Pretty interesting read:

Link

Some quotes:
"Uploads by 'fans' generating half of revenue on YouTube"

"two billion dollars delivered to rights holders"

"YouTube says that 90 percent of respondents choose to "monetize" the illegally uploaded material. The music part would go as far as 95 percent. According to the "How Google Fights Piracy' report google has $ 60 million invested in Content ID, and the database contains more than 50 million reference files."



I don't know what this means to you all, but for me Contend ID really changed my prospects on my career in the "music" business.

what are your experiences with content ID?

 

Fuck content ID, period. It's a stupid fucking system and it's judgement is flawed. And copyright disputes solve nothing. These mofos won't listen to you and they ignore your copyright disclaimers. Google needs to do better.

 

I've heard this before, but without disagreeing with you. I could not find anyone who is penalized unfair.

I've heard people complaining about remixing, but then it's your fault or the one who supplied you with the stems.
let's not blame the system that it does it's job correctly.

And if you are really sure you have the rights you always could file a counter dmca request

 

Content ID is a good idea, but flawed in practice, and proprietary to YouTube. There should be an universal, streamlined system of copyrighting and rights-payments to any and all rightsholders of recorded works, including the authors of the songs/compositions and the owners of the recordings themselves (which may or may not be the same), AND of the owners of works from which the piece was derivative (an adaptation, samples, et al.).

Blockchain is a good start in that direction, but it doesn't go all the way. The nodal-point for all copyright registration (in the USA) is supposedly the Library of Congress Copyright Office, but many people don't use it, because it is cumbersome, inefficient, and increasingly costly (that is, prohibitively-overpriced. That agency should be streamlined to accept electronic submissions with ease and at very little cost, to accommodate the demand for copyright registration and processing. It should be configured so that all digital media are, at that point, encoded with a chain of code identifying author(s), publisher(s), and other pertinent rights-holders per each piece of digital media (including video, digital images, digital texts, and so forth).

From there, performance-rights agencies such as BMI and ASCAP, and mechanical-rights agencies such as Harry Fox Agency, could be engaged fully in their roles of administering the payments of the respective royalties (and not be prone to non-reporting, or under-reporting, or keeping "unpaid" royalties around in a slush-fund, or keeping royalties "uncollected" in the first place). Such agencies would accrue the royalties in accounts for each rights-holder, who could withdraw the royalties at will. Royalties could be immediately and thoroughly reported and collected (and paid) to rightsholders, per play of a stream or per each instance of download, and with percentages of royalities diverted accordingly to each rightsholder involved.

Not only that, but each usage of each digital-media file (in this case, music/audio), could be controlled by the rightsholders themselves, granting permission selectively as to where on the Internet the file be permitted to reside, and for what use, and for what duration. Say that one wants one's song up on YouTube or Spotify, or available for download, for only one week; one wants one's piece to only appear as part of a video that streams on Vimeo or a movie that's on Netflix – or maybe one wants to release a French-language version of a song just for French internet sites - or, just that one wants to prevent "fans" from posting (and monetizing) one's song on YouTube. All that and more could be possible; the technology exists - though the self-interest of the involved companies, agencies and bureaucracies ignores this in favor of conveniently maintaining archaic procedures for reporting and payment of performance and mechanical rights.

 

I made an Album and uploaded to Youtube. I had monetization in it until Youtube said that I there was a copyrighted song which is totally false because I made the whole album from scratch, except some beat loops I took from a sample library which happens to be the same as the copyrighted song, so I responded to Youtube with everything I could give to prove them that I was not using his track, but Youtube just says no. I am not sure if I was talking with a person or with a robot but now my album is not monetized because of their stupid content ID system.

 

How much money you guys make from Youtube monetize for 1000 views, for example?

 

It is a SCAM!!!

I have a 12y old nephew and he is a pianist. He won many 1st prizes in international contests, played with live orchestra at least 5 times with repertoire like Mozart concertos, Liszt, the hardest etudes, preludes etc. by Chopin and so on…). Twice at Carnegie Hall. I help my brother (his father) to put together - sync A/V.

So there is:

A camcorder

A Zoom H4n

A Steinway (real)

A (for a very long time) DEAD composer

A very talented and hard-working kid

(no samples, no stems, no rmxes, no VST instruments, NO HW synths..)

