Censoredtallica – 2000s Metalligreed Comes Home To Roost With Twitch DMCAmageddon

Of all the story arcs and plot twists life can throw at us, I wasn’t expecting to get a laughably bad booyah out of a hot tech issue from the early 2000s in 2021. 😏

In a nutshell, due to the pandemic Blizzcon was morphed into an online presentation known as Blizzconline, and much like its offline convention counterparts, there were musical performances scheduled live via the internet, and the Metallica one with a rather decent rendition of For Whom The Bell Tolls had the most hilarious DMCA-dodging gaffe of the year if you were watching on Twitch… 😏

If you were watching on YouTube, you saw this:

…but if you were watching on Twitch, you got to watch chat go wild and lose their [marbles] when this happened… 😏

For context, both Metallica and Twitch have something to do with some kind of copyright fiasco. Metallica infamously came out in opposition to MP3s during the Napster fiasco of the early 2000s, and Twitch has infamously had DMCA nonsense with music (as opposed to YouTube with Content ID), etc., in the last year. Fitting that this laughable DMCA dub of what should be some solid heavy metal would involve both of those two.

Recent Twitch nonsense aside, this oddly comes full circle for the infamy Metallica earned for itself with the Napster fiasco in the 2000s as one of those “jumped the shark” musicians, etc., that came out against MP3s back in the day and then released something like St. Anger while all of that was going on. Yeah, remember that time the folks who brought us Ride The Lightning and Master Of Puppets decided to ape the garbage-can-lid-drums-and-just-a-few-chords sound of Nu Metal right as the fad was conking out for good?

If you can imagine college-age me curious to learn as much as possible stumbling across all of this and eventually seeing all the Camp Chaos Flash cartoons and whatnot in those days, then yeah. It was a wild tech issue to follow as people tried to figure out what to do with this technology and the broadband that fueled it.

Not all bands were on Metallica’s side though.

Its been about 20 years, so if Metallica has different views on music technology nowadays then glad they finally came around, but it’s hilarious to see this link between these two messes finally cause something comical like this to happen.

Speaking of something comical, if you’re wondering what exactly Twitch audioswapped Metallica with, some Google song searches quickly found the two songs. If there was a third one I missed then I apologize. I only watched *most* of the cringe performance before Twitch pulled the VOD. 🙂

The two tracks are in the Epidemic Sound catalog, a service similar to Monstercat. I find it hilarious though that Metallica would get DMCA-dubbed with a xylophone track called “Toys In Space” though. 😊

Just the latest silly yet rather serious example of why it’s long past time for DMCA reform to reflect the 2020s instead of 1998. 🙂

Jay’s Notes From The Twitch Town Hall On December 16, 2020

I thought about doing a snowstorm stream but didn’t want to be an ignoramus talking about The Multimedia Meta without seeing this townhall first, so I decided to type notes when I finally got around to seeing it.

The context coming into this is that I’m not impressed enough with Twitch to make it anything more than a sidecar to my YouTube involvement, whether videos or streams. I just became a Twitch Affiliate but there won’t be any conflicts with the YouTube stuff because my channel on Twitch is highly-restricted because of Twitch’s shortcomings with DMCA and how their leadership decides to run the platform. Essentially, there is too much dumping on the creators and not enough taking responsibility for what they oversee.

I’m also not amused that Aureylian is hosting this thing. She got into that argument about numbers with Devin Nash earlier after Devin showcased an example of how Twitch leadership takes advantage of what their userbase doesn’t know when it comes to stuff like analytics. They’ll tell people something they made is good when people who are really into tech or analytics etc. can see right through the sales pitch. With Devin it was numbers. With me it was this spin machine about how being able to delete clips and VODs more efficiently was actually a good thing instead of a real solution to DMCA.

