The YouTube Copyright Metagame (Part 1)

you pop this piece of crap in and what do you get with people and corporations in the music industry that are unlawfully and religiously claiming works that were made fully legally by YouTube channels where I got a mail from YouTube saying that someone named ramjets claimed my video which means that the video is still running but the revenue from advertising now goes into his pocket instead of my pocket they have copyright claims just over 400 of my total catalogue of videos this is two separate claims coming from two different companies this is clearly an attempt to censor the video from multiple angles it's premeditated and it's really nothing but pure censorship Lord what is happening in there I know you're a sophisticated guy the world is a mess the world is as angry as it gets what you think this is gonna cause a little more anger [Music] if you're searching for evidence that we live in a clown based society look no further than YouTube's copyright system last year I posted an episode of YouTube Geographic where I talked about the origin and development of YouTube's Content ID system I ended the episode with the implication that the copyright system improved over time but is that actually true or just wishful thinking well if you compare now with 2008 the system certainly seems better as nowadays you're far less likely to get your channels striked and terminated as part of a copyright claim but I'm not sure whether to attribute this to the system improving or copyright claimants getting smarter you see in the beginning when YouTube was just a sketchy Wild West site media companies wanted nothing to do with it many companies like Viacom threatened YouTube with lawsuit after a lawsuit for copyright infringement when YouTube finally appeased the media companies with Content ID their only means of controlling the content was a scorched earth policy 2008 to 2009 was probably the worst ever time to upload copyrighted content to YouTube any Channel at this time uploading montages remixes or YouTube poops face serious risk of losing everything one day out of the blue minor use of copyrighted music frequently resulted in entire videos getting muted or worse replaced with a dreaded YouTube audio swap song you sometime later copyright punishments got a little less severe around 2010 media companies began blocking content rather than removing it still a major obstacle for youtubers but at least it was preferable to the nuclear option also around this time Google introduced their Adsense program to YouTube videos meaning it was now possible to earn money from content on YouTube and thus a new form of copyright claim became available to rights holders revenue collection eventually media companies began to realize that monetizing claimed content was a much better option than just removing it since they could basically generate free revenue from virtually no effort on their part at first this was a very welcome change at least in my experience I wasn't making money from my YouTube hoops anyway I just wanted them to be seen so when copyright claim and stopped blocking my videos and simply ran ads on them it was no skin off my back monetization used to be a rare privilege on YouTube preserved only for the top creators on the site over time however the advent of MC ends made monetization much more accessible so our standards and expectations of earning YouTube revenue changed unfortunately the Content ID system didn't change alongside our expectations all of a sudden monetization became an entitlement rather than a dream and the once benign revenue collection from media companies became a much more pervasive issue the Content ID system only really improved in its ability to detect content and not in its ability to differentiate remixes and reviews from shameless reuploads at some points the media conglomerates were the least of our concern people like Derrick Savage and Matt Hass began abusing the system to silence criticism fair use was totally thrown by the wayside content creators suffered while abusive claimants face no consequences whatsoever even now ten whole years after the introduction of Content ID YouTube's copyright system is still very flawed with many blatant issues remaining unresolved and unaddressed but with that being said this is the system in place and youtubers have had to accept that this is our reality if you want to succeed on YouTube you must go through the Content ID system and as the system has become more advanced so to have the strategies youtubers used outsmarted strategies that essentially answer the question how much copyrighted stuff can I use and still get paid using copyrighted content is inherently risky the more you use the more likely you are to lose out on revenue for a video however the more you avoid copyrighted material the more you risk your content becoming bland repetitive and unengaging for new viewers it's a delicate balance and to this day no one knows for sure the best way to approach this conundrum a conundrum I like to call the YouTube copyright meta game [Music] [Applause] [Music] the metagame can essentially be represented by a spectrum of risk specifically the risk of tripping the content ID system through the use of copyrighted content in your video how close can you get to the fire without getting burned starting at the very left of the spectrum you'll find the least risky option possible mr.clean the type of content where you don't use any copyrighted material because you don't need it this style used to be much more common in the early days of YouTube where people would just flip on a webcam and upload a raw video of themselves talking theoretically this stuff should be safe from even the most slimy copyright abuse it's strictly original by design and using external copyrighted sources is completely unnecessary to the purpose of the content making it the least risky type of video on the site but with that being said there's a reason why you don't really see this type of video much anymore nowadays audiences expect a little more than a raw video of you making a sandwich so unless you're very talented in a very specific niche or have very high production value people aren't really going to be rushing to watch you unlike the old days most modern genres on YouTube do benefit from using multimedia assets like external music images and footage so much so that it's almost a requirement for growing your channel but despite this there are some creators who choose not to do it regardless why let's see could be because you love to upload copyrighted cartoons [Music] the cold turkey is very similar to mr. clean the only difference being that cold turkeys abstain from using copyrighted material even though their videos could conceivably benefit from it