YouTube updates copyright infringement claims system

YouTube has announced changes to its copyright claims process in a bid to protect creators and better manage infringement.

Julian Bill, YouTube’s product manager said in an announcement yesterday, July 9, that the platform will now require copyright owners to provide timestamps to indicate exactly where their content appears in videos when making an infringement claim.

As it stands, copyright owners are not required to provide timestamps when using the claiming system, so “it was sometimes unclear to creators which part of their videos” were being claimed as being infringing.

YouTube said that from now on, it will be evaluating the accuracy of the timestamps and copyright owners who repeatedly fail to provide accurate data will have their access to the claiming system revoked.

Additionally, the platform will also improve editing tools for creators, to make it easier to remove infringing content from their videos.

These editing options will be: muting all sound when the claimed song plays, or replacing the infringing song with one of YouTube’s free-to-use songs from its audio library. Creators will also have the option to trim out the content.

The news comes after YouTube’s CEO Susan Wojcicki released a statement in April, which said she recently met with YouTube creators who were concerned about the current copyright infringement system.

According to the statement, creators were “frustrated with copyright claims” that are less than 10 seconds or incidental.

These concerns related to YouTube’s “Manual claiming” system, which Wojcicki said was “increasingly being used to claim infringement over very short (in some cases one second) content or incidental content, “like when a creator walks part a store playing a few seconds of music”.

She said the company was also very concerned about Article 17 of the EU Copyright Directive, which was passed earlier this year.

“While we support the rights of copyright holders—YouTube has deals with almost all the music companies and TV broadcasters today—we are concerned about the vague, untested requirements of the new directive,” Wojcicki said.

“It could create serious limitations for what YouTube creators can upload. This risks lowering the revenue to traditional media and music companies from YouTube and potentially devastating the many European creators who have built their businesses on YouTube,” Wojcicki added.

This story was first published on TBO.

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