Video: This Copyright Situation Is Even Worse Than You Thought by Charles Cornell, annotated

Over the last week or two, there have been a lot of videos made about this whole copyright system on YouTube, particularly as it applies to music educators on YouTube, like myself. It all kind of stems from Brick Biotto's video about some of the difficulties that he's faced, and then other creators like David Bennett have also made videos kind of following up with their own input. So if you're looking for a very eloquent, reasonably phrased summary of the entire situation,

I would highly advise checking those out. Because in classic style for this channel, we're going to keep it unscripted, and I'm just going to tell you kind of what I've been dealing with almost since I feel like I started on YouTube. As one does on YouTube, I feel like I need to start out by saying, I'm not a lawyer, this is not legal advice. And I know nothing. Anything I say is not a accusatory of any in particular large record label.

This is all theoretical and about nobody in particular. My entire approach with this whole thing, more or less has been these companies, I'm right. Now, it's a little more eloquent than that. Honestly, it's not entirely more eloquent than that, maybe a little bit. Below, here's the deal. Here's what happens. Every single video that I make, generally speaking, I'm using copyrighted material.

The vast majority of the time that video gets claimed by the copyright owner, which by the way, it doesn't even always seem like it is the copyright owner, because it feels like half the time it says some massive record label on behalf of some other, that I don't have no idea how it even works. Somebody claims the video because there's the system in place that YouTube is built of. Essentially allows these record labels to collect money for free

with absolutely no possible repercussions on their part. A lot of this can start from the content ID system where it's picked up automatically, but most of my claims on my videos are manual, which means that people who are employed by these companies go through my videos with a fine toothed call looking for anything that they could potentially just throw a claim on. If they hear anything at all that is owned by them, whatever that means,

then they can throw a claim on the video. Now, let me tell you where this whole thing stems from. Okay, as I said in the beginning of this video, I'm right. And I know that I'm right because I have studied the wording of exactly how fair you supplies in so many different circumstances. I am familiar with the legal precedent that has been set by various court cases surrounding this, even specifically on YouTube with the Ethan Klein case

from years ago that made a bunch of headlines of that time. I know that I'm using content in a way that satisfies the requirements of fair use. And you'll notice, if you listen to any of the intros or outros of my videos, I don't use the subject material that I'm talking about. I literally only use it when I am explicitly teaching about it or showing it for demonstration purposes or whatever else within the bounds of fair use.

I don't even use it for intros and outros because at that time, yes, I'm talking about it, but I'm not directly talking about it in a way that's like, see here, listen to this. No, it's in the background. And that is even, I'm like, ooh, that could get into weird territory where they could say, well, no, you're not talking about it at that point. That has happened to me. So I'm very careful in terms of how much I use content or the specific use cases rather.

And because of that, like, I'm right. You. Okay, so that's why, that's why I like, that's why I start for all these things. So I get a claim on a video, I file a dispute. My dispute, I'm assuming that no human being, maybe a human, is looking at this dispute, but in the vast majority of cases, I'm just assuming that it's just a robot of some kind that just automatically rejects the dispute.

I've never in my life wanted dispute. Actually, that's not true. I wanted to dispute like once or twice. I don't even know why. But here's the thing, the dispute, which is that initial thing, and as David Bennett pointed out, this can be very scary, because YouTube makes it all big and scary with the wording that they use. That dispute, there is absolutely no consequence for the company to reject the dispute in a fraudulent manner. Even if they know that you're right, there's simply no recourse.

They can't get in trouble unless there was a class action lawsuit brought about by lots and lots and lots of people. There's just no way the YouTube system does not penalize them for fraudulently claiming something and then rejecting a dispute, even though the creator in that context is completely correct. So just assume the dispute is always going to get rejected. This is where things get interesting. And as David Bennett was so kind to thank me for helping him out,

I've got a couple of people to thank as well. In particular, I want to thank Adam Neely. When I was first starting out, Adam and I got connected and he really explained this system to me in a way that I hadn't understood before. So anything I know, I would like to attribute a lot of that as coming from Adam. And then I also had a lot of help from a legal creator here on YouTube who I'm not going to name,

because I don't think he would appreciate people getting the idea that maybe he can magically solve everyone's problems for them. He knows who he is and I'm super appreciative of the help that he provided when I was early on in my YouTube career as well. So I also have people to thank and this community of creators has been incredibly supportive, particularly in the music space. I'm sure maybe that's widespread around other genres of YouTube.