a big example that comes to mind here is kurz Gazette a science channel that painstakingly ensures that all of their assets are original content and although they have successfully eliminated the risk of a copyright dispute the costs are enormous requiring a team of people spending hundreds of hours per video drawing and animating visual components in addition to composing original music clearly this tremendous amount of effort is not exactly feasible for smaller channels who can't spare the expense a lot of you have been commenting asking me why I'm no longer playing clips songs in my videos how come I'm not playing why aren't I playing lips and basically my answer to that question is copyright anthony Fantana is another YouTube creator who seems to avoid using copyrighted material at all costs why I chose not to use copyrighted material in my reviews despite it being a very common practice among YouTube reviewers it's just really a time consuming process and something that just ends up being like a real nail-biter at the end of the day because I'm worried about whether or not this video is am I gonna get revenue off of that am I getting a revenue off of this is this going to affect whether or not the next video is monetized or this that and the other thing it's just kind of a headache I would rather not focus on because I have to put out so much content all the time and I feel like just spending all of that all that time all that effort on just refuting claims and fighting with this label and fighting with that label and responding to this and responding to that it's it's just a waste of my time media criticism is a genre that can benefit greatly from using copyrighted works to provide the viewer with direct examples of the elements being reviewed however on fantana's music review channel the needle drop he abstains from using any song samples within his reviews this creates the rather unfortunate consequence of his reviews lacking context for audience members unfamiliar with the specific or this appears to have the effect of making his viewership dependent on the popularity of the song or album rather than intrinsic to the channel itself Fantana has only been able to overcome this because of his unrivaled consistency and longevity in the medium as one of the first regular music reviewers on youtube he quickly established himself as the premier music critic on not just YouTube but the Internet in general if I was completely free and allowed to and able to use as many song clips in every review as I would like yeah I would probably make it a more regular thing in most of my reviews but because of that possibility that incredibly likely possibility really a probability a lot of the time that I am going to have to be responding to a bunch of prompts about claims and this and that and the other thing in my videos just for referencing something or bringing up a clip or something like that it's just something I would rather avoid most youtubers however don't have the benefit of pioneering a genre it's difficult to imagine another critic becoming popular doing what Fantana does youtubers must innovate their approaches if they want to avoid getting labeled as a derivative clone and frequently this innovation requires the use of copyrighted material which is where we find the copyright strategists I call the fair users this is where you'll find a majority of your film TV and video game reviewers in addition to a lot of drama news and commentary channels this type of media is dependent on discussing and critiquing someone else's content whether it's owned by a movie studio or some other youtuber this content falls under the legal defense of fair use which theoretically protects it from claims of copyright infringement however as we've discussed earlier rights holders on YouTube don't really care about fair use the Content ID system cannot determine the context of the copyrighted material it can only detect whether it's used at all so technically according to YouTube's automated systems there's very little separating a movie review from a direct upload of that same movie which brings me to the bootlegger at the very far right of the spectrum you'll find the closest thing to an organized crime syndicate on YouTube the very people that Content ID is trying to stop people who literally upload unedited clips of movies and TV shows these guys have been around since the very beginning of the website YouTube itself was supposedly created because its founder jawed Karim wanted to see a live TV clip that he couldn't find anywhere else the origins of YouTube are rooted in the bootlegger the faceless silent Mavericks of YouTube who makes sure that no epic movie one-liner goes on up loaded it was this type of content which instigated the Viacom lawsuit in the first place and directly led to the implementation of Content ID nowadays almost every major TV network movie studio and record company has their own YouTube channels to dump clips but back in the day these bootleggers were all we had and love him or hate him they were instrumental in driving traffic to the site when it was just starting out and they arguably still are today so the next time you see a Family Guy funny moments compilation pop into your recommended you can be thankful because no traffic means no YouTube and many of you watching now are only here because you were first introduced to the site by binging unlicensed TV clips the bootleggers walked so you tubers could run you don't have to respect them but you have to acknowledge the role they play on this site but with that being said they are uploading exclusively copyrighted content and no slapping on a euphoric after effects intro doesn't change that so I can't really feel bad for them when they get caught considering the copyright system literally exists to stop them so so far we've covered the riskiest copyright strategy and the safest so what about everything in between well that's the part of the spectrum I affectionately referred to as no-man's land and the place I like to call home it just so happens that I and a lot of other youtubers use copyrighted content just for the hell of it I can't speak for everyone else but I do it simply because it's a style I've adapted since my days in YouTube who anyone familiar with the history of the genre is aware that we've been terrorized by copyright claims for ages dating back to when the system was much less for giving so many channels were barbarically slaughtered for daring to upload videos of Sponge Bob shooting Patrick in modern times meme channels have to deal with a lot of the same pitfalls we are a noble and proud people simply making humorous edits for the enjoyment of others even though the fruits of our labor gets shamelessly reposted elsewhere we never remix our sources