Updated 4/24/12: YouTube has greatly improved the copyright claim dispute process in recent weeks, and it seems that even copyright holders have gotten much more responsive and willing to relinquish claims falsely flagged by YouTube’s Copyright ID engine. These are all good steps in the right direction!
Are you a YouTube Partner? Great! Then don’t use sounds or tracks from the Final Cut Pro/iMovie/iLife library in your YouTube videos, because sooner or later, they’ll be flagged, taking them out of the revenue sharing program.
I’ve touched on this topic in this post and this earlier post as well. Until now, I thought filing a copyright dispute and trying to work within that process on the issue would lead to the correct solution, which would be a rejection of the false claims, but unfortunately that’s not the way the copyright dispute process is structured.
There is no mechanism on YouTube to adequately dispute a copyright claim, because the process is heavily tilted in the favor of the supposed copyright holder. There is a first step, which allows you to raise your hand and say to the alleged copyright holder, “Wait a minute, I’m not using your music, the track I’m using here is royalty-free, here is the iLife SLA, see where it says I’m allowed to use it commercially”, which may lead to the removal of the copyright claim, or not, in which case you can re-dispute but risk jeopardizing the standing of your YouTube account, the removal of your video along with its view count and the possible loss of your Partner status. That can be a terrible situation.
That’s right, beyond that initial “raising of your hand”, there is nothing else you can do. If YouTube staff is nice, they might give you an email address for the supposed copyright holder, and in some rare cases, someone might read your email at those places, respond and actually do something meaningful about your problem, but that chance is slim. The majority of the time, you’re going to be screwed over, and some alleged copyright holder is going to profit from your work.
The really annoying part in this whole screwing-over business is there’s no middle ground. Your video’s either in the revenue sharing program or it isn’t. YouTube has chosen to ignore the whole video aspect of this altogether, meaning that when a copyright claim is filed for the music in a video, even though you have a video which is wholly yours, and only the music might belong to someone else (but it doesn’t when you use sounds from iMovie, because they’re royalty-free), they pull the video out of revenue sharing altogether, as if there’s no video, only audio. Shouldn’t they allow you to continue to make some money on that video? After all, you shot it and edited it! Your only “fault” (if we could even call it that) was using royalty-free tracks from Apple to score it. In a logical world, that’s what would happen, but we don’t live in a logical world. We live in a world where YouTube chooses to obey the demands of alleged copyright owners without standing up for its YouTube Partners. All these supposed owners have to do is to upload sound-alike tracks to their YouTube catalog and they’re set. YouTube’s Content ID engine will start identifying videos that are using similar-sounding tracks and flagging them, leading to a lot of frustration on our part. I know this sounds harsh and I love Google and YouTube, but this is so frustrating for me that I’m not sure how else to put it.
Things have gotten so bad that now the copyright trolls have started to make music that sounds like the tracks from the iLife Library, for the express purpose of cashing in on YouTube. See this thread in the YouTube forums. And for a bit of background on the issue, see this thread as well. The problem’s existed for years, not months. YouTube likely knows about it. Privately, they’re likely tweaking the copyright engine algorithm and they’re trying to address the problem, but publicly, all I’m seeing is people getting screwed over by the copyright trolls.
You can’t even rely on the initial copyright warning anymore. In the past, you’d upload a video to YouTube, and within a few minutes, you’d get a warning saying the video matches content from such and such entity. Fine. I’d pull it down and re-edit it, using other sounds, even though the sounds I’d used were also from Apple’s royalty-free library. But now, you upload the video, everything’s fine, and months down the road, after the video’s been seen by thousands of people or more, and it’s been linked to, etc., you get the dreaded copyright warning. What are you going to do then? Pull it down? As you can see from the thread I linked to in the paragraph above, the copyright trolls are going through popular YouTube videos, identifying the music used in those videos, and then profiting from this loophole. We, the YouTube Partners, who do the hard work to create the videos that make YouTube a popular website are the ones getting screwed over. When is YouTube going to stand up for us?
