YouTube Video - Copyright Claim
Imagine my surprise when I saw a copyright claim against my YouTube videos of my Lascia Ch'io Pianga and Feels Like Home performances. The claim is made by Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society for Musical Composition.
Here is my understanding of how copyright laws work in the U.S. If I make a recording of my own performance, I entirely own the copyright. Music composed by a composer who has been dead for 75 years becomes Public Domain. George Frideric Handel died in the 18th century so there is no possible music composition claim on Lascia Ch'io Pianga. As for Feels Like Home composed by Randy Newman, that may be an interesting point of legal claim/dispute. However, in both songs, I transcribed and arranged my own piano renditions of the music.
Armed with this knowledge, I made a claim dispute with Google.
I wish to request the removal of the claim by Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society for Musical Composition from my YouTube video. I transcribed and arranged the music for my performance. This is my recording of my performance and I entirely own the copyright.
I made this claim dispute for each of the videos and Google released the copyright claims. It appears that Google uses automated software to match YouTube videos with potential copyright claims. The Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society apparently represents various organizations worldwide that may have copyright claims against YouTube videos. Google supposedly has arrangements in place for such organizations to file claims with Google for enforcement which may include actions such as levying royalties against the YouTube video owner, displaying ads against the YouTube video or taking down the video altogether.
I do understand the need for Google to do this. It must be a nightmare running the YouTube business where there are many copyright infringement situations. I even understand the need for Google to do this with automated software since it is not cost-viable to have humans perform the reviews manually. However, it would seem the matching is not finely tuned enough because my videos were obviously flagged incorrectly. It is frustrating to be labelled "guilty" until declared "innocent".
I am happy that I was able to resolve this with Google. There are other Internet properties which I have written about in the past that do similar kinds of automated detection and enforcement where there are many false positives and they do not respond to user/customer inquiries. Craigslist Facebook Akismet
Video from Google on Rights Management
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