My latest problem at Youtube - Eight of my videos have been marked as violating some kind of copyright issue. Just today, my Mozart video was claimed by Orchard Music, and seven of my other videos are claimed by Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society. I don't know what is going on, but I am very angry!! How can somebody claim that me playing some Mozart in my own living room without music (I had it memorized) is violating anything!!! I now get the pleasure of disputing all these claims, but I just know that probably nothing good will come of it.
What a royal pain in the ass this is going to be....

Anyone have any advice or help?

I've had this happen also. I think the process is sometimes an automated one - I have a video where I am playing my own arrangement of a famous theme and it has a copyright claim on it! I don't claim to be an expert on copyright law, but I have had to do a little research as a consequence of giving public recitals, so here are a few general principles (from UK law - US law may vary but I imagine not substantially):

Firstly, I think there is a general assumption to view YouTube as an extension of a concert hall: a 'virtual concert hall' if you like. When playing in public, you should submit (to the promoter or appropriate body) a list of your pieces, the dates of the composer, the publisher of the edition you are playing frrom, and the edition date. This applies even if you are playing from memory. Some places aren't as strict, and require you only to sign a declaration as to whether you are playing music which falls under the copyright remit or not. The concert is rendered liable to a fee, payable to the appropriate performing rights body, if any of the composer(s) performed has died within the last 70 years or if any of the editions nominated have been published within the last 70 years. (The 70 years specification is, I believe, applicable to the European Union, but it is 50 years in the US - though there have been moves afoot to elongate the duration). Please note that music is defined as a new edition even when there has been a minor editorial change made to a long-established text. Fees are even applicable for piped music in, e.g. dentists' waiting rooms. YouTube doesn't charge fees, but does entitle publishers to make claims. In your case, I cannot see how a publisher can "know" that they have used their edition when you are playing from memory, and the claim strikes me as borderline facetious. The MPRCS claim is probably some sort of generic claim, and I would suggest you check your videos to see whether they conform with the above general principles. I should add that YouTube's position is also odd to me in the UK, because there is an exemption from copyright fees if the concert is one where no financial transactions take place - i.e. free admission and (unbelievably this is crucial) no charges for refreshments at the interval.

Regarding appealing against the claims, I can't help you there. I hope they have not forced you to take the videos down - that has not happened to me on any of the videos I have had claims against. I've not bothered with an appeal, but it does strike me as exceptionally odd and haphazard when something like this happens, particularly when you bear in mind just how rampant flagrant copyright infringement is on YouTube.

Thank you, Andrew. No, they have not requested that I take down any of my videos. But still, it's very annoying to me and actually I kind of feel violated myself! Why do those people want to pick on some nobody like me? I just don't understand it.
Anyway, I filed a dispute regarding my Mozart video. I'll wait to see if anything happens before I dispute all the claims on my other videos.

grrrr....

Me neither. It seems completely pointless. I sympathise - I was annoyed when it first happened to me. I think they have an algorithm which has the capability to scan the audio within the video and check it for matches against pre-registered copyrighted material. I believe this because one of my videos came up as matching copyrighted material at the point of upload. I then deleted it and reuploaded with no tagged information, in case it was something to do with the file name and/or description, but it still registered as a copyright match. I was quite surprised, because to check user-generated audio even against a standardised audio of the same piece, but potentially with differing dynamics, tempo, etc, is actually quite a sophisticated computing problem.

Such an algorithm would fail to distinguish between composer's copyright and performer's copyright. Orchard Music owns their performers' recordings of Mozart. They don't own Mozart's compositions.

Will you let us know how this shakes out?

Wow, that is interesting!



Yes, that's the thing about for example my Mozart video. They don't own rights to Mozart's music - nobody does!
And yes, I will certainly relay word if I am at all successful in my appeals. I'm going to submit the dispute form again tomorrow. Maybe if I do it often enough, like every day, they'll get sick of me and give in.

Hi Monica,

That's dreadful!!! I can see why you're so angry. How did they contact you? A letter to your home? Email? A notice on your channel?

David

In my case, going to the My Videos section of YouTube produces, within the list of videos, a result like this:

Bellini-Thalberg Casta Diva ( 2010 transcriptions recital, part 8 )
From Sigismund Thalberg's collection of transcriptions from song and opera, L'art du du chant applique au piano.
7 September 2010 05:50 (PDT) Public Edit info Edit video Insight

* Annotations
* AudioSwap
* Captions and Subtitles
* Promote

Matched third-party content. View Copyright Info.

When you click on View Copyright Info, you get

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your video, Bellini-Thalberg Casta Diva ( 2010 transcriptions recital, part 8 ) , may {my italics} include content that is owned or administered by these entities:

* Entity: Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society Content Type: Musical Composition
* Entity: Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society Content Type: Musical Composition

What should I do?

No action is required on your part. Your video is still available worldwide. In some cases, ads may appear next to your video.
What can I do about my video's status?

Please note that the video's status can change if the policies chosen by the content owners change. You may want to check back periodically to see if you have new options available to you.

Under certain circumstances, you may dispute this copyright claim. These are:

* if the content is mistakenly identified and is actually completely your original creation;
* if you believe that your use does not infringe copyright (e.g. it is fair use under US law);
* if you are actually licensed by the owner to use this content.