I’ll be blunt. Twitch is in a change or die situation, and I don’t see any fight in the current leadership. Hence the cynicism. Let’s begin:

• “When you choose to build your community here.” No streamer should do that anymore. Twitch is the runt of the big three, and that will not change until DMCA is fixed and Twitch is actually worth it for non-streaming videos, etc.
• “I started on Twitch as a streamer a decade ago before becoming an employee.” Twitch should not hire streamers – as crazy as it sounds. There should be mostly people with business sense on the payroll. Streaming has a bit of an issue with it sucking up so much of your time when you go full time that it blunts things like your social skills and professional development. Some folks will think I’m crazy for saying Twitch should have more corporate influence, but they should. They’d be a lot more professional if they did.
• Oh boy. Emmett Shear. Non sequitur time. 🙂
• Must be fun talking so your CEO just sits there looking stoned lol Aureylian does have the right idea with the necessity of the human face to their business, but why is SHE saying this while the CEO just sits there? It should be the CEO declaring these things from on high.
• “Twitch should be the company with the human touch.” Susan Wojcicki should be taking notes. It’d be interesting if YouTube fixed this first. 😏
• Why does the CEO of a *livestreaming platform* have a crappy low shutter speed camera that looks like a webcam?!! My Nexigo could smoke whatever this guy was using for under a hundred bucks!!! 🤨
• Oh boy. Underwater microphone time for CEO Shear. Again, a livestreaming company, and the brass biffs things like the AV of this and the Glitchcon presentation. Not unlike YouTube’s issues with Creator Insider and the zoom meeting cameras though. 🤔
• Seriously. Aureylian reminds me of Adam Sessler. Adam Sessler used to be INFAMOUS for not sharing screen time with people and talking too much versus whoever the guest was.
• “We haven’t even gotten into the main part of the town hall yet.” Why is she talking up a storm and turning the boss of the whole darn company into a side actor then? 😏
• “We know you have a choice in streaming solutions.” Heh heh. YouTube. 🙂👍
• DMCA first? Yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy… 🙂🍿
• Twitch Soundtrack is nothing to brag about, nor is the OBS update that does the same thing. If the Twitch version of content that gets exported to YouTube, etc., is the dullest version, Twitch is not competitive in the long haul – period.
• The technology has its uses I suppose, like if you want to swap in different music, but let’s remember Twitch’s bread and butter of game streaming. Someone should be able to share their experience playing a video game on a service like this, not a heavily-nerfed copyright-friendly version.
• “If anything accidentally slips through.” I’m sure the RIAA and NMPA wrinkled their nose if they were watching this. The JakeNBake Kanye situation isn’t going to be stopped by multitrack audio technology. Enough trying to make something like this look like any kind of competitor to YouTube Content ID.
• So if Twitch is buying public performance licenses for musicians to be able to have Twitch channels, why did Herman Li get banned a bunch of times? 🤔
• “This differentiates us from the other video online sites that focus on video on demand.” Anything to not say YouTube. 😏
• Sounds like they’re waffling an ad revenue redirect agreement for copyrighted music. Bottom line – they shouldn’t. They can 1-up YouTube if they make it proportional instead of winner-take-all.
• “On demand videos are more likely to be viewed as a substitute listening experience.” Then why is auto-Live-DMCA being specifically targeted at Twitch? I expect another angry op-ed on Billboard or something… 🤔
• Dodging the Content ID issue. That’s quite alright. It just means Twitch is content to stay as the runt of the bunch.
• …and here we go. Off to the brainwashing session on how deleting Clips and VODs is actually a solution to Twitch’s DMCA deficiencies. 🙄 Useless. 🙄
• Oooooooooooooooooooh. Unpublishing VODs. Dear Twitch people. This is not an improvement. It’s just Twitch catching up to YouTube, where you’ve been able to set videos to Private for years. 🙄
• “You can use the Highlighter tool to select and remove stuff from your VODs.” Oh really. Pausing and trying it now… 🤔 Ah cool. There is a split tool. It just blends in with everything because it’s just a scissors icon, which usually stands for CUT instead of SPLIT. 🙄 Either way, the Twitch Highlighter still loses to YouTube’s cloud editor because it only goes down to the second while YouTube’s cloud editor goes down to the frame. 🤔
• Oh, it’s “misinformation” that stuff like this clip that got JakeNBake DMCAed is still there? Still waiting for this link to break. As of December 2020 it hasn’t. 🤔
