YouTube copyright notices.. taken too far?

Hey all,

I have a fairly popular YouTube channel and I cover a lot of motorsport events around the country with videos regularly getting 100k+ views. Over the past 12 months or so I have been getting hit with copyright notices on my videos for music that can be heard in the background during the event. Ranging from 2 seconds up to about 10 seconds, none of this audio is overlayed by me nor do I actually want it in my videos..not that I can help it as it's through the venues P.A system (who of which don't pay royalty's to even play it legally)

It really hit a nerve when I was covering a event live with round 5,500 people watching live YouTube cut it off as it picked up audio in the background.. you could barely hear it at the event let alone on the live stream. No warning at all, just off. Since have moved to another platform but still a pain with the change over.

The second nerve was hit this morning when it happened again, but a video that had roughly 2.5M views and gaining around 30-50k per day. Instead of getting a warning YouTube has now re-monitised the video 100% to the copyright owner (rough prices are 40k hits = $100AUD)..

Problem here is that one, the matched audio isn't even in the video and when I attempt to dispute the claim I get an error… So my video is earning false income for somebody and there isn't a thing I can do about it!

Zzzz

/rant

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Comments

  • I feel for you.. trying to make an honest living making content. Is it possible to get a better microphone that only picks up your voice/content? It seems some people are claiming copywrite even when there is none of their content in there - if they get a cut 1% of the time its still a lot of money. Meanwhile they are wasting your time that could be monetized. Scum.

    • I have a fairly expensive audio setup used at these events but the PA systems used are made to be louder than the race cars/bikes, which is fair enough imo but yeah it is a limitation I can't get around.

      Just sucks balls how nazi the sound checker is and how a little false positive can make somebody lose so much money.

  • Yep had the same thing happen, and Youtube don't care.
    I ended up pulling my video.

    It's even happened to Lawrence Lessig
    https://www.eff.org/cases/lawrence-lessig-v-liberation-music

  • Do your next video coverage without ANY audio. and you will mime the video or caption it.

  • Could you just mute the audio for the sections of the video that contain music? Given that as you say the music plays for "only 2 seconds to 10 seconds' it would be a minor disruption to the overall video.

    More difficult for a live event you were covering though I suppose, short of turning off the mic whenever you hear music playing… might be a bit impractical.

    Are you covering these events officially in association with the event organisers? Maybe you could discuss the issue with them and see if they can offer a solution?

    • Normally they do mute the copyright bits but I believe its some new rollout feature to pay the the "owner" instead of the uploader.

      I've spoken to the event organisers about it but decided it wasn't worth the trouble of setting up a dedicated "mic" out setup for us that didn't have the music from the radio. I could threaten not to cover their events but it would only hurt my self.. no videos = no money

      • Perhaps not worth the effort, but worth an experiment: set up a second microphone just recording the background noise, pitch the background microphone audio down 10% or something and blend it back with the primary microphone - may be enough to fool the automatic music detection algorithm?

        • Better off inverting the background and trying to annul the music.

        • that would probably take some frequencies out of the primary audio and make it sound a bit weird. worth a shot tho.

        • You'd definitely get artifacts, but I doubt the algorithm would be fooled by pitch change.

  • +1

    Feeling for you man, really sucks that you're putting out content people like and YouTube wants none of it.
    Guess after Google came along, YT went down the drain.

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