# Advice needed! "A Copyright Claim was Created"



## Mike Fox (Oct 3, 2016)

Greetings everyone,

A few years back I composed a song and uploaded it to youtube. Today, I received a notification from Youtube on behalf of a distribution company who is acting as a "claimant" for that song. I dug a little deeper, and was able to find the artist who is taking the song I composed, and is incorporating it into his own work...and selling it...on several websites. 

I've never been in a situation like this before, and I'm not entirely sure how to act. My initial instinct was to just email the distribution company (as well as the artist) and kindly ask that they completely remove the song from any website where monetary gain is concerned. Maybe that's all that I need to do? 

I would greatly appreciate it If someone could offer some advice. Thank you.


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## Markus S (Oct 4, 2016)

Is this TuneCore claiming the rights?


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## Markus S (Oct 4, 2016)

..had the exact same thing. My publisher took care of it. It mainly comes down to showing that you published the song first. If it is still on Youtube, you can use your video upload as proof. If you published it somewhere else, even better. I'd email Youtube and the publishing company and inform them about the "real" copyright infringement. In my case they withdraw the other song completely from their catalogue and from Youtube.

Really these guys they download something from Youtube and then publish an album with it. In my case the album was even labeled with "Jesus Christ" something. :D


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## Mike Fox (Oct 4, 2016)

Thanks for your response. Label Worx is the distribution company. I can easily provide any kind of proof they need, especially since the track was uploaded in 2012 to both youtube and CD Baby. This other "artist" uploaded the track yesterday.


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## Kejero (Oct 4, 2016)

Let him monetize for a few weeks, then sue! Wooh, moneyyyy!


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## lpuser (Oct 4, 2016)

Just log into your YT account, go to where the notice is displayed and file a dispute. It usually is very easy (based on my experience). YouTube had false claims quite often in the past because their Content ID system is not perfect. Usually this can be sorted easily and in most of my cases, I did not even prove that I was the original creator of the music (but that might have changed).


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## Mike Fox (Oct 4, 2016)

lpuser said:


> Just log into your YT account, go to where the notice is displayed and file a dispute. It usually is very easy (based on my experience). YouTube had false claims quite often in the past because their Content ID system is not perfect. Usually this can be sorted easily and in most of my cases, I did not even prove that I was the original creator of the music (but that might have changed).



Thanks for your comment. I was able to file a dispute yesterday. Unfortunately, this doesn't remove the illegal track from the several websites that it has already been posted to. I've contacted the distribution company, and they are now looking into it. I also contacted the artist, and he told me he would work with Label Worx to get this resolved. Let's see what happens...


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## mac (Oct 4, 2016)

Absolute scum. So what's the other persons excuse? Is it another case of 'my son uploaded it by accident'?


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## Mike Fox (Oct 4, 2016)

mac said:


> Absolute scum. So what's the other persons excuse? Is it another case of 'my son uploaded it by accident'?



Turns out I didn't contact the artist, but rather the record label the artist is on. When I told them to remove the song from Soundcloud, they said that i should be the one to contact the artist since it is his personal Soundcloud account. I'm sorry, but this is unprofessional, and frustrating. The record label should contact the artist since they represent him, and already have his contact info. Any respectable label would have already taken the initiative to do so.


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## Markus S (Oct 5, 2016)

mikefox789 said:


> Turns out I didn't contact the artist, but rather the record label the artist is on. When I told them to remove the song from Soundcloud, they said that i should be the one to contact the artist since it is his personal Soundcloud account. I'm sorry, but this is unprofessional, and frustrating. The record label should contact the artist since they represent him, and already have his contact info. Any respectable label would have already taken the initiative to do so.



Actually I had this, too, in another case.  You can easily ask Soundcloud to remove the file - they did this within 24 hours or so for me. I remember the guy got something like 450.000 plays of the track in 2 months or so, that was quite impressive actually. Anyway no need to get in touch with the artist if you don't want to.


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## SillyMidOn (Oct 5, 2016)

Hey - sorry to hear about your situation. 

One thing you can do is join BASCA (https://basca.org.uk), it's relatively cheap, and through them you have access to music industry lawyers who can then advise you as to the best way forward. To me this sounds like an open and shut case - you are going to win. Then only thing is in order to win you will need to be able to apply enough and sustained pressure on the other party, they know this, and will hope to bore/dazzle/talk/scare/ignore you into submission. So good legal representation is necessary.