But I know that the music creators here on YouTube are just such a great community, one that I'm very lucky to be a part of. So I'm grateful to everyone for all the help that I've been given and I'm happy to continue to pass that forward in any way that I can. So after the dispute gets rejected, this is where the interesting part starts. That is when YouTube kicks you into their appeal system. And in the appeal system, things get scary. You've got to put your address, you've got to put your full name, you've got to sign like digitally sign like this legal,

all this legal ease, right? And it's just it's designed to look very scary because what is YouTube trying to do? They're just trying to protect themselves. They're trying to be like, look, this is between you guys. Don't, don't bring me into this. I get it. I understand it. I mean, it's a really difficult situation that they're put into trying to try to figure out how to navigate all this legal stuff amongst the content that these record labels are allowing to be used on you. It's a, it's just a big mess. But that appeal form asks a number of questions.

It's things like how much of the original content did you use? And by the way, that doesn't matter. You can use the whole thing. If you're using it in a transformative way, you're using it to demonstrate, to teach, to provide commentary, whatever it is that falls under fair use. The amount that you used of the original content makes no difference whatsoever. Also, this idea of like, did your work usurp the original market?

What they mean is like, did you just post the song and take all the views or take all the traffic away from where it should be? Like, by the original poster? That would be a scenario where it's like, oh, you usurped the original market. No, that's not how this works. Not only in the way that I tend to cover things, not only does it not take away from the original market, it probably only adds to it because a lot of the time what I'm doing is I'm trying to add attention to a lot of material that I cover.

But the law doesn't even require that it doesn't usurp the original market. If you create commentary on something that destroys the validity of the original work, that's fair game. It would be like if somebody published a terrible book or an article or whatever. It's just something that was really bad and a bunch of people came together and be like, yeah, you're wrong, that's stupid. I mean, we see this happen all the time, especially in like political circles.

This is a very common thing. Like, you use somebody else's material to create commentary or to show something to your audience and it destroys the original market for the original work. There's no legal requirement that it doesn't do that. So that's a stupid question. It's just like all these things that are in this appeals system. It's like as long as you are, is you are for sure using the content in a transformative nature, which here on Music Education YouTube tends to be the case.

I cannot teach you about something involving a particular court progression without showing you the court progression. That's kind of a requirement. So you fill this thing out and you explain, actually, no, you're wrong, this is stupid, I'm right, come at me, bro. And I will say up until this point, I'm lucky in the sense that I have not lost an appeal. And now again, remember, I put a lot of effort into ensuring that when I cover stuff in the first place, that I'm sure that it is under the protections of fair use, the way that I'm using it.

Like I said, I don't even, I don't even play it as background music to the intro of the video because I worry that that could be construed as like, well, that you're not commenting on it right then. So I'm very careful about all of this and that is of course extremely intentional for this very purpose because when I get to this point in an appeal, I literally want to be like, good luck. I'm right, I know I'm right, go fuck yourself. But on area that I don't have experience with, but that I know comes after this is normally if that gets rejected, you get that fancy little copyright strike.

And as we know, three copyright strikes in your channel is taken down, which is kind of insane because somebody could fraudulently and maliciously do that really at any time. It's just an oddity of the system that YouTube has built, I suppose. So they give you a copyright strike and they submit a DMCA takedown notice. You have to take the video down. The video gets removed from YouTube, but at that point, I could submit a counter notice, essentially being like, you sue me.