• The key issue with everything DMCA-related here is that everything announced is a form of Twitch catching up to YouTube, except the one thing that Twitch could benefit from the most – a competitor to Content ID.
• Trust And Safety time. Here’s what everyone was making fun of. 😏
• There’s always one problem I have with this system for telling people the outcome of a report – what if the person reported cites an invasion of their privacy?
• The new policy talks about not modifying game content to promote hate against protected groups, so if someone fires up Vice City and makes Tommy Vercetti look like a racist against the Cubans or Haitians… 🤔
• “Suggesting that a person’s channel is only popular or has not been banned due to sexual favors…” Oh look. An Alinity rule. 😏
• Finished looking over the policy. “Simp” doesn’t show up, but “Virgin” does. 🤔
• Okay that’s it. Jumping to 1.25x speed. Caffeine mode. This is boring.
• The big issue I have with the new sexual harassment policy is that 50% of Twitch’s audience is 18-34 and ~20% is teenagers. Not so sure a corporate HR style policy will work with all these adolescents who’ll inevitably be immature. 🤔
• Okeedokee. Ads time. Obviously I’m a nerd so I’ll have the most to say about DMCA, but let’s see how Team Purple plans on paying its bills. 🙂
• So the random midroll experiment is over. Good. 🙂
• Let’s reiterate where Twitch could do better than YouTube when it comes to ads. Ads on YouTube are an unmoderated mess that at their worst sends someone else’s YouTube videos through the ad system and completely hijacks your viewing experience unless you hit the Skip button. Twitch doesn’t have a Skip button, but has hard caps on lengths like a TV or radio station. That is good and needs to be expanded.
• Let’s see if preroll ads are ever brought up. Prerolls are a big way Twitch snubs smaller creators because a platform with as much of a focus on live content as Twitch fundamentally isn’t channel-flippable like its old media predecessor – television. 🤔
• This monetization guy is the most business-minded Twitch representative yet in this entire stream. He gets it. We have a pandemic going on and not everybody has money to tie up in a bunch of subs and bits services, so ads are a free way to support creators by letting Twitch try to pay its bills.
• As always though, platforms do everything they can to not sound like old YouTube back when “monetization” was called “ad revenue SHARING.” 🤔
• “Chat isn’t too good on larger channels.” That’s because some Twitch streamers actually encourage spam and don’t use Slow Mode. You can’t talk about the platform like it has to be this way if streamers are legit not using the provided tools to run their channels, like the ad break buttons I keep seeing not get used every time a streamer uses the bathroom or something.
• “Ads pay our bills and keeps Twitch free.” Finally. Someone mentioning scaling revenue for a platform.
• Ads also represent one way in which Twitch can 1-up YouTube. Don’t attach algorithmic penalties to people being adblocked. 🙂
• Another thing I like about this very-business-minded Twitch guy – he actually has a decent camera. The camera he’s using outdoes what Emmett Shear had. 😏
• “Today, Prerolls are run by Twitch.” Yup. And that shoots the platform in the foot. What’s the improvement coming down the pike?
• “Streamers are afraid of midroll ads.” If you offend away people who got upset with you for running a midroll at an otherwise dull moment of your stream, do you really want them in your audience?
• “Viewers are 5 times more likely to stay through a midroll than a preroll.” Well then. Looks like Twitch has a preroll problem to sort out. 🤔
• This ad guy finally said YouTube – the first of his colleagues to do so. 🙂
• The idea I find most interesting here is this idea of turning how streamers run ad breaks into a minigame. That sounds exactly like the sort of maverick technology that Twitch would experiment with and fit the traditional gamer niche of the platform.
• Squeezeback Ads look pretty awesome. Bonus points for if the ad doesn’t make it into the VOD.
• Multiplayer Ads are also an interesting idea. Their announcement was just overshadowed by Twitch’s current deficiencies with DMCA.
• “Skippable ads aren’t great in terms of revenue to the streamer.” Currently on my YouTube channel skippable ads represent 77% of the ad revenue. Mmhmm? 😏
• End of the Ad section – yet another ramblefest from Aurelyian. She really is another Adam Sessler with how she just can’t stop taking over the entire show. 🤔
• This is pure peacocking, but none of this distracts away from Twitch DMCA. Period.
• Here’s what the net result of the ban on “Simp” will be. YouTube drama channels will ramp up their use the word and flame “Twitch streamers can’t take criticism!!!!” even more. 🤔
• Nice to hear that the senator proposing jail time for streaming copyrighted content clarified that he’s specifically looking to target piracy streaming… after there was an uproar on the internet… 🤔

