Good morning, Readers!
The Starlings already know this, as I’ve complained about it on Ko-Fi as soon as it happened, but please allow me to vent a little about it today.
As you know, I’ve created a new YouTube channel to house my videos related to my books, writing and my journey as a creative. There won’t be anything terribly personal on there outside of that. I’m trying very hard to keep my writing life and life life quite separate.
As a teeny tiny creator with next to zero subscribers (which… is actually quite nice, as I don’t particularly want to be famous (my books, yes, but not me personally)), I rely heavily on images and music that is free to use/Creative Commons for my videos. All three of them.
I’m not including shorts, here.
Anyway, the channel is very new and has only two public videos… Until this coming Friday, when the video that the Starlings get to see early goes public. Then there will be three.
But this third video, which I used music that was free to use without attribution according to the license (I’ve still put attribution in the description, though), was claimed by some company called HAAWK Publishing.
A copyright strike is a terrifying thing for a YouTuber. Especially a small one that has absolutely zero power in this environment. There are a couple of things you can do when you get one.
You can take the whole video down.
If it doesn’t affect your standing, you can just leave it and let this other company rob you of any earnings your video might garner. That would be a whopping $0.00 in my case, but that’s not the point.
You can remove the music and re upload, or simply just let the video have no music for however long you used the claimed music.
You can mute the video for the length of the copyrighted music used, which would leave nearly my entire video mute.
Or you can dispute that claim in the hopes that you can have it removed from your channel. This is a terrifying option. The claimant will review your claim and decide whether or not it has any merit. Not YouTube. Not an impartial third party. But the claimant. If they decide to uphold their claim, it will count as a strike against your channel. You can appeal that, too, but until a decision is made, you’re stuck with a black mark on your record - and that mark might remain at the end of the whole process. You could lose your channel because of it. All that hard work. Just… gone.
It’s this system, I am certain, that ensures some creators will never dispute a copyright claim - even if that claim is untrue or fraudulent. Any “company” can make a claim, and start earning on other people’s videos, and the chances of them getting caught are slim. Because it’s so difficult and scary to fight back.
But I was in a fighting mood. And I had receipts - a link to the site I downloaded the song from and a link to the license stating that the music was free to use without attribution. So I disputed the claim.
I’m certain HAAWK knew that it was a fraudulent claim because in minutes of me submitting my dispute, they released the claim. Minutes.
This is how the companies like this make their money. They target small creators hoping that the creator will be too meek or scared of losing everything to fight back. Then they steal any income made on that video. When we do fight back, they give up quickly because there are legal repercussions to making fraudulent claims. They don’t want that smoke.
But there are enough small creators too scared to make a move that it is still profitable for them to do this.
Which is some serious bullshit.
I’m angry about it. Even though it worked out in my favour.
There needs to be a better way to do this that doesn’t unfairly put the small creators with absolutely no power and everything to lose in this position. The penalties for making fraudulent claims should be harsher. The creators should be paid back for their stolen earnings. Plus interest.
Look, I have all of seven subscribers (which is awesome, actually! I didn’t think I’d have any). I’m unlikely to generate any income from any of my videos. I could have just let them have it. But it’s the principle of the matter. It’s not right. It’s not fair. And that makes me angry.
I’m very lucky it worked out for me here. Fighting back hasn’t in the past.
Anyway, I’m just really annoyed and needed to get it out of my system. Thanks for listening.
Oh, and new video this Friday, I guess.
Thanks!
Slán go foill!
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