White Noise Video on YouTube Hit By Five Copyright Claims (bbc.com)

Chris Baraniuk, reporting for BBC: A musician who made a 10-hour long video of continuous white noise -- indistinct electronic hissing -- has said five copyright infringement claims have been made against him. Sebastian Tomczak, who is based in Australia, said he made the video in 2015 and uploaded it to YouTube. The claimants accusing him of infringement include publishers of white noise intended for sleep therapy. "I will be disputing these claims," he told the BBC. In this case, those accusing Mr Tomczak are not demanding the video's removal, but instead the reward of any revenue made from advertising associated with it. Without the claims, Mr Tomczak would receive such revenue himself. "I am intrigued and perplexed that YouTube's automated content ID system will pattern-match white noise with multiple claims," he said.

Comments

White noise can be copied too

[JoeyRox]

The copyright claims are valid if his video copied the white noise audio track from other videos, which can easily be determined by comparing the wave forms.

Re:White noise can be copied too

[admin7087]

Doubtful. There is no expression of a creative idea and the work is also not original. Both are requirements for copyright. Otherwise I could just copyright the word "and" and get my free income for the rest of my life.

He needs to fight the claims

[eclectro]

The supreme court of the United States has definitively ruled that patentable items can no longer be protected by copyright once the patent has been expired.

Here is an expired patent describing such a device. And there were a number of devices before that. And schematic diagrams and circuits in magazines for white noise/sleep generators long ago.

It's a shame that people are so full of themselves that they think they are truly that special that they somehow made a unique creation here. But actually it's likely worse in that people think they found an easy target and want to take what they can with a bad faith claim.

This is a time where counter claims under the DMCA need to be filed against these bad faith claims and collect damages to help prevent further abuse.

Maybe even make google a co-defendant.

Youtube own provided music

[slazzy]

I was hit with a copyright claim using Youtube own provided music! What really sucks: - I got no notification email to let me know they started stealing all my revenue - The link to contest the action was 404 not found