…and just like that, this town hall took up my entire night and I had no chance to do the snowstorm stream afterwards.

Fundamentally, this town hall and its associated peacocking just goes to show all the more how Twitch really snookers people with marketing. YouTube has Content ID, and Facebook actually pursued music licenses for its streamers. Even in something like this, we see from the non-answer to the DMCA shortcomings that Twitch will remain the runt of the bunch for years to come.

The scene is changing. My next focus is to see how Twitch’s market share slowly erodes away as YouTube and Facebook continue to squeeze its territory, and my Twitch channel will remain deliberately limited, because if Twitch doesn’t want to change, neither will I. 🤔

The YouTube Audio Library Is In Jeopardy – Part 2

It is 1:24 PM at Jay’s Geekhouse as I begin typing this. I’ve given Label Engine until 5 PM Eastern to handle this issue with their rogue client professionally before I begin escalations via a formal dispute on YouTube and continued research into this soon-to-be growing problem with Content ID and The YouTube Audio Library. However, I want the problem solved, not my specific instance of it. I won’t be waiting until 5 PM to get started.

What makes this the most embarrassing to a usual big fan of YouTube like myself, despite YouTube’s many issues over the years, is that YouTube usually leads the platforms in technology solutions for content creation. I find a lot of what YouTube is working on to be absolutely fascinating and see where their vision of this technology could lead when it’s more polished and mature. Therefore, it is uniquely embarrassing to see YouTube completely leave something like The YouTube Audio Library vulnerable to exploitation via the very Content ID system that it’s supposed to be all set against.

See the last blog entry for the two Silent Partner songs that I’ve already confirmed will have this problem. For the TLDR crowd, bad actors on YouTube are resubmitting YTAL content to Content ID and then claiming videos under the new metadata they give these songs. In the case of both Silent Partner tracks, they are both from 2013-2014 and the autogenerated videos are from September-October 2020.

What makes this concerning is that this roughly coincides with the recent revisions to the YouTube Audio Library UI, a UI update which I think has accidentally exposed this serious flaw with YouTube’s Audio Library and Content ID and inadvertently encouraged this sort of thing. A classic case of unintended consequences.

With the recent revision of the YTAL UI, you can now sort by Date Added and see the oldest songs on the YTAL itself. This would explain why the flagged song in my video and the other one that the YouTube algorithms introduced me to are both old Silent Partner songs that have been on the YTAL for years. If someone wanted to pull a stunt like this, they’d want to pick an old song that people may not care about that will give them lots of matches in order to take other people’s ad revenue via Content ID.

…except, of course, people will care.

Here’s another song that would run afoul of some larger creators if someone did this trick with it. The 126ers’ End Of Summer, on the YTAL since November 2014. JinnyTTY has this as her outro music in her YouTube videos of her stream highlights. Here’s one of the biggest female livestreamers in the world and she’s now prone to this nonsense.

