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Are mounting copyright infringement strikes going to render commercial sample content useless?

Interesting as I'm viewing this thread, there's an ad for Slate + Ash "Landforms" running on the side. I own it, and it's a great product, but it's a great example of a loop-oriented product that has a significant amount of melodic content.
 
Lee Blaske said:
As long as you need to spend time and financial resources fighting the claims (not to mention the huge inconvenience for your clients), it's a big issue. Anyone can claim infringement in a court of law.
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Agreed, but to be clear, as far as YouTube copyright claims by their AI are concerned, there is no financial burden because there is no lawsuit to defend.

A copyright claim will usually only result in demonetization of your video. A claim does not tarnish your standing on YouTube, nor does it constitute a legal action.

AFAIK, a copyright strike, which does negatively affect your account's standing, is the result of human intervention. It will cause your video to be removed, or offending sections to be muted, but again, it's not a legal action.

The only time you would need to spend money is to defend an actual copyright infringement lawsuit, and that usually only happens if the plaintiff has reason to believe they will get a big payout, because it also costs them to bring the case to court.

If YouTube is the only place where your music is playing, there's no big pot of gold for a copyright claimant to go after. Unless you're Justin Bieber or Billie Eilish, the worst that'll happen is your video will be suppressed.

But yeah, it's still a pain to deal with and makes it problematic to indemnify clients from copyright actions. But this is the world we live in, and both AI and human generated claims and lawsuits (see prior post about copyright small claims court) are only going to increase in frequency, regardless of whether the music uses loops or not.
 
NekujaK said:
But yeah, it's still a pain to deal with and makes it problematic to indemnify clients from copyright actions. But this is the world we live in, and both AI and human generated claims and lawsuits (see prior post about copyright small claims court) are only going to increase in frequency, regardless of whether the music uses loops or not.
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My fear is that we're just seeing this ramp up, now. I would totally not be surprised to see it spread to other arenas.

And, even if the severity of action from YouTube is not yet great, it puts a lot of things in motion. Clients purchasing rights to library music will not want to be dealing with the nuisance of copyright infringement strikes. That will most likely lead to more carefully worded agreements for content creators placing music in libraries, regarding not using loops. Lots of creators are already seeing it.
 
It's really not hard to challenge a strike from YouTube. They send you an email notifying you of the situation, and you can write back. I have received responses very promptly.

For example, I received one on a clip from a short film I produced, wrote, and directed. The clip had been up for awhile with no issues, until a company called The Orchard claimed ownership. I challenged this and won in a day or so. Since this experience, I have come to believe that there are a lot of people who claim ownership of stuff and see if anybody challenges it. (The irony is that as a publicity writer I often worked for The Orchard.)

Also, when you first upload a video, they immediately notify you of a copyright claim. When I did a video on Werner Herzog, they flagged the Popol Vuh music I was using. And they said my video was fine, it was just that the ad money would go to Popul Vuh. So I took it down and spent an hour putting something that signified the message of uplift I was going for at that point in the video. It was not Popol Vuh by a long shot, but it communicated what I was trying to do. (One lesson I've learned is to not spend more time composing than on the video itself.)

Because I make pennies on my videos I don't care that much if somebody else monetizes them, but if possible I do like to be in control of how many ads are in them.

So I would say that with loops you could write back with the name of the loop collection you purchased rights to and the EULA. The person doing a copyright strike has no more rights to the loops than you do. Worth a try.
 
PrimeEagle said:
Doesn’t YouTube remove or block your channel if you get too many strikes?
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Yes, if they go unchallenged or if you lose a challenge.

It's important to note the difference between "strikes" and "claims". Strikes are initiated by a human actor and an accumulation of them can harm your channel. Claims are AI-generated and don't affect your channel - the typical result is simply demonetization of your video.

As @Reid Rosefelt pointed out above, both are easy to challenge.

And then there are bizarre experiences like this...

How I made a YouTube copyright claim disappear

I've uploaded a ton of original music to YouTube over the past 10+ years and never had a single copyright problem... until now. This weekend, YouTube's automated Content ID checker hit me with a copyright claim when it found an alleged melody match in a small portion of my new song. This upset...
vi-control.net vi-control.net
 
NekujaK said:
Keep in mind that when it comes to copyright infringement of original musical works, it's technically only melody and lyrics that matter. Drum loops, string ostinatos, chord progressions, etc. are generally considered standard musical building blocks and not unique enough to be copyrighted (in most situations).

Here's an interesting article that provides an excellent analysis of the controversial Katy Perry "Dark Horse" / "Joyful Noise" plagiarism case, that basically revolved around an 8-note ostinato. The initial ruling was insane, but the court came to its senses on appeal: https://advertisinglaw.fkks.com/pos...on-and-arrangement-of-uncopyrightable-element

The other type of copyright infringement is if you actually use part of someone else's audio recording - such as using a loop that someone also used. In the case of loops, you're protected because, as others have mentioned earlier, you licensed the right to use it. So even though 100 other artists may be using the same loop, exposed or not, you have every right to use it within the terms of the developer's EULA.

Several years back, I posted some videos that used animated backgrounds I licensed from Digital Juice, a stock video content provider. When the videos went live on YouTube, I was hit with visual copyright claims by an unrecognizable 3rd party for the animated backgrounds. Fortunately, it was resolved quickly and easily - I simply responded to the claim thru YouTube, stating I had licensed the images from Digital Juice, and the claim went away.


