Lawyer Reacts: Wings of Pegasus on Copyright & YouTube

Cool video! Thanks for the feature, I'll have to keep in touch in case I need you in my corner! I think it's always going to be difficult to play just a few seconds for me to demonstrate beyond doubt that vocal pitch lines are being calibrated to A440, as every now and again a natural voice can create this. So a few seconds 'could' be natural and not pitch corrected or auto-tuned, but 2-3 minutes is a clear unnatural manipulation. But I think it's just the nature of presenting the evidence and objective data. Unfortunately the copyright strike I received was issued without them seeing my video, but when I contacted them they did reverse it and remove the strike. So maybe from what you say this could have been because they hadn't followed the rules themselves! Interesting stuff! Just adding this - So would you advise I dispute each copyright claim? I was under the impression if I disputed and it was rejected I could be issued a copyright strike, hence I didn't feel the risk was worth it!

Thank you for helping Fil out! He’s a stand-up dude and fantastic at what he does.

Fil is one of the nicest guy on the internet. Anytime I’ve ever had a question. He’s answered every one I assume himself.He’s also very intelligent. Young men like him don’t grow on trees. He’s just a good dude was impression I got.

Thanks for featuring Fil Henley's analysis videos in your video. I've been watching his analysis videos for a little over 4 years. Because I'm also a musician and songwriter, Fil reminds me of what I've learned and teaches me new things, the latter more recently being about auto tune, pitch correction, and fair use. I myself am considering to record my own music compositions but don't know too much about the recording aspect. Anyway, thanks again for your feature!

Therein hangs a problem! (3:20) Situation: You're out with your video camera, shooting a scene for your video to be uploaded to YT. The video could be about anything at all, perhaps at a railway station videoing a vintage locomotive, someone walks past with a radio blaring out at or near full volume and a song is playing. It's only heard momentarily, about 30 seconds or so. You SHOULD NOT GET PINGED FOR COPYRIGHT FOR SOMETHING THAT WAS OUTSIDE YOUR CONTROL! You didn't want the song in your video because it turned up just as the loco you were shooting video of just started to depart. You wanted the sound of the loco itself but that song interfered with your shot. YouTube has a hell of a lot to answer for!

You're right, YouTubers generally can't afford to dispute copyright strikes, and the big companies (not just in music) exploit that a lot by striking videos that are clearly fair use as they don't want criticism out there. There's even a case where a show on Netflix illegally used a YouTube creator's content (which didn't include anything but his own content) and quite a long clip of it. Then when the YouTuber did a livestream talking about it and used that show's footage of his stolen content (which they had simply played, no voice overs), Netflix issued a copyright right strike on the YouTuber's livestream video. This YouTuber is fighting the strike, of course. He's also fighting because of them breaking his copyright. He has funds to start the case and has many subscribers who are prepared to donate to crowd funding if he needs more funds as no one likes a big powerful bully. He may not need more as it could be just caught up in Netflix's strategy to strike just about any identified use of their shows (whether fair use or not as they have the power and know most can't afford to challenge them) and also because the show was made by a third party. So, there's a chance Netflix may not be aware of the illegal use of the YouTuber's content. Or if aware, they didn't care as knowing their legal power they took a punt that they'd get away with it.

Please comment on why he got his video taken off YouTube a few days ago because of his playing riffs on his guitar! That makes zero sense!

There's one big thing I really don't understand... and I hope you can shine some light on that... I've seen reaction videos where the songs are played nonstop, or at least in big chunks, without any spoken commentary, and they don't get blocked... In the meantime these educational videos are blocked because Fil is demonstrating guitar technique and not even playing the song itself (his recent David Bowie example). Is there any possible explanation for this? Or is Youtube just censoring the most interesting content creators and not even looking at the ones I just described, where you could really not say it is fair use?

Very informative. What interests me most about not only Fil's videos but also hundreds of others which are similar to some of his, is where an original clip is used to enable a guitar tutor to demonstrate how to play a particular riff. This method, in Fil's case, appears to have breached the you tube copyright threshold according to a video which he featured 8 days ago. The sole purpose of showing a clip is therefore , in these circumstances, to show you how to play the guitar. Surely that must count as fair use.

The system is just broken.. I had entire videos claimed of me making modular patches.. Where I actually walk people through my creative choices and how to go about making a patch.. and none of the note material used was borrowed from existing material... The whole copyright law needs to be revised to better reflect the current landscape...

This is terrific! I love it when someone explains the law so succinctly.