YouTube has the technology to fix this. Content ID needs to be tied to the YouTube Audio Library and all YTAL tracks need to be an automatic block so someone can’t pull this stunt with them by defeating the purpose of the YTAL in the first place. If a submitted work to Content ID matches a YouTube Audio Library song, it needs to be rejected.

In terms of my previous discussion regarding Joe Athlete Calorie Crusher, the non-YTAL version of this problem I dealt with 6 years ago, action about the relabeling of Rick Rhodes’ song would be up to the rightsholders, but in this case, I know YouTube is the administrator of their own library, and their own help documents already explicitly tell creators they won’t get Content IDed if they use music from the YTAL for their videos.

Lastly, let’s discuss why Label Engine simply releasing this claim wouldn’t solve the problem for creators in the long term. In the case of Joe Athlete Calorie Crusher the CEO of the rights management company actually ordered a release of the claim and a whitelist of my specific video, but you can see if you follow the money why these businesses have no incentive to change if YouTube doesn’t stop them.

My video is one video, and I’m just one creator. I’m part of the vocal minority that actually stood up for my rights. If you Content ID 500 videos and 100 people send disputes, it still leaves 400 creators not taking action, and plenty of reason to keep doing this until YouTube puts a stop to it. Even with the new escrow system that is backdated to 5 days before a dispute, it just represents a delay in the flow of pennies that eventually add up.

YouTube has the technology to stop this, and this flaw in their systems that has recently been exposed like this is only going to get worse until they do so.

Worse comes to worse, I’ll use the audio scrubber tool to remove the song and fix the problem that way, but this still represents a YTAL song that you really can’t use in your videos. How many more will there be if this issue remains unresolved?

Here’s my prediction. Older YTAL songs become a Content ID minefield until YouTube actually fixes this. The two Silent Partner songs I know about are from September-October 2020. We’ll see how many more there are.

The YouTube Audio Library Is In Jeopardy

Over the years since 2006 as a longtime YouTuber I’ve seen YouTube evolve into what it is today, learning some lessons along the way. One of these lessons is one I have sadly been reminded of yet again as of October 2020.

Several years ago in late 2014 I encountered a situation where a royalty-free music track that I paid $50 for a commercial SmartSound license for was flagged as a different song by a different artist. What was supposed to be “Leap Of Faith” by Rick Rhodes and Ron Komie (ASCAP) published by Westar Music was being misrepresented in YouTube’s Content ID system as “Joe Athlete – Calorie Crusher.”

In October of 2020, this copyright issue is still a thing today.

Here’s the link to SmartSound’s purchasing page for Rick Rhodes And Ron Komie’s “Leap Of Faith” which is still being sold for ~$50.

…and here’s “Joe Athlete – Calorie Crusher” on YouTube – monetized – since February 24, 2015, allegedly released in October 2014 even though I purchased a license for Leap Of Faith (calling it by its real name) and have videos from 2007 that use this song.

All these years later, the specific reason why I stopped using royalty-free music is still live on YouTube, and monetized, despite the rightsholder information and ASCAP being listed on the SmartSound page to this day.

Around the time this was happening, YouTube released a new feature for creators. The YouTube Audio Library, which was supposed to be a copyright-safe internal audio library for making YouTube videos, was a free solution to the ongoing problems with finding good music without running into issues with Content ID or the DMCA.

Fast forward to October 2020 yet again, and this feature’s credibility is in jeopardy.

Here’s YouTube’s own help article telling creators they will not receive a Content ID claim for using music from the YouTube Audio Library.

Unfortunately, if you’ve been following me on Twitter, you’ll know that I’ve been the recipient of exactly that.

Here’s “Wha Happnin – The Dreamer Say (Original Version)”, except it’s not. Uploaded September 7, 2020.

