1:19
Dealing with a copyright claim
On YouTube this video is called Help with Music copyright issue on youtube!
What this lesson teaches
Eighty seconds reporting something that happened to a viewer, and it needs reading alongside its limits.
What happened
A DJ had the audio stripped from a ten-minute mix over copyright.
His own first guess was the usual one - some artists do not allow their music on the platform at all.
But the user went further. They contacted the company and explained that the music was in a mix.
And the response that came back was that it is a demonstration of mixing skill, therefore fair use - so it went back up.
His advice
If you have a mix taken down, and it genuinely is a mix, then if you can word it like that there is a good chance you might get it restored.
The word he tells you to remember is demonstration.
And here is the necessary caveat
This is one outcome in one case, and it is not a principle you can count on.
"It's a mix, therefore fair use" is not a settled rule anywhere. Fair use - and fair dealing, its narrower equivalent in the UK and elsewhere - is assessed case by case, and a continuous DJ mix of commercial recordings is not an obvious example of it. Plenty of mixes have been taken down and stayed down.
What probably happened here is more mundane and more encouraging: somebody at the company looked at it, decided it was not a problem, and released the claim. That is a human decision, not a legal finding - and it is the same mechanism that got his own strikes removed in the copyright lesson earlier in this course, where the thing that worked was explaining politely what the video actually was.
So the transferable lesson is not the phrase. It is that a claim is worth answering, with a clear, honest description of what your video is for - and that the person reading it has discretion.
What to do instead, where you can
The reliable versions are in the other lessons of this course, and they are reliable precisely because they do not depend on anybody's goodwill after the fact:
Check the policies before you record, so you build the mix out of tracks that will survive.
Get a green light in writing from the labels whose music you want to use.
Accept the advert tier. A mix that is claimed and monetised by the rights holder is still online, still being heard, and nobody is in trouble.
Arguing a claim is the fallback, and it works often enough to be worth doing. It is just not a licence.
Contents of the video
Right, just make a note of that name there. Right, I was contacted by them. Basically what they said is that they'd had their 10 minute mix taken off or the audio taken off because of copyright issues. Now when they emailed me initially I said maybe it's down to the fact that certain artists don't allow their music to be played on YouTube. But what happened is that particular YouTube user contacted the company And explained that the music they were using was in a mix. Now check this out, hold on. Now on contacting YouTube what they said, it is or it's a demonstration of mixing skill. Therefore it is fair use. So in other words, it's not a case of this particular YouTube user was bunging on a track for everyone to download. Get this and remember this. Demonstration.
All right, so in other words, if you have, let's say a 10 minute mix or for that matter, anything taken off and there's audio in it, if it is a mix, then if you can word it like this, there's a good chance you might get it put back on. All right, so hopefully a bit of help for you. Practice and enjoy.
This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.
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