Really Helpful - I watch Phil's videos and this perspective is very interesting. I got a copyright claim on one of mine - from Sony. Did I want to dispute it? Yes - I wrote it, played it and recorded it. They removed the claim,

You seem to be taking YouTube's side in this. As to length of clip, that also depends on the purpose of the clip. The example you gave of the Elvis, you said they they would use unnecessarily long clips, without commenting on them. Which is not fair use. But if he plays a clip, then comments on it, that is fair use! So yeah, I think a judge would in fact consider all of his clips fair use. It's debatable if he is running a "non-profit education" channel, but at least the monetization is indirect and I think monetization is permitted for YouTube fair use. After all, that's what we are talking about here. Monetized clips. So the alternative would be a "for profit" educational, which I am guessing would be a "pay for this content" type arrangement. With YouTube monetization, it's indirect, he just puts it out there and if he happens to gain monetization through high traffic and playing of ads, I think he is in the clear and this is non profit educational use. A documentary might be as well, but might be a different story, since it would presumably be sold directly to a television network. I don't think these are very accurate depictions of how the law views this content. YouTube clearly has a massive problem with bias towards fake and malicious copyright claims, of all sorts... You should be leading the charge against them. Not defending their behavior when it is obviously in flagrant violation of the intent of fair use laws. Look also at the case between sargon of akkad and that victimhood addict akylah Hughes or whatever her name is. He won resoundingly. The judge made comments that fair use must be protected and if in doubt, we should choose to lean towards fair use. That's on your shoulders too.

I ran into this around August 2022, going into September or so. There is a group of copyright groups that false flagged me on Minecraft videos. I tried contacting one of them since despite filing a dispute, they tagged all seven videos for the same thing. They in turn decided to deny the claim on the first video, and I had to dispute it. Since I'm small I don't have many options, so blasted Youtube on twitter. I think I got a human for once, but they refused to remove the obviously false claims. Instead I had to wait them out. For reference, C418 has directly stated the music will never be claimed by him in Minecraft. He does have rules to follow if it's used otherwise. I've since bought some royalty free loops, and put new music in it's place.

3:55 "Oftentimes ... the copyright owner will not reinstate the claim." YT's content ID system is fundamentally flawed, in favor of big (rich) media organizations who own many copyrights, and puts ridiculous burdens on small players like myself who must prove ourselves innocent under a presumption of guilt. I'll give myself as the example. This has happened to me 3 times. I will use a piece of very old classical music (think Beethoven), whose compositions are public domain. ONLY individual performances are copyright. I will use a public domain or Creative Commons performance in my video, and credit it clearly both in the video and the description to alert YT. Then some completely unrelated media organization will claim a copyright violation, based on their ownership of a completely different performance of the public domain music. This happens automatically because of the way YT's content ID system works. I must then take time to contest their claim by pointing out that the specific performance I used is not their performance. This has happened to me 3 times and every time I have won. But in fact, I have lost because it is MY time that is consumed, while the YT content ID system virtually eliminates any time loss by the abusive copyright claimant. The abusive claimant experiences no "pain" for their false claim, while I, lawfully within my rights, experiences the pain of lost time and possibly lost revenue.

What about videos that are non-monetized are they also subject to copyright strike?

Not sure what you stated about YouTube's Copyright strike is correct. For example, one content creator, ESO has created hundreds of videos on the video game Skyrim. The theme music for the video game is OWNED by Bethesda, the same company that created the video game Skyrim. Because ESO has created so many videos about Skyrim (and other Bethesda games), Bethesda has given ESO permission to use the Skyrim music in his videos!! ESO actually has a contract with Bethesda granting the authorization to use the music! However, FAKE people/FAKE companies can and do submit these copyright infraction claims, and SUCCESSFULLY gain a Copyright strike - even when the the content creator has written permission from the Copyright holder to use the music.

Fil has received copyright claims on himself singing, so I would say the system is just plain broken, because clearly it's fair use to upload yourself singing.

I got a copyright strike on a piece of Mozart Music performed by a university ensemble. Mozart died in 1791. I disputed it and the strike was removed,

That doesn't seem to be how it works on YouTube. Lots of creators have voiced their experiences with this, more or less like: author makes claim, YouTube gives option to creator to accept or refute, then the author gets the option to back-down or not, then YouTube takes the author's side. It doesn't seem like any proof is required. YouTube simply puts a "beware of your legal obligations and consequences" statement and moves on. All automated, probably. The content creators have to file a legal claim in a court of law, and often then the authors back down because it wouldn't hold up in court. Many creators don't have the means, or knowledge to defend against this and simply give in. It has been used effectively by many record labels & video licensing companies, etc...