The song itself is What It Is by Silent Partner, on the YouTube Audio Library since November of 2014. This Limo Recording Studio video of the song is circa April 1, 2015.

This is not a one-off incident either. Here’s “Ambi.Dextrose – I Am Crazy (Original Version)” except it’s not. Uploaded October 10, 2020.

The comment section rightly calls out that this is actually Court And Page by Silent Partner, on the YouTube Audio Library since September of 2013. Again, here’s a video pre-dating this by years from LIMO Recording Studio. Uploaded March 31, 2014.

What makes the least sense in all of this is how on Earth did YouTube let YouTube Audio Library music be resubmitted to Content ID even when it’s a 100% match. The Content ID and other systems already work this way and can tell you when material is potentially infringing, including the percentage that your content matches the other party’s.

This completely destroys the credibility of the YouTube Audio Library as things currently are. The very resource for creators that YouTube has even directly said themselves is safe to use… is not.

I look forward to YouTube fixing this expeditiously. It’s one thing when copyright infringement of royalty-free tracks goes unchecked for years, but when a major feature of YouTube Creator Studio can no longer be trusted, it breaks the trust of content creators on what should be the premiere video platform in the world.

For the first time ever since I’ve been blogging, I hope some of these embeds break from the videos being removed from YouTube. This is the one time that broken embeds on one of my blog entries would actually be a good thing.

End Of An Era – How Content ID Trolls Can End YouTube’s Dominance In Online Video

Greetings Earthlings!!! … I mean readers.  😀  Yay bad jokes already.  😛

I’m writing this as a reward for any YouTubers who actually took me seriously when I hinted on my channel that I was becoming more of a blogger or something-other-than-YouTuber rather than a YouTuber these days.  I’ll eventually make some vlogs talking about this, but those of you who actually took a look over here are going to hear this far before the YouTube crowd does because things are just utterly nutzo for me right now so it’ll be awhile before I get to announce this on the channel proper.  For the WordPressers who didn’t come over here from YouTube, I apologize for the YouTube Inside Baseball here, but this issue might still be worth paying attention to if you encounter this problem on other sites.

The Big News

I’ve been very seriously thinking about winding down my involvement on YouTube and turning my YouTube channel into a satellite channel for a new main video channel on another site.  So far I’m thinking Dailymotion – YouTube’s main competitor.  Dailymotion used to be a silly knockoff of YouTube a few years ago but they’ve been getting a lot more serious lately and have become their top competitor in terms of views and availability.  I say availability because Youku is the real second-biggest site in terms of audience, but it’s only available in Chinese because it’s the PRC’s YouTube replacement, since YouTube is banned in China of course.  😛

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_hosting_services

Why am I considering these changes?  First – Dailymotion now has loosened their upload restrictions such that a regular account will be more than adequate for me in terms of upload length and size limits (and I can still become a Motionmaker to remove those restrictions of course).  Secondly, I think with the current climate on YouTube that the internet video monolith is eventually going to start to slide out of its #1 spot if it hasn’t started to slide already.  As we’ve seen with the increased changes to profiles and other site features on a more and more regular basis lately, YouTube is suddenly starting to try more and more things but YouTubers cry out about how views are dropping on their uploads, and then YouTube barked up the wrong tree by saying it was all about the subscribers when they launched YouTube One.  The way it works nowadays is that if you’re on YouTube, if your channel isn’t being explicitly promoted, it will be explicitly buried.  This has made more than a few people upset of course since it has pretty much become impossible for regular YouTubers to build up any significant channel size the way the “YouTube Celebrity” video bloggers of yore once did, and even some of them are “small time” these days despite their former dominance.  😛

That’s not the only problem though.  I think Google’s attempts to force Google+ down YouTubers’ throats and their current situation with Content ID and Copyright Trolls signal the end of an era for YouTubers like myself and a very compelling reason to seek greener pastures in the online video world.