I need more information. I want to learn more about the dispute process.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The score is public domain (under all world copyright jurisdictions) so I fail to see how there can be any valid copyright claim.

I have another video where the warning includes:

.... may include content that is owned or administered by these entities:

* Entity: UMPG Publishing Content Type: Musical Composition
* Entity: Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society Content Type: Musical Composition

Yes, those lovely people at Universal who induced IMSLP to temporarily shut down with spurious cease and desist notices. I'm not even playing from their edition!

I'm sure it must be an automated process, because surely nobody is sad enough to spend their time scanning videos which get minimal viewing figures for potential breaches of copyright.

Do those above messages look familiar, Monica?

Hi David,
They sent me an email. Here it is:

Dear monicapiano,
Your video, Mozart - K570, 3rd movement, may have content that is owned or licensed by The Orchard Music.
No action is required on your part; however, if you are interested in learning how this affects your video, please visit the Content ID Matches section of your account for more information.
Sincerely,
- The YouTube Team
***************************************
And now next to my video there is this:

Matched third party content. View Copyright Info.

It's on eight of my videos. I'm not sure if that verbiage is visible to others or if I just see it. Andrew, do you know?
******************************************
And yes, Andrew, I get similar messages. On my Mozart video it shows (slightly different than yours because I submitted the dispute form):

Copyright Info: Mozart - K570, 3rd movement
You have disputed a copyright claim on your video, Mozart - K570, 3rd movement .
To see the details of the dispute you filed, click here.

Your dispute is still awaiting a response from these content owners:

Entity: The Orchard Music Content Type: Sound Recording
What should I do?
No action is required on your part. Your video is still available worldwide. In some cases ads may appear next to your video.

What can I do about my video's status?
Please note that the video's status can change, if the policies chosen by the content owners change. You may want to check back periodically to see if you have new options available to you.

Please take a few minutes to visit our Help Center section on Policy and Copyright Guidelines, where you can learn more about copyright law and our Content Identification Service.

*************************************************

Now, I just saw something that I didn't notice before....it says the claim is against a Sound Recording? What the heck does that mean? On some of my other videos it says the claim is against the musical composition, but now they're also claiming that my little recording setup, the way I record my videos is owned by them? Really???? And I wonder what happens to all those people who make videos where an actual music score is shown on the video as the music plays? I would think those videos would catch the eyes of the copyright police more than my kind of videos.

No, I think it means they reckon you have infringed copyright on their recording. Evidently your recording is so perfect that they think you are using theirs.

Sweet of you to say, but really my playing in the video is not that great...

I'm pretty sure I have read somewhere that YouTube has an internal database of music tracks and checks videos to see if the audio track matches against their database (even for only small parts of the track). So, for example, you upload a home-made video, but you have put a sample of a popular song into the video as a backing soundtrack, it will detect that you have used copyright material and flag the video. What I suspect is that the check performed is along the lines of "is there a database-registered melody?" within the video and not "is there a specific performance?". Naturally this has the consequence that videos of people performing well-known compositions will be incorrectly flagged as utilising copyrighted recordings. I think it no coincidence that the three videos of mine flagged are the ones which have arrangements of the best-known operatic extracts. Similarly, a Mozart sonata movement is one of the more likely solo piano extracts to have a sample within their database. The only sign to an outsider is that under the right hand side of your Mozart video there is a tag saying "Artist: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart". On my Casta diva, likewise there is a tag saying: "Artist: Vincenzo Bellini". To recap, I believe their automated process is clever enough to detect what piece of music is being played, but sufficiently lacking in common sense to realise that it is being performed by the user and not taken from a CD! For heavens sake, in my video I am playing a piano arrangement of an orchestral piece.



A simple waveform analysis would immediately demonstrate that it was not their recording! (Unless Monica is a reincarnation of Joyce Hatto and has had it ingeniously edited to disguise the piracy).

You know, Andrew, I think you're onto something when you wrote about uploading your video without tags. I think next time I make a video, I'm not even going to name the file properly. I'll call it some generic name like "A Piano Piece". Then in the video itself I can have the correct title. Let's see them claim copyrights to that!!


That's so funny! Joyce Hatto - you know we once had some dealings with her husband here on the site. Or maybe we were talking about that whole situation, I can't quite remember now. We've had a couple people fake recordings and then tried submitting them as their own recordings. But we caught 'em!

Btw - Andrew, thank you for taking time to help me with this situation.

Hi Monica,

Thanks for posting that notice you got. I really feel bad that you have to deal with this nonsense. I totally understand your ire over it all. Well, from reading the material, they at least acknowledged your disputing their claim, and they said no further action is required on your part. So it sounds like you can sit it out for the time being.

Hopefully they'll just back off. As Andrew said, a waveform analysis (the digital bits and bytes DNA) should enable you to prevail.

David

Hi David,

Thank you, you're right in that I probably can just relax about all this copyright stuff. I'm not really in the mood for battle right now anyway and also now I'm trying to figure out my 'new' Youtube.

Have you all see the new look? I guess it's okay except for one thing - I can't find my friends list, nor can I see their activity. All I get in my feed are my subscriptions updates. I don't get it - how can the 'friends' list disappear? Maybe I'm missing something - seems there is a lot of tweaking to do to get your new homepage the way you want it. Still, I think I've looked everywhere and don't see my friends.

Anyone?