Warner Music Files Copyright Claim on A Silent 'Star Wars' Video On YouTube (wired.com)

rgh02 writes: Earlier this summer, popular YouTube channel Auralnauts received some unfortunate news: Warner/Chappell had filed a monetization claim on their "Star Wars Minus Williams" video through YouTube's Content ID System. More than anything, the Auralnauts were confused -- the video the music company was claiming rights over didn't have any music in it at all.
In fact, the video is almost entirely silent, augmented with a few awkward coughs as Han Solo and Luke Skywalker plod noiselessly toward Princess Leia in a two-minute scene where they're awarded ceremonial medallions. Wired's article describes it as "a tongue-in-cheek tribute" to John Williams' Star Wars score for the film's final scene, also reporting that it had been online for almost three years before Warner/Chappell music publishing claimed rights to all money the video would receive: When I tried to get Warner/Chappell's side of this story, the company offered no comment. But apparently my reporting helped bring the "Star Wars Minus Williams" copyright dispute to an unexpectedly speedy resolution. When Koonce told his YouTube partner manager that a journalist had interviewed him, YouTube stepped in and removed the copyright claim against the video.
YouTube has also created a "Fair Use Protection" program covering legal costs for channels they believe are unfairly targeted with video takedown notices. But the article points out that 95% of the time music companies just chose YouTube's "monetize" option to claim the ad revenue rather than asking that a video be blocked -- and that last year YouTube paid the music industry $1 billion. (Though the music industry insists that amount is still below what they're receiving from streaming music services.)

Comments

Why is the video getting money at all?

[Anonymous Coward]

They removed the music but all the video is copyrighted.

Re:Why is the video getting money at all?

[magusxxx]

If my video is taken down, that implies I broke the law. That's defamation of character. I'm wondering why people haven't filed a court claim like this. Even if it's small claims. And refuse to settle until your terms are met. Even if you go to court, then there'd be standing which could be stockpiled and used for an even bigger case. And remember, since Youtube took the video down they could be called as a witness. Several times a week in fact if enough people filed at the same time.

The Wonderful World of Disney

[Anonymous Coward]

Disney is extremely sue happy in general, but tyrannical when it comes to YouTube. They're the Micro$oft of the film world.

monetization claim

[mapkinase]

monetization claim: this is the most interesting part for me: prediction of the future.

The future is behind content identification, not behind content blocking. All content will be quickly identified and ISP will be paying content owners a fee from the money they collect from our ISP fees.

Pirate site and owner site - both will exist and compete in technology and convenience of content delivery (for example, a site might to choose to slap ads on the content, the other site might choose not to, the third site might choose that you pay an additional fee for content delivery, guess, who will be winning the users?) but the ISP will pay only content owners for our clicks.

Never mind this particular monetization claim is ridiculous. 2 min excerpt should be covered by Fair Use act, but in general, that's how it will work in the future.

Users will pay a fixed fee and get all the content on the Internet for the price of that fee. ISPs will take care of owners.

"it's just good business"

[v1]

If it costs them less to file the claim than the claim than they will get back on the average, they'll do it. There are only two ways to stop them - [1] make it illegal (and then they will only stop some of the time) or [2] make it unprofitable.

Right now the way the system is set up, for very little effort they can file a claim and siphon off the ad revenue. It's a "click here for free money" button. Who in their right mind wouldn't press the button? Right now the ONLY negative side-effect is bad press. And just look what happened here. "You discussed our abuse of the system with a journalist?!" *DING* ((claim dropped)) Imagine that!

It's not that they don't know what they're doing is wrong - it's that they simply don't care. It's just free money until it attracts bad press. I don't blame them, I blame the rules. If I were in their position, I'd probably be doing the same thing. The problem is the "click here for free money" button. The only way to fix the problem is to fix the rules.