First, A Quick Note About Google+

I do not like Google’s attempts to either force people into using Google+ via YouTube channel linking or use their real names to make YouTube look like Google+.  The real names thing obviously is an issue with Internet stuff and the ongoing problem of identity theft.  Google+ integration is also a system that’s being pushed out first and polished later like many YouTube systems, and like those systems, while it’s being polished it is very prone to abuse.  I’ve already heard about trolls attacking Google+ pages of YouTubers’ channels on Google+ to get the page shut down on Google+ and taking the YouTube Channel with it since the two were linked up.  Hopefully Google can get that worked out.  Unfortunately though, any Google+ integration shenanigans are a distant second to the real problem that’s going to intimidate people away from this site.

Content ID Trolls – YouTube’s Real Problem… And Threat

I’ve been on YouTube since 2006 with no problems or disciplinary action ever taken against my account.  Why?  Because as an AV guy who understands things like asset permissions I have respected the rights of others and done what that disclaimer says every time you upload a video and made sure I had permission to do so, either explicitly or as a matter of Fair Use.  However, in the past year even that has not been enough to prevent me from running into issues with Content ID matches – sometimes for rather ridiculous reasons.  Granted, I have never received a copyright strike nor has my account ever fallen out of good standing because of these sorts of matters, but in the interest of keeping things that way, I will most likely end up treating Content ID matches as problems even if the rightsholders explicitly in writing declare that they have no interest whatsoever in ever doing anything but monetizing my videos.

My Recent History With This Mess

My first issue was with Nintendo when I did a mashup video comparing Skyrim to The Legend Of Zelda: The Ocarina Of Time because Skyrim literally did remind me of OoT in some ways.  I eventually took down the video thinking I was going to get in trouble with Nintendo, and as someone who grew up in the Nintendo generation as a kid I didn’t want that to happen.  Later on I found out about Nintendo’s monetization push on YouTube to monetize any videos featuring their products, which is very much a massive social media gaffe on their part because of issues like what I’m talking about here.

Since then, I’ve had run-ins with BFM Digital and The Orchard, two rights management companies who are hired by musicians and record companies who don’t want to get people banned from sites en masse to handle monetizing on sites like YouTube as much as possible.  In the case of BFM Digital, one of the royalty-free stock tracks I used in a World Of Warcraft video in 2008 was matched against a track from a Halloween music CD that came out this month in October of 2013.  After some confrontation on this erroneous claim that 5 years ago I allegedly ripped a track from a digital Halloween album that just came out in 2013, the CEO amicably had the claim released… at least for now.  I say for now because I’ve heard stories about people winning disputes like this but having YouTube’s automated system re-flag them later once the dust had settled.  In the case of The Orchard, a sound effect I used of a trumpet playing the tune Taps was apparently too similar to a sound effects recording whose rights are administered by IODA, now part of The Orchard.

Both of these instances – despite incurring no disciplinary action on my YouTube account as the rightsholders have merely monetized rather than penalized in these cases – nonetheless still represent disturbing precedents on YouTube that will scare some people away from this site.

The Problem Nowadays

I’ve been seeing three main sources of these kinds of problems these days.  Content ID shenanigans on YouTube are very often tied to:

• Stock Music Double-Dipping – A stock music track’s rightsholders decide to monetize the use of the track on YouTube despite charging a high price to purchase the track with a royalty-free license (I’ve seen those tracks for up to $50/song – quite a ways above iTunes of course).  Often the legal justification from the lawyers involved is that the royalty-free licenses don’t take YouTube into account and are only about not paying royalties when the end user uses the track rather than any explicit ban on monetization from the rightsholder after being uploaded.
• Classical Music Tracks – From what I’ve read usually recordings of classical music are erroneously claimed via Content ID because specific recordings can still fall under copyright protection even if the piece is public domain, which creates a loophole/problem where a “troll company” registers a classical work and if any other version of the piece sounds too similar, it’s matched up.  This is a unique issue with classical music because a good orchestra will be out to recreate what the composer originally put on the sheet music, so how many different renditions of a classical piece can one really have soundwise without there being false positives?
• Sound Effects – Same issue as classical music, but easier to get snagged by because sound effect recordings are much shorter and could be spread around the Internet on WAV sites, etc.  There have been particularly high-profile incidents involving sound effects where YouTubers were Content ID trolled because of originally recorded wind or bird sounds.

