Slashdot Mirror


YouTuber Says He Was Accused of Infringing His Own Song (cnet.com)

CNET reported this week that a musician, who plays guitar and has lots of viewers on YouTube, received an unusual email from the company alleging that he had copied a tune he wrote himself two years ago. From the report: But last month, Paul Davids says he got a rather unusual email from YouTube. The Content ID system had flagged a tune he wrote himself, two years ago, for infringing on someone's else's newer video. Someone who, it seems, stole his backing track to create a new track of his own. [...] "Someone took my track, made their own track, uploaded it to Spotify, YouTube, whatever, and I get a copyright infringement notice? Wait, what?" said Davids. The story has a happy ending -- Davids used YouTube's appeals system to quickly work things out, and let the other artist keep on using his tune. (Davids tracked him down on Facebook Messenger, and the guy apparently admitted he'd downloaded 'a couple of guitar licks' on YouTube.) But it's weird to think YouTube would flag an old video for infringing on a new one, no?

1 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. Youtube just plain sucks for DMCA takedowns by Sandman1971 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I have a couple of videos that use classical music that falls under Creative Common licenses. Every week I get a warning from Youtube saying that some company is claiming that I infringe on their copyright. I contest and always win... Then repeat again the following week, sometime from the same 'company' for the same song! I've so far had about 40 different companies claim copyright on songs that are not theirs. It's beyond frustrating. Youtube's process is clearly broken.

    --
    It's better to burn out than to fade away