(CelebrityAccess) — Video-on-demand giant Youtube is finally pushing back against what it characterizes as “aggressive” manual copyright claims against very short music clips used in monetized videos.
Starting in September, YouTube will bar copyright owners from making manual claims to take revenue from monetized videos that include short music clips, such as unintentional music caught in the background of a video.
Once the new policy goes into effect, copyright owners that continue to aggressively attempt to flag content through the manual claims system will have their access to the manual claims system suspended, YouTube said in a blog post on Thursday.
“One concerning trend we’ve seen is aggressive manual claiming of very short music clips used in monetized videos. These claims can feel particularly unfair, as they transfer all revenue from the creator to the claimant, regardless of the amount of music claimed,” YouTube said in the post.
The aggressive claims, when manually filed, had previously resulted in the transfer of all revenue from monetized videos from the content creator to the he claimant, regardless of the amount of music claimed. The system created financial incentives for spurious or questionable claims, even for ‘fair use’ of copyrighted material, such as in criticism, and provided little recourse for content creators on the video platform.
Last month, Youtube launched a raft of new creator tools to try to ameliorate the impact of these short clip claims, including new requirements that copyright owners to provide timestamps for all manual claims so that content creators know exactly what part of their videos were flagged, as well as new editing tools that allow content creators to remove manually claimed content from videos.
“We strive to make YouTube a fair ecosystem for everyone, including songwriters, artists, and YouTube creators. We acknowledge that these changes may result in more blocked content in the near-term, but we feel this is an important step toward striking the right balance over the long-term. Our goal is to unlock new value for everyone by powering creative reuse and content mashups, while fairly compensating all rightsholders.”
