Illustration by Alex Castro / The VergeYouTube is changing how it handles copyright claims around brief or unintentional clips of music in an attempt to make the system fairer to video creators. In the short term, however, YouTube warns that the changes could lead to more videos being blocked entirely.
Creators on YouTube have increasingly struggled with record labels claiming copyright on their videos when snippets of music appear momentarily in the background, like from the radio of a car passing by. YouTube’s new rules don’t stop these claims from happening, but they attempt to discourage the claims by removing a key incentive for copyright holders: the ability to make money.
Now, when a copyright claim is manually filed for “very short clips” of music or for music that is “unintentional[ly]” playing in the background of a video clip, the rights holder will no longer be allowed to earn money from ads placed on the video. Instead, they’ll have to choose between leaving the video up and blocking the creator from making money, or blocking the video entirely. The new rules apply to audio copyright claims only, so short clips of videos aren’t covered.
It’s not a perfect solution. YouTube’s hope is that, by removing the ability to make money off of these tiny snippets or accidental clips, record labels will spend less time searching them out and instead just choose to leave creators alone. The trouble is, there’s no guarantee that’s what’ll happen. Record labels could keep up the pressure, but choose to block the videos entirely.
Based on a blog post written by YouTube, that heightened reaction is what the company seems to expect will happen right off the bat, as labels adjust to the new policy. “We acknowledge that these changes may result in more blocked content in the near-term, but we feel this is an important step toward striking the right balance over the long-term,” the company wrote.
“We’ve been noticing this trend of more aggressive manual claiming.”
The change comes in response to an uptick in the number of manually filed copyright claims on small clips of music in recent months. “We’ve been noticing this trend of more aggressive manual claiming,” David Rosenstein, YouTube’s director of creator product management, told The Verge. In May, my colleague Julia Alexander wrote about how creators big and small were losing money because of these claims, with one major YouTuber claiming to have lost five figures on a video for simply saying a line from a Bon Jovi song. (The copyright holder in that case, Sony/ATV, eventually released the claim after it was disputed.)
YouTube’s new policy seeks to stop that by covering situations when music is playing unintentionally (like from a store someone is passing by) and when music is played intentionally but very briefly (so, theoretically, you could blast a moment of “All Star”). YouTube isn’t defining “very short,” but Rosenstein says the company is talking “single digit” seconds.
There are a couple of big caveats to the policy, though. It only applies to “manual” copyright claims — that is, when a record label or other rights holder identifies something that belongs to them and files the violation notice by hand. If a music clip is caught by YouTube’s Content ID system, which scans videos for infringing material, then rights holders will still be able to make money off of the video, regardless of how brief or unintentional the music is.
The success also depends on how well YouTube enforces adherence to these new rules. When filing a claim manually, rights holders will always retain the ability to elect to make money off of an infringing video. The only difference now is that choosing that option in one of these scenarios would be a violation of YouTube’s rules, but it’ll be up to YouTube to enforce them. The company says it will block the ability to file manual claims from rights owners that “repeatedly fail” to adhere to the rules.
“That win-win is not as strong as it used to be.”
YouTubers themselves will have no say in the process, though. Even if they feel that their video has been wrongly claimed under the new policy, there won’t be a way to formally dispute whether the policy should have applied to them. Instead, Rosenstein says YouTube has a review team that looks through “loads and loads” of claims each week to find problems. He adds that the team also monitors social media to catch issues they missed.
Last month, YouTube updated the tools available to creators to let them better respond to these manual claims and potentially avoid video takedowns. It began requiring manual copyright claims to include specific timestamps around when the copyrighted content appears so that creators can quickly remove it or replace the audio using YouTube’s built-in editing tools, allowing them to keep the video up and maintain their own ads.
Rosenstein says that YouTube’s copyright claiming system is supposed to be a “win-win” for creators and rights holders, allowing creators to legally use licensed music while ensuring that rights holders are paid. “That win-win is not as strong as it used to be,” Rosenstein said, “especially with really short uses of music resulting in all revenue getting reassigned from the creator, who in many cases is really bringing in the audience.”
“That’s what we’re working toward,” Rosenstein said. “How can we restore that balance a little bit better.”
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