Random Notes

As part of my Trainfulness project, I sometimes upload Creative Commons licensed videos to YouTube. I always make sure I have the proper licence, as I want to play fair with content creators such as NRK (the Norwegian Broadcasting Company). But lately I have received a couple of copyright claims from the company Pirames International. This would not be that much of an issue if YouTube did not make handling the cases extremely frustrating.

When you get a copyright claim, there is no notification for you. Literally the only way to find out that it has happened is to go through your video manager and manually view that none of them have the little text shown above. I even went to the YouTube notification settings and checked that I have notifications about "Activity on my videos or channel" turned on. Looks like YouTube doesn't think copyright claims on your videos are activity that warrants your attention.

The reason copyright claims with no notification are such a problem is that 1) your video loses monetization, and 2) the claimant will monetize it for themselves until the claim is resolved. That's right, your money will go to the claimant until you see the claim and dispute it and there's no way to get the money from that time back. I don't monetize my videos so I'm not losing anything, but as soon as Pirames International puts a claim on my video, they will add their own ads on it and make money from it. Literally making money off other people's work.

So then you notice that your video is being monetized by someone else with a totally frivolous claim. You dispute it, but is there an option to state that the claim was fake and in bad faith? No, there's not. In fact I don't think there are any repercussions for the offending company. It takes just one Google search to see that Pirames International has been doing this before.

And why wouldn't they? Just file tons of false claims, collect ad money from the content creators that don't religiously monitor their video list, and if anyone disputes, just say "whoopsie" and release the claim. You can't lose!