with the same intent in terms of our approach to copyright you can call us the Transformers because our work is transformative and supposedly under the protection of fair use when a copyrighted work is remixed altered or edited it has theoretically been transformed beyond the confines of its original purpose and should therefore be treated as an entirely new entity to put it simply people who want to watch The Incredibles aren't going to tune into my eight-minute nonsensical remix of The Incredibles they're gonna pay for the full-length movie or pirated my remix is not attempting to siphon revenue off the original work my viewers are not trying to skirt around paying for a movie ticket they're watching to see my artistic interpretation of the source material it's the same reason why Andy Warhol's paintings can't be classified as an advertisement for Campbell Soup he transformed the original work into something completely distinct however in the eyes of the copyright holder on YouTube it doesn't make much of a difference if you use any significant amount of copyrighted footage regardless of the context you are likely to get claimed and this is largely due to how the Content ID system is administered [Music] earlier this year YouTube released an alternate version of their Content ID tool for creators in the YouTube studio beta while it does not grant creators the same revenue sharing privileges as media companies it does provide us with insight on what these companies see while claiming our content basically within the copyright tab you will see a list of other people's videos that the system detected to match content in your videos presumably media companies have the additional option to claim revenue from each video on the list regardless of the context amount used or whether the claimant even watch the video this highly streamlined system is great for rightsholders and terrible for pretty much everyone else essentially there's nothing stopping media companies from just spamming revenue claims on every video that winds up on the content claims list theoretically youtubers are supposed to have a means of countering bogus claims in accordance with the DMCA but in practice that simply isn't the case on YouTube the claimant presides as the judge jury and executioner in copyright disputes appeals and counterclaims mean nothing when their outcome is determined by the same people who issue the claim in the first place once the copyright holder inevitably rejects all of your appeals your only option to reverse the claim is to literally take the claimant to court nearly all youtubers are just small private citizens who can't afford to fight multi-million dollar corporations in a lengthy court battle in a legal war of attrition the corporation will always win and when you factor in how the cost of even entering a lawsuit will greatly exceed any revenue you would gain from the video this makes legal action a non-existent option in practice in the world of YouTube copyright if the claimant holds all of the leverage the way YouTube sees it they earn the same cut of revenue no matter who claims the video so they don't exactly have much of an incentive to change this imagine if your ex-wife was in charge of determining your alimony payment doesn't really seem fair does it well that's the system we have on YouTube and I've personally had to deal with it time and time again episode two have never ever had its revenue claimed by WWE for using less than a minute of content I was discouraged but I was actually willing to settle for this because I was done worrying about it and I just wanted the video to go online for people to see then a few hours after making it public WWE blocked the video worldwide so in review I uploaded a video basically giving WWE free praise free promotion and free revenue and they took a look at that and said no we don't want any of that we're gonna instead choose to be as belligerent as possible to assert our copyright dominance my appeal was predictably rejected leaving me with no choice but to recut the parts and re-upload the entire video and hey this time the Content ID system didn't detect anything and I got to keep all the revenue for myself so in conclusion WWE can suck a fart out of my ass your programming is hot garbage and I can't wait to start watching aew this fall Wednesday's on TNT and let this serve as a permanent reminder to all of you that media companies don't care one bit about the context of your video they will shut you down without warning for no reason even if your video benefits them in every conceivable way so if you think that these media companies are willing to spare a single minute of time to give your video a fair review then you are sorely mistaken on how little these companies care if you want your videos to get through the copyright system unscathed you can't rely on media companies to be nice oftentimes the people in charge of manually reviewing the claims seem more robotic than the automated system itself so with that being said the discretion of the copyright system depends almost entirely on whether or not you can sneak past the BOTS undetected and in order to do that we're going to have to investigate the dark arts of copyright smuggling coming up in part 2 of YouTube copyright school we take a look at the techniques youtubers use to avoid getting claimed gee check the feds people of society it is I Joker am here to tell you that enough is enough I have had it with getting copyright claim getting demonetised getting pushed around by this cruel unfeeling world Society has stolen my precious ad revenue for long enough and I figure it's about time I return the favor now don't you bother touching that dial because I'm currently broadcasting live around the world that's right ladies and gentlemen I've successfully hacked into all of your machines using the power of the downward spiral and now you're all about to witness what happens when youtubers rise up if you're seeing this message then your personal information has already been harvested and sold to the Chinese and I got away with it too all because you people connected to public Wi-Fi without a VPN all those times I tried to sell you Nord VPN you scoffed and clicked away well guess what you fools you should have used my affiliate link to purchase Nord VPN for 70% off the three year plan because now you're all gonna pay but whose demonetised now [Music] believe in me coffee no if you want it sucks that's your choice I supposed you

Channel: EmpLemon

Views: 1,060,310

Keywords: EmpLemon, YouTube, Commentary, Complaints, Copyright, Anthony Fntano

Id: BPIC2A_YeI0

Length: 21min 21sec (1281 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 21 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/TJBlast]

Can’t wait for part 2