Obviously, all three of these represent absolute nonsense for the YouTubers involved – especially the stock track double-dipping where YouTubers like myself sometimes have paid up to $50 a song to allegedly not have copyright problems on YouTube – only to end up in no better shape than the people who just ripped from their CDs to begin with (as was my case with BFM Digital).  So why is this a problem and why will it eventually intimidate people off the site?

The Right Of Death: Shoot First – Ask Questions Later

The ultimate problem with YouTube’s latest revisions to their copyright systems is that the monetization-only options are part of the same system that originally brought us DMCA takedown abuse and the two aren’t separated, so even if you have a rightsholder saying that all they want to do is make money off of your video, the option’s still there for them to change their mind and get your account shut down if there are enough incidents.  Plus, what if the rightsholder messes up or gets spoofed, as might have happened to Sega last year with the alleged takedown spree by Sega Of Japan over anything related to the Shining series.  With incidents like this going on, and the monetization and penalization systems being linked, there is essentially no difference between a Content ID match and copyright strike in terms of potential for trouble on YouTube, so why take the risk?

Something else worth noting when it comes to the “right of death” here.  If YouTube is investing in all of this automated stuff like Content ID, why can’t new uploads be scanned for potential issues before the videos go live?  Why does everything always have to be potentially takedowns and strikes for the end user?  What if an upload were scanned and any potential issues sent to the uploader before the video went live with the uploader needing to click an acknowledge button to assume responsibility for any potential copyright issues in their video?  I’ve heard of some of YouTube’s competitors playing around with this type of system.  Perhaps for once it’ll be YouTube that falls behind on something rather than a competitor when it comes to new features on an online video site.

…For The Love Of Money…

Let’s assume though that this only is some kind of money thing and that these companies don’t blow off any challenges to any erroneous Content ID claims to drag out the resolution process as long as they can.  Is there any reason for these companies to ever stop doing this stuff?  Not that I can see.  They’ll always be able to squeeze a little bit of revenue out of whatever window YouTube’s accuser-as-judge-jury-and-executioner model allows them to.  The only hope for the end user would be if this intimidation factor eventually chilled the amount of content being produced and then eventually chilled the amount of traffic on YouTube.  These organizations involved here might rethink things if their wallet takes a hit, as could be the case with these copyright trolls if they scare people off the site and their own revenue drops as a result of YouTube’s then-reduced traffic.  Until that happens though – if it happens – I see no reason why this nonsense will ever slow down or stop for those of us who’ve been watching it take place on this site.

The Road Forward From Here

As for me, what I’m probably going to do is start quietly removing Content ID matched YouTube content and then eventually announce everything on the channel before really ramping up the transition.  I’ll quietly do a kickoff video on DailyMotion too while I’m at it.  If this goes the way I’m looking for it to go, eventually I will have only a few made-for-YouTube series going on the channel, and if DailyMotion’s really as good as it looks, I’ll move the better of my current YouTube videos as well as other series’ that I don’t want on YouTube anymore over to there.  It’s really too bad that YouTube has forced my hand in all of this, but as I said when I started the RadioStyle series a few years ago in response to what I called “YouTube Vista” a.k.a. YouTube Profiles 2.0, if YouTube wants to make changes, two can play at this game.

‘Tis a sad day for YouTubers indeed, but perhaps a more competitive online video landscape will ultimately make for a better experience for us “third rate user-generated content people.”  One can only hope – right?  😛  Truly, it is the End Of An Era here.  The question now is – what’s next?  :-\