News
Youtube Copyright Strike Issues
Cordova, TN; March 18, in the year of our Lord 2019--Family Friendly Gaming, the industry leader in covering the family friendly video games is addressing something we learned recently about Youtube and the Copyright Strike system. Before I get into that let me first chronicle the events that happened. We received a copyright strike from Youtube when they were given a copyright take down notice from a company representing one of the artists in a song. Please be aware the company that owned rights to the song, and the other artist were fine with it being on Youtube. On top of that Youtube sent all of the monetization of this song to the company with the copyright to the song. So a company labeled as a copyright troll by others on the Internet smacking us violently with a copyright strike made no sense. If this was some copyright violation then Youtube should have immediately flagged it when the video was uploaded. There is no way we have the money or technology to determine all of the potential copyright owners in a video we publish from a video game.
I had a conversation with a representative of this company. Both of us were passionate in our understanding of copyright law. Ubisoft gave us a license to record their video game. The artists were already financially compensated for their limited audio only appearance in the video game. Our video transformed the content under the fair use copyright laws. Our video is used in education for PE classes in school. All of this put Family Friendly Gaming firmly under the law and committing no infraction. Yet we were still hit with a copyright strike. Even though we did nothing wrong. How lame is that? The one artist partially involved with this song wanted a monopoly on the song on Youtube. They are trying to grow their money, and obviously greed is a part of this equation. Family Friendly Gaming made no money off of this video, even though we spent money producing and publishing it. To make matters even more interesting my copyrighted content is found in the transformed video. By taking down my video on Youtube they in essence violated my copyright.
Thankfully we were able to come to a compromise. This company retracted their copyright claim, and we made the video private. We then replaced the audio of the song with something Youtube had paid for. The copyright strike was removed. We let this organization know they can come to us directly instead of the extreme and radical copyright strike route. We also let them know other companies block videos which do not result in copyright strikes. To me a copyright strike should only come if you knowingly violate the law. Like the road signs say the speed limit is 65mph, and you are doing 80mph. You saw the sign and knew it was a problem. We never were provided any signs on this. Which is why it is so problematic. Youtube needs to get better at this. There needs to be more education on this issue, and not that worthless copyright school video which tells us we did everything right.
How are we to know one of the two artists involved with a song who was already paid, and wants a Youtube monopoly on their song tries to redefine how we transform the content as a copyright violation? Where will this go? Youtube already treats musicians like royalty and content creators like third class citizens. There are countless videos where they get all the money and we get nothing. Even though we transformed the content, and our copyright is included in the video. Our copyright is constantly trampled upon by musicians, Youtube, and extremely wealthy lawyers. Can you see ways to improve this system?
{NOTE} This happened weeks before it was published. There were more important stories to publish.
I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.
God bless,
Paul Bury
Family Friendly Gaming
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