As I've mentioned in other threads, YouTube's AI copyright checker is highly flawed, incredibly inconsistent, and registers false positives all the time. But it's not the law, and the results don't extend beyond YouTube. It's simply a helper tool that YouTube uses to cover its ass, and thwart unscrupulous monetization by those who don't own rights to posted material. It's great at stopping me from posting a Beatles recording and earning money from it, but it's terrible at evaluating the nuances of compositional similarities between original musical works. Unfortunately, it's essentially being used for both, but thankfully, only within the confines of YouTube.
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I didn't realize the Dark Horse case was turned around! I thought it was insane and dangerous too.
 
Lee Blaske said:
From friends getting automatically generated infringement strikes from loop content that was quite buried in mixes.
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Well people are not allowed to upload files that use publicly available samples to content id (yes, you read that right, recordings that use *any* sample from *any* sample library, not just loops, are prohibited from content id protection), so this shouldn’t be happening.

People should be getting sued for lying when they check the box saying that their work doesn’t contain any publicly available samples or loops if in reality it does.
 
Dex said:
Well people are not allowed to upload files that use publicly available samples to content id (yes, you read that right, recordings that use *any* sample from *any* sample library, not just loops, are prohibited from content id protection), so this shouldn’t be happening.

People should be getting sued for lying when they check the box saying that their work doesn’t contain any publicly available samples or loops if in reality it does.
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So how does that work for songs released by big labels that contain samples of other songs?
 
PrimeEagle said:
So how does that work for songs released by big labels that contain samples of other songs?
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If the label owns the exclusive rights to both of the songs then it’s fine.

If not, then it is ineligible for content id.

Of course we all know that the big boys get away with a lot more than the rest of us.

diymusician.cdbaby.com

What kind of songs don't qualify for YouTube Content ID?

Some audio is not eligible for monetization via Content ID on YouTube. What is Content ID? In short: Content ID — as it pertains to most musicians and labels —
diymusician.cdbaby.com diymusician.cdbaby.com
 
No copyrights I own go on Youtube. I have the luxury of eschewing them I suppose, since I earn money other ways. I question the whole idea of being at the mercy of a few big platform’s whims, but YT - forget it.

I read the other day that YT took down Cornell University’s channel because Susie Brght gave a lecture about sex (yes, adults talked about pee pees) and the video was uploaded as all Cornell lectures are. They didn’t take down just her lecture (a normal lecture, in a hall, with clothes on) - that would be stupid enough - but they took down Cornell’s whole channel. FB, YT - they are thought of by many around the world as quasi-public utilities, but boy, they really really aren’t.

FWIW, I also don’t use commercial loops much. I just don’t find it that much fun. Making my own is more fun. I know they are great when you need to manufacture some poop in a hurry, but…yawn. I’m not anti-loop as a value, I just don’t enjoy working with the pre-made ones.

Thanks for all the great info, everyone. Incredible stuff
 
jonnybutter said:
No copyrights I own go on Youtube. I have the luxury of eschewing them I suppose, since I earn money other ways. I question the whole idea of being at the mercy of a few big platform’s whims, but YT - forget it.

I read the other day that YT took down Cornell University’s channel because Susie Brght gave a lecture about sex (yes, adults talked about pee pees) and the video was uploaded as all Cornell lectures are. They didn’t take down just her lecture (a normal lecture, in a hall, with clothes on) - that would be stupid enough - but they took down Cornell’s whole channel. FB, YT - they are thought of by many around the world as quasi-public utilities, but boy, they really really aren’t.

FWIW, I also don’t use commercial loops much. I just don’t find it that much fun. Making my own is more fun. I know they are great when you need to manufacture some poop in a hurry, but…yawn. I’m not anti-loop as a value, I just don’t enjoy working with the pre-made ones.

Thanks for all the great info, everyone. Incredible stuff
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It's very strange as you can find full frontal nudity on YouTube so not sure why those channels remain but an Ivy League lecture does not - YT is a strange world
 
Dex said:
Of course we all know that the big boys get away with a lot more than the rest of us.
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Yep, that's the answer I was expecting, but hoping wasn't true. I feel most of us could get flagged for using a commercial sample, but I seriously doubt someone like Kanye would.
 
PrimeEagle said:
Yep, that's the answer I was expecting, but hoping wasn't true. I feel most of us could get flagged for using a commercial sample, but I seriously doubt someone like Kanye would.
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Keep in mind that you can still upload your sample-based music to YouTube and you can still monetize it. You're just not eligible to register it with content ID to find matches of it and monetize or take down those matches.
 
The solution is adding royalty-free/copyright-free loops into the AI database as exceptions, but greed is greed.
 
Jim Rutt had a neat idea/speculation wrt the parallel problem of fb etc takedowns, which is in short:

clarity required as to what exactly and specifically is wrong
appeals require real human response
arbitration by 3rd party

paid for by
self-adjustable cost for appeal to repel nuisance
fine fb/yt etc if wrong for nuisance back if it goes to arbitration
fine is a fixed multiplier of original payment, so can be big if initial payment is big
cost of this "litigation" can be spread as if an investable asset, so larger initial cost can produce large payouts if upheld

likelihood of implementation is of course very low, and I imagine I've garbled it quite a bit
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I've read a long time ago an interesting advise to put all information about used samples and licenses into the video description. The bots should check them and when they read which sample library was used and that the samples are royalty free they shouldn't block the video.
 
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