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YouTube's dual standards for copyright enforcement

It's not hard to find those who think that the concept of copyright is past its best-by date.

Even those who do believe there is still a place for copyright in today's connected world can often be found "sampling" movies, TV programmes and music via P2P networks, salving their ruffled conscience by coming up with all manner of justifications for infringing the rights of content creators.

Now I don't use P2P networks and if you look at the cabinet under my old CRT TV you'll find a scattering of "store-bought" movie DVDs but none that have been unlawfully snatched from the Net.

While I don't agree with all the tactics of the movie and music studios, I do believe that we should respect copyright as a concept because without it, our choice of content is going to be increasingly small.

On the other hand, I also believe that copyright is something that should only be allowed to provide "reasonable profit", not the extortionate levels of gouging that occur in some industries.

To this end, much of the copyrighted content I create, I offer freely to others who might wish to republish for non-commercial purposes.

Most recently I've made this offer through my RCModelReviews website. Anyone wanting to republish a review or a feature article from that website for non-commercial purposes need only contact me and ask.

I also have a few YouTube Channels and, on occasion, people have emailed me to ask if they can use excerpts from some of my videos for inclusion in their own work. Almost without exception I've given permission for them to do this.

However, last week I had my first encounter with YouTube's copyright-enforcement division.

While performing one of my regular YT searches for new content I noticed videos that were clearly mine -- but which had been uploaded to another channel.

I contacted the operator of the channel and asked them to stop using my videos to populate their own channel without permission.

The next day, dozens more of my videos appeared on the same channel. I tried to contact the channel owner again but found that I'd been "blocked". Clearly this person was aware that they were breaching my copyright but were going to go ahead anyway. It also became apparent that they had created this channel, composed entirely of popular vids from other channels, solely to promote their file-sharing website.

So I filed a copyright complaint for a dozen or so infringing videos using the mechanism provided by YouTube. I figured that when they saw that this person had re-uploaded a whole bunch of my videos without permission, they channel would be axed or the operator would be smart enough to remove the rest of the infringing vids.

The next day I got notification that my copyright claims had been upheld and the dozen or so vids had been removed (by YouTube) from that channel. However, there were still about 40 other videos of mine that remained.

Rather than go through the onerous task of filing a complaint for each infringing video, I emailed YouTube's copyright department and suggested that they take a look at the channel and that they'd see a huge number of re-uploaded vids there from my (and other) channels.

The reply was a simple one: You must file a complaint for each infringing video.

WTF?

I contacted a couple of other people whose videos had also been re-uploaded to this channel -- they were equally unamused and set about filing complaints, as did I.

After filing another 30 complaints, YouTube's form told me that I'd exceeded my limit and could file no more complaints.

WTF?

The next day I received notification that all of my complaints had been upheld and some of the other folks I'd alerted advised me that their complaints had also been upheld.

However, the channel was still there and, because I'd been unable to file all my complaints due to exceeding some kind of limit, so were plenty of my videos.

I emailed YT's copyright people again and suggested that the situation was ludicrous. How is it that some folks get their channel shut down because they have a radio going in the background, playing a popular tune while filming a video-blog entry or because there's a TV set running in the corner of the room playing a popular music vid? And here am I, unable to get a clear case of blatant copyright infringement shut down despite scores of complaints filed by me and just as many filed by others.

That email seemed to do the trick because the next day, the offending channel was gone.

I also alerted YT to the fact that this guy had started numerous other channels using the same "steal popular vids" approach to spamming his file-sharing website. I told them what to search for in order to find all these 100% pirated channels.

No action has been taken against any of the others.

So there you go -- copyright protection on YouTube seems to operate on two levels.

If you're a big music or movie studio with a pool of trained sharks lawyers, you'll get instant action for the slightest infringement.

If you're just a regular Joe then you'll find it a very, very ,very hard job to get anywhere when people decide to infringe *your* copyright.

Bad form YouTube. Could do better!

Have you ever tangled with YouTube over copyright (either as an infringer or as someone whose IP has been stolen by another YT user)?

Might we see more attempts by spammers to steal the best vids just to create new channels that promote their warez or products? If so, should YT step up its game?

Does it seem right that even once you reach your limit for copyright infringement notices, the offender still gets to repost your videos with impunity?

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