The content ID is a joke and being a joke some wannabe mafia take advantage of this. Or it could be all a setup by Doodle.

When I upload videos to YT, 2 of 3 videos ALWAYS(!!!) get copyright claims on them. I can bet on it.

Usually two or three copyright claims (on 1 vid!) are from some clowns (like (ass)otiations for copyright protection of Bangladesh; I can’t remember) and the third one is from some company that represents a bigger company (the last one was Sony). These seem more serious because at least they write who they are and at least they claim the RECORDING, not the COMPOSITION (usually by Beethoven, Chopin & similar).

When you DISPUTE the claims, the clowns usually run away in a day. I bet they put claims on 1000s of videos and hope that the majority of ppl will not check the video manager. Why wouldn’t they?! There is NO CONSEQUENCE for them if they make a false claims; the first time they don’t even have to tell you who they are. So they can monetize the stuff until you catch them.

The other companies that represents a big names give you some data and they persist the entire month before giving up (or better, let go); they also don’t monetize, but they can prevent the video to show in some countries, which leads to my problem:

Some months ago my nephew was entering a competition. The jury that made the decision who can enter requested two videos of the performer, which you could upload on any video sharing service. I uploaded the videos on YT. There was also a deadline. Fortunately I checked the videos next day. They were OK here in EU, but not in USA where the competition took place. I used another V/sharing service and wrote a mail so it all went well but...

Goodle made things “easy” for ppl, like: UPLOAD whatever you want, there will be no consequences and that suits many users, especially those who don’t make any money. And if all goes wrong and you get three strikes your (false) account will be deleted. But IF you are serious about your work, 100% sure that your stuff is in order, than YT can be a spaghetti western experience…

 

I'm not sure what this means. Audiosex loves to pile on anything made by a big corporation and obviously AS's philosophy on intellectual property is tricky. But Youtube Content ID has nothing to do with anyone's prospects. Just register your songs with their database and you're protected. Then if anyone reuploads you get revenue from it.

 

What a wonderful, well-thought out, intelligent post. My hat's off to you for epitomizing the perfect Internet forum response. (No, that's not sarcasm.) Pure signal, no noise. Bravo.

I don't really have anything to add, other than my agreement that copyright management in this day-and-age is outpaced by decades of progress. All the institutions that are supposed to govern rights control and remuneration of intellectual property have utterly failed to rise to the challenges of instant self-publishing and worldwide connectivity.

On-demand media and the near elimination of any bars-to-entry on the creation and publication of those mediums have changed the way people interact with art and entertainment to a radical degree, yet the copyright/royalty process has remained predominantly the same. Aside from a few private sector and proprietary exceptions, there aren't many tools or procedures for a creator to adequately control their work.

It's quite ridiculous that media publishers are expected to scour the Internet and attempt to micro-manage every website/user via DMCA or some other form of grievance. "Good morning, 7 AM. Time to Google all my albums and see if Soundcloud/YouTube/other website has any infringing material so I can report a terms-of-service violation, request a takedown, or hit an ISP with a DMCA notice." It's just not feasible, nor should it be necessary.

Yes, there are always going to be rogue sites/users that operate at the fringes of society and pass along content according to their own rules, but when you have monolithic entities (with publicly traded stocks!) that operate with their own invented sets of rules and standards then something is awry.

It's backward that Google has become the de facto copyright police, broker of all deals between end-users and copyright holders, and gatekeeper to info at large instead of the relevant institutions de jure. Content disputes shouldn't be at Google's, et al. discretion, it should be a non-biased, non-profit entity.

It's especially backward since YouTube is built on the premise of making infringement easy to the point of encouragement only to turn around and "legitimize" it by throwing up some ads and throwing a few coppers to the real rights holder.

I don't understand how the RIAA, et al. demonize all these music blogspots, etc. yet YouTube is the primary one-stop shop for all grey-market media. You want to watch an old '80s cartoon or a new album? No need to torrent, just hop on YouTube. They just got away with it for so long that it was easier and more profitable to opt-in rather than fight it. A true case of doing something wrong and then asking for forgiveness, rather than asking for permission before doing so.

 

Last edited: Jul 14, 2016