See, look, here's the thing. It gets into the specifics and again, other people have covered this on a much more detailed oriented level and I highly recommend that you check out those videos. What I'm really getting at here is, is the reason I feel that this system operates the way it does, right? So as I said, the dispute rejection holds absolutely no possible repercussions for the company. It's like, why would they ever agree with your dispute?

There's no reason they need to. They reject the dispute, they keep your money and the vast majority of YouTubers are too afraid to go beyond that process because YouTube makes the language and the system after that point looking so scary that it makes you feel like you're going to lose your channel. And even me, like, I never, if I'm ever going to appeal anything, I don't do it. If it's like, if I have two appeals out at any given time, I do not do a third.

Because I'm like, well, what if all of these came back and I got three strikes just like that? So I do my best to like not to not run that risk. But it's kind of insane that that risk exists in the first place because here's the thing. My estimation of this whole system is that why have I won the appeals? Why do things typically get dropped at that point? Now again, I will reiterate that I am very careful.

I think other people have gotten strikes. There might be an argument there. Sometimes I'm not sure I'm sure that there's still fraudulent claims and takedowns going on and stuff like that. But I just, I want to continue to reiterate how careful I am because I'm very confident in the way that I use material. And I've got a lot of practice doing it. I've been doing this for over six years now, which is insane. But I believe that I typically win at that point because the last thing that these companies want to do is jeopardize this nice little system they've got going on where they can just collect money from creators who are too scared to fight them all the way.

Because what would happen if they actually came after my thing? I was that confident that I was correct and I took them to court over this. And it jeopardizes the entire thing for them because the second that a court finds in my favor now legal precedent is established and this whole system comes tumbling down for them. If there's one thing that they don't want, it is that. So if there's a few YouTubers here and there that have figured out that they can fight this thing that they know they're right and that they're not going to back down.

Okay, we'll just let them go because we know the vast majority of people will not fight us that far and we can just collect their money and we got a nice little revenue source there. In all reality, a lot of people are probably using content in a way that isn't protected by fair use. I can't tell you the number of times I see things posted on you just not making money from it is not the same thing as well. I'm not making money so it's fair use. That's not how that works at all.

I have seen a lot of that and like that's not that's not going to that's not going to work. So there are situations in which I think people maybe have a misunderstanding of what the actual law says. There are people who can explain the law far more in depth and more accurately than I can so I will not attempt to butcher it here. The important thing to know is just that I'm extremely careful in how I use content and because of that, I'm very confident that I am using things within the bounds of fair use and that's why I feel the confidence to fight these as far as I need to take it before they drop it.

And they will drop it because again, they do not want to lose in court and establish this precedent that just ruins this free revenue source that they have had that they've developed that they require absolutely no effort on their part. It's not like the artists they're protecting are getting anything for it, you know, at least not in comparison to what the labels themselves are making. I don't have a great solution to this system. I recognize the difficulty of the situation YouTube is in and trying to navigate all this.

I think that this system is the best version of what we could have absolutely not. It is incredibly obnoxious having to fight these things and there are plenty of creators who genuinely lose out on a lot of potential income because either they don't know how to fight it, they're scared to fight it reasonably so. Or they don't understand the fair use law well enough to ensure that everything that they're doing falls within it. It's a tricky situation and I don't think I'm really a great person to provide the solution.

But I just wanted to sort of add in I guess my thoughts on the whole situation and kind of offer a little bit of a maybe a little more ruckus approach to it and just that's just kind of been my thing this whole time. You I'm right. Anyways, I'm going to link Ric Biotto's video and David Bennett's video as well as, you know, any others that I find from others who have covered this topic may be maybe a little more in detail.

Then I have here and I highly recommend going to check them out. I'm here to help you learn more about music. The law allows me to do that. I put a lot of effort into making sure that I'm doing it within the law and I sure as hell I'm not going to allow some companies that are just trying to get free revenue off of me to stop me from doing that. Hopefully that's cool with you guys and yeah, we'll see in the next video. We'll get back to talking about actual music in a fair use compliant manner.