To be fair, I think the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of both Google and Apple on this matter.
What Apple should have done, years ago, was to sign up for the Content ID program and upload all of the tracks in the iMovie/iLife Library (you know, the ones they keep saying are royalty-free). Then, they should have indicated to YouTube that whenever a video uploaded to the platform matches one of the tracks in their library, YouTube should do absolutely nothing about it, because it’s perfectly okay, they’re royalty-free tracks. If they had done that, we wouldn’t be in this mess now, would we?
YouTube is to blame as well. The copyright dispute process does not work. It puts all the balance of power in the hands of those who file the copyright claim, and because no person at Google reviews our disputes, the trolls have all the say in the matter. (I understand the sheer amount of work it would take if YouTube staff would have to review every dispute filed for false claims, but at least they could do it for their YouTube Partners, there aren’t that many of us.)
Instead our copyright disputes only get seen by the staff at the various copyright holding groups, who have an interest in maintaining their claims, since there’s no recourse from Google/YouTube for wrongly identified videos, and of course, let’s not forget the copyright trolls, who hang onto every claim they make no matter what one says in a dispute.
I make that distinction above because there are some groups within the music industry who aren’t copyright trolls. For example, I’ve had copyright disputes reviewed by staff at the GoDigital Media Group and the Warner Music Group, and they’ve ultimately agreed with me and retracted their copyright claims. So there are some good guys around, there just aren’t enough of them.
So my advice to you, as stated at the start of this post, is do not use music from the Final Cut Pro/iMovie/iLife Library at all if you’re a YouTube Partner. You’re better off using music from independent artists and licensing it directly from them, or getting it from websites like MusOpen — or scoring your videos yourself, with original music.
Perhaps Apple and Google will fix this at some point. Until then, do yourself a favor and follow my advice. You’ll be able to sleep better for it.
Raoul Pop 
I have the same problem because I used a bit of iMovie music in my intro that appears before every video and now I get more content matches becuse of that…
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I used a piece by Bach, Air “On the G String” in a video which Youtube is saying that was administered by Believe. However I found it on https://play.google.com/store/music/album/Keith_Joseph_Salmon_Essential_Bach_Volume_1?id=B7rg6eys6f67h7tocchafwhk45a&hl=en
This states that it is royalty free music. Then I read your blog and looked into it further. I looked it up on Believe and yes it is there, even though it says in the previous link that it is royalty free. Not sure what to do with YouTube. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.
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Bach’s music is all public domain. New recordings of his music can be copyrighted, or released as royalty-free or public domain recordings, as the artist or copyright holder desires. What’s likely happening here is that you are indeed using a RF track while Believe holds another recording of that same Bach piece in their copyright catalog. The two sound the same but aren’t the same. File a claim dispute on YT and explain this nicely to them. Provide them with the download link for your recording. They should release the copyright claim. But be nice and explain all this in detail.
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Thank you for your help. i appreciate it.
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iMovie contains sample content including but not limited to graphics, audio clips, video clips and/or templates (“Sample Content”). This Sample Content is proprietary to Apple and/or its licensors, and is protected by applicable intellectual property and other laws, including but not limited to copyright. Except as otherwise provided, all Sample Content included in iMovie may be used on a royalty-free basis in your own video projects but may not be distributed on a standalone basis.”
this is the only way to get them to allow this
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Man, I totally agree. It’s even worse than them just wrongly identifying iLife music. I write and record my own music and upload the music videos to YouTube, yet YouTube has repeatedly has repeatedly blocked my attempts at monetization on several videos by leaving the case “Under Review” for well over a year. It is EXTREMELY frustrating to say the least.
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I am not a youtube partner but I just got one of one of my old videos, I think this is stupid as a lot of people use iMovie music in their videos-these people should stop claiming iLife music as theirs, as Apple wouldn’t of given us the music within the package if it was illegal to use it in home videos.
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One of my videos was recently flagged as well. It was showing me playing on the piano a well-known game music score. Can this be disputed?