Hope that helps.


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## lpuser (Oct 5, 2016)

mikefox789 said:


> Unfortunately, this doesn't remove the illegal track from the several websites that it has already been posted to.



That´s the unfortunately thing with the internet and my personal guess based on my experience is, that you will not be able to fight this, no matter how many lawyers are working on it. I hope I am wrong, but filing taking down notices is mostly a complete waste of time, because once one site takes a track down, it will reappear on 5 new sites. Have been through all this already, with some sites sending me a ridiculous list of informations I should send them prior to them doing anything ... Keep my fingers crossed for you!


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## Mike Fox (Oct 5, 2016)

Again, thanks for everyone's comments. It seems that the artist, record label, and distribution company are doing everything on their end to resolve this. But check out this last email I got from the record label...

"By the way, why are you not proctect your content? Who know who using your stuff. If they not signup youtube content you will never know..
Do you want to release us your album? Protect your content and release in more store, and grow up your name. We can offer you 50% from net incomes."


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## lpuser (Oct 7, 2016)

Oh dear ... did they really write this? It would be sad if it wasn´t funny


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## Mike Fox (Oct 7, 2016)

lpuser said:


> Oh dear ... did they really write this? It would be sad if it wasn´t funny


Yeah, they definitely wrote it! Wack jobs.


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## zacnelson (Oct 7, 2016)

Unbelievable! grrrrrr


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## higgs (Oct 7, 2016)

I ran into this about two years ago. For about a year CD Baby monetized on a song used in a micro-documentary I produced. I pushed back and told YT that I had the rights to the music for years prior to the claim made against me on YT. I pushed back even more and CD Baby backed down.

Contest it on YT. The burden of proof is on the claimant. You have proof that you posted this a number of years back - I doubt the claimant could produce anything as compelling in service of proof of ownership as your upload.

It is really a silly system, but I think a lot of people in similar situations just get upset or scared and then back down. I wouldn't worry. Just push back.


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## Desire Inspires (Oct 8, 2016)

mikefox789 said:


> I've never been in a situation like this before, and I'm not entirely sure how to act. My initial instinct was to just email the distribution company (as well as the artist) and kindly ask that they completely remove the song from any website where monetary gain is concerned. Maybe that's all that I need to do?



Why would they remove a song to make you happy?

I agree that what they are doing is wroing. The should not be making money from your music. They should not be using your music wothout permission. But do you truly think they will stop using your music just because you ask? 

It will not happen. Either sue or forget about it. Those are the choices that will work in reality.


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## Mike Fox (Oct 8, 2016)

Desire Inspires said:


> Why would they remove a song to make you happy?
> 
> I agree that what they are doing is wroing. The should not be making money from your music. They should not be using your music wothout permission. But do you truly think they will stop using your music just because you ask?
> 
> It will not happen. Either sue or forget about it. Those are the choices that will work in reality.


It actually did happen. The songs were removed yesterday. I doubt they cared about me being happy, but they probably realized that a law suit may have been a possibility, which is why they pulled the tracks.


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## SampleScience (Oct 22, 2016)

Did you manage to win the YouTube dispute? I once had a similar problem, someone was claiming the music rights to a YouTube video I did where you could clearly see the composition (I was showing off a plugin I created in my DAW, so you could clearly see that I was the composer. I was also the sound designer and plugin developer!). I was always winning the dispute and making money on my back so I simply removed the video and posted on DailyMotion and Archive.org.


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## Desire Inspires (Oct 22, 2016)

mikefox789 said:


> It actually did happen. The songs were removed yesterday. I doubt they cared about me being happy, but they probably realized that a law suit may have been a possibility, which is why they pulled the tracks.



So you won. Good to hear.


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## Mike Fox (Oct 24, 2016)

SampleScience said:


> Did you manage to win the YouTube dispute? I once had a similar problem, someone was claiming the music rights to a YouTube video I did where you could clearly see the composition (I was showing off a plugin I created in my DAW, so you could clearly see that I was the composer. I was also the sound designer and plugin developer!). I was always winning the dispute and making money on my back so I simply removed the video and posted on DailyMotion and Archive.org.



I did! It was pretty easy too. No fuss or fight from the claimant.


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