 min. great lungs