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I must admit, after all this advice, I still don’t know which option to choose when my iLife music has been flagged:
own the CD / DVD or bought the song online.
I’m not selling the video or making any money from it.
I gave credit in the video.
The video is my original content and I own all of the rights to it.
I have a license or written permission from the proper rights holder to use this material.
My use of the content meets the legal requirements for fair use or fair dealing under applicable copyright laws.
The content is in the public domain or is not eligible for copyright protection.
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Hi. I also have this problem for every video. So I have a text ready I cut’n’paste every time with a link to the PDF of the SLA for iMovie that Apple has on their website.
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Could I get that text?
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This happened to me too with imovie music, Rumblefish http://rumblefish.com/ claims they own the music but I can’t figure out where I complain or challenge the claim on the youtube site. Any tips?
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Go to Video Manager on YouTube, then look for a section called “Copyright Notices” on the left hand side. Click on it and the videos that raised copyright flags will be listed there. Click on the little link next to the video that says “Matched third party content”, and that will take you to a page that explains what’s going on and will also have a link that says “Dispute copyright claim”. Click on that, fill it out, submit it and it’ll take up to a month to get a response.
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Thanks – I resolved it by disputing it. Seems like they are looking for people who lie down or ignore them.
After I disputed it saying that the music was from imovie, youtube wrote “rumblefish has reviewed your dispute and released its copyright claim on your video,…”
Thanks
Denise
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I’ve just had the same thing happen when uploading a movie generated from iMovie. Youtube emailed almost immediately saying it was copyrighted music, and I’ve disputed it showing the relevant Apple license :
“Except as otherwise provided, all Sample Content included in iMovie may be used on a royalty-free basis in your own video projects but may not be distributed on a standalone basis.”
I’m now waiting to see what happens next…
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It worked – the “copyright owner” released their claim the next day 🙂
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This has happened to me THREE times today (for a total of 6 wasted hours of uploading time)! “Johnson Gao-Part 1. Love” and one was linked to a BOOK ON TAPE something Laurence. Seriously?!?! They were jingles from iMovie! I’d like a list of songs NOT to use on iMovie, so that I can use the right music with assurance that I am not going to have to delete the video and upload with different jingles. How ridiculous.
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Youtube sickens me. They dont even have a complaint section all you can do is counter the copyright infringement. Its just becoming a more and more disgusting service. They also didnt include independents running for election in ’08.
i had to click on the link that you use to send documentation for ownership of music just to send them a messageit shouldn’t be that hard to contact them its ridiculous
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I have the same problem. I just use 3 sound effect from iMovie library for my intro. In my whole video I didn’t put any music as background.. And I got a email from YouTube saying that I used copyright music as background music. Wait a minute are they even watching my videos? I did not use any music as background.. This is just crazy..
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“Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society” is another one of.., those… (they even mention their actions in their name).
I am very very disturbed by this practice.., they make even the big “copyright companies” look bad.., and that’s a difficult thing to do.
I talked to my legal department and decided to file a dispute. It has to be on the record and people need to dispute and complain about this…
I am shocked about this.., I’m also surprised that I can still be after spending so many years on the Internet.
Very helpfull post Raoul.., many thanks.
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You’re quite welcome! Go get ’em! 🙂
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This has just happened to me – I googled “The Orchard Music” and found your blog – I am so frustrated as I deliberately chose an Apple Sound Loop (“Spacey Club.aif”) for my video so that I wouldn’t run into copyright problems.
Interestingly while I got the “may have content that is owned or licensed by The Orchard Music” email almost immediately after uploading, it hasn’t been listed in my Content ID Matches section yet.
If YouTube gives me a change to dispute the issue I will do so.
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Please do. Follow up all the way with YouTube within their framework. The more people complain, the higher it’ll be on their to-do list.
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I hope you have enclosed the paragraph before the last one in an email to youtube, have you ? They probably hate being trolled as much as partners do. Enough complaints on X and Y trolls will point them to the culprit, so they can focus on eradicating the germ once identified.
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They know about it. So far, no action on their part. Perhaps they’re planning something.
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