Fighting music copyright battles on YouTube - how Creators get the fluffy end of the pineapple

I’ve said many times YouTube is biased in favour of music copyright owners and gives little support to creators who choose to dispute or appeal against copyright claimants. The whole process is aimed at intimidating creators; nevertheless creators need not be put off by this. So here is my experience of my to date:

My YouTube copyright battles fall into four main categories

1. The show reels where I have deliberately used a popular piece of music for dramatic effect
2. Dressage to music videos, where the YouTube bot is able to identify some of the tracks that the rider has used
3. Show jumping or dressage with arena music playing in the background over the PA. This also includes prize givings
4. False claims where copyright is claimed on Royalty free music either by mistake or to be deliberately misleading

Obviously there are subdivisions; for example in some cases for the Freestyles I have been given the original disc which means I can achieve better sound quality but it is more difficult to argue that the music is not reproducible because it was played over the PA.

The starting point and your options
©Harveywetdog

In the past my biggest concern was can I still play the video; some copyright owners will insist that videos are blocked completely. With monetisation it has now become worthwhile trying to dispute some of claims. I certainly don’t want people earning money from my videos if I can help it.

The unfairness of it all
A small snippet of music entitles them to monetise your entire video
©Harveywetdog

Obviously I don’t really have much of an argument with category 1; my only choice would be to mute the sound or delete the video. I am thinking about that for one video as we will discuss further below.

Category 4 is most straightforward and I can argue that I have permission to use the track. I suspect there are people who steal Royalty Free Music and then present it as their own so you have to tread carefully when dealing with them.

Category 3 I argue is Fair Use, and there is a category under Fair Use which covers “background music”. I also bring out the poor quality of sound over the PA and the basic irrelevance of the music to the competition. I also make the point that for the music to be played over the PA some form of Royalty payment will have been paid. If I am not successful I will either completely mute the sound or try the track removal tool. Unfortunately this tool is not very effective and this is another example where YouTube have invested heavily to identify the tracks but under invested in the software to remove it. In some cases I’ve completely re-edited the video and used a Royalty Free Track. As you know I do that a lot these days but I do feel those videos tend to lack atmosphere, or you get feedback like this:-

 

"True ! But the music overlay is like a funeral - the death of reality - I feel desperate for Charlotte - locked into a paradigm like this 😢I wish you wouldn't have covered over reality with this annoying interference of morbidity - enough deceptive tactics in this gruesome world its like you are employing communist strategy to lull us into falsehood - I understand your reasons but wow I even see you covering up for the stupid barrista 😤"

 

With Category 2 I use the Fair Use “remix or mash up” option. Obviously I use the argument that the professional bodies have performing rights arrangements in place that the riders have to adhere to, but some copyright owners reject the arguments in the dispute. I have appealed against one such rejection and I’m waiting to see how that goes before doing any more. You have to recognise that if my appeal is rejected I run the risk of a copyright strike against my channel and as it’s three strikes and you’re out you have to tread carefully.

You're not given any detailed information why your dispute was rejected
©Harveywetdog

One thing that is frustrating is that you put a lot of work into making the arguments but you do not see this information being fed to the copyright owner. You don’t know if they’ve even read your dispute or appeal before they come to a decision. Certainly I’ve been given no feedback from them for the disputes, however I would expect a direct response for the appeal but we’ll see.

There is no evidence that the copyright owner sees or reads the full detail of your dispute
© Harveywetdog

Making the appeal based on the BD agreement with PPL made me look more closely at that agreement. I have used the process myself as a rider in the past so I thought I was up to speed with it. I’d have to say although it appears to give the rider permission to use the music in competition, it is less clear on things like live streaming and broadcasting and adding to YouTube so the appeal might not be accepted. The fact that the on-line document expires on 31st December 2020 didn’t fill me with a lot of confidence either. We’ll see how it goes but I don’t think I’ll run the risk of appealing again especially as most of the Freestyles aren’t big hitters when it comes to views.

 So to return to the one video in Category 1 that I’m going to challenge. This is my most popular video “The Ghost of Tom Joad”. Given the work I put into the video I do think it is unfair that the multi millionaire Springsteen can take all the money from it, and I have written to YouTube to ask if some sort of sharing is possible (some copyright owners are prepared to share revenue from the videos).

Watch it while you can

Unfortunately YouTube are worse than useless when you ask questions like this, and while they are prepared to issue platitudes and waffle in response to such questions, they simply do not want to get involved. They did however give me the email address for the copyright owners so that I could approach them directly. That was a month ago and so far no response, disappointing but no great surprise.

 My next move will be to dispute their claim on the basis that the music is only one element of the video, and if my dispute is rejected I will delete the video from YouTube. Cutting my nose off to spite my face I know, but the video doesn’t exactly fit in with channel and I do realise that some subscribers are confused by the mix.

 I should have said that I have standard wording set up for each category that I can cut and paste in, so the whole process is not very time consuming especially as I’m mostly grounded at the moment.

 Finally, and putting the boot on the other foot YouTube are able to identify other videos that use your content on their platform. I’ve successfully used the output from this tool to tell people to stop using my content in their videos.