Copyrights and YouTube

[PaulKay]

I thought you all might be interested in this. I have probably 30-40 YouTube videos of which almost all are covers. Only 4 have had copyright claims found by the YouTube “algorithms”.
3 of the 4 are claims by the owner of the entire song. I have no issues with any of these. Seems kind of right that they be tagged so they can’t be monetized.  Technically it should happen to all of them this way.  But it doesn’t.
But something different happened when I released Malted Milk.
You can see in the picture, the copyright claim dialog that YouTube presented.  Notice that it claims the “melody” has copyright claims over “sections” of the video.  Keep in mind that the song is a cover of Robert Johnson that was recorded in 1937. But the claims made are for songs recorded “after” Robert Johnson recorded it.  

But the most astonishing thing about all of this is that Google’s “algorithms” must have extracted the audio from the video, created a sonic profile of some kind, but then was able to access some database of copyrighted song fragments? that it can run comparisons against.  And do that all in a matter of minutes.  To say this is impressive is an understatement.

[Dub]

Interesting… and puzzling.

Does anyone here use the Shazam app that Apple bought a couple of years ago? Start the app and hit “Listen” and it will identify the song it hears being played. This works in crowded restaurants as well as quiet places where music is playing. It’s very accurate and includes all the info, including an option to hear it on Apple Music. I’m guessing this works for all of the millions of tunes in Apple’s library and perhaps more. It’s surprising how quickly the app identifies a tune.

I’m guessing that YouTube (Google) has similar technology.

[PaulKay]

Aug 17, 2022 8:52:26 GMT -5 Dub said:

Interesting… and puzzling.

Does anyone here use the Shazam app that Apple bought a couple of years ago? Start the app and hit “Listen” and it will identify the song it hears being played. This works in crowded restaurants as well as quiet places where music is playing. It’s very accurate and includes all the info, including an option to hear it on Apple Music. I’m guessing this works for all of the millions of tunes in Apple’s library and perhaps more. It’s surprising how quickly the app identifies a tune.

I’m guessing that YouTube (Google) has similar technology.

I haven't seen that, but that is equally impressive technology.
It does seems that the key to it all is how digitized audio gets indexed into a searchable database that drastically reduces how many audio file comparisons need to be made. The magic sauce of Google search technology.

[Marshall]

So what are they telling you? You can't play your video? Or you can't monetize it? Or what?

[aquaduct]

Aug 17, 2022 13:17:10 GMT -5 Marshall said:

So what are they telling you? You can't play your video? Or you can't monetize it? Or what?

From what I've seen it seems to indicate that if you somehow monetize the video (not sure how that would happen- maybe use a portion of the melody in a commercial of some sort) you'll owe the copyright holder some minuscule amount of money. Or maybe if your account is turned into a subscriber service.

I've got 4 videos out there and YT recognized Room 335 and Affirmation as copyrighted. Room 335 is a Larry Carlton tune but it did not recognize another of his tunes- Burnable. It also didn't recognize Moondance for some reason. Maybe just because it's instrumental. Or maybe I suck.

But the only monetizing I'm concerned with is gigging and despite some hysteria a decade ago, we've never been hit with a rights charge.

[PaulKay]

Aug 17, 2022 13:17:10 GMT -5 Marshall said:

So what are they telling you? You can't play your video? Or you can't monetize it? Or what?

They aren’t restricting it from being viewed, embedded, or found in search results etc.
But Youtube does restrict how much it gets recommended in their browser feeds.
Police Dog Blues was released the same day as Malted Milk and has been recommended thousands of times so far, while Malted Milk got recommended 10’s of times.
The short answer is YouTube is far less likely to use it for ad bate.
This makes sense when you consider "they" are monetizing it when they put videos into the recommend stream with the intent of placing ads.

[Russell Letson]

The bottom line would seem to be the "not a copyright strike," "not affected," and "no restrictions" flags--though I wonder why YouTube even bothers to send you a notice. Probably an automated process with no humans in the loop. Anybody with half an ear should recognize the Johnson tune as generic blues and thus an unlikely copyright issue. The words would be a different matter, and King of Spades Music claims copyright on several of Johnson's lyrics as of 1978. One wonders exactly how and by whom that was obtained 40 years after Johnson's death--some of the story is here:

caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1433998.html

Also odd that the notice does not include links to the supposedly-similar videos, which would allow a human to check the accuracy and reasonableness of the findings. I did a bunch of Googling and still can't quite find the matches that the notice claims. There's an Aerosmith version of "Reefer Head Woman" with a harp solo starting around 2:42, but the rest of the two minutes cited is guitar and screaming vocal.

[PaulKay]

Aug 17, 2022 14:30:05 GMT -5 Russell Letson said:

The bottom line would seem to be the "not a copyright strike," "not affected," and "no restrictions" flags--though I wonder why YouTube even bothers to send you a notice. Probably an automated process with no humans in the loop. Anybody with half an ear should recognize the Johnson tune as generic blues and thus an unlikely copyright issue. The words would be a different matter, and King of Spades Music claims copyright on several of Johnson's lyrics as of 1978. One wonders exactly how and by whom that was obtained 40 years after Johnson's death--some of the story is here:

caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1433998.html

Also odd that the notice does not include links to the supposedly-similar videos, which would allow a human to check the accuracy and reasonableness of the findings. I did a bunch of Googling and still can't quite find the matches that the notice claims. There's an Aerosmith version of "Reefer Head Woman" with a harp solo starting around 2:42, but the rest of the two minutes cited is guitar and screaming vocal.

I agree that it is an entirely automated process.  

I think it exposes flaws in their algorithms in that it found copyrighted melody fragments for what is a very generic 12/8 time blues in A and yet not find a match to the Johnson original.

[PaulKay]

So it turns out that if YouTube finds a copyright hit of any kind, it will not grant the video the “Standard YouTube License”.
So what is that?

What does Standard license mean on YouTube?
The standard YouTube license is YouTube's default setting for all uploads. It basically allows creators to retain full ownership of their content while giving all broadcasting rights to YouTube.

All my videos with copyright flags have the YouTube license greyed out.  As in .. it doesn’t apply.
So without a license, YouTube won’t use it for ad bate.

[RickW]

There was a short story years ago, SF, about how a government used computers to catalog all copyrighted melodies, and any new music being released had to be checked against it. They were in the process of extending copyright time to something like 70 or 100 years. A famous composer thought he had come up with something new, and dedicated the piece to his wife, then found out that the algorithm had identified that melody as one that had already been copyrighted. It didn’t end happily, and his wife was trying to get the copyright extension cut back, as no new music could be created.

When you think about it, there are only 12 notes, so the possibilities are not endless. You have to wonder if at some point this won’t be reality.

[gbacklin]

[jdd2]

Aug 17, 2022 18:26:00 GMT -5 RickW said:

...
When you think about it, there are only 12 notes, so the possibilities are not endless. You have to wonder if at some point this won’t be reality.

That's a fairly common math problem, e.g., how many different ways can you arrange 12 books on a shelf.

The answer, which I knew was a lot, I just googled and it's 10 * (11!), which is 399,168,000. And if I've got that right, that's something like 12-tone, where nothing is repeated until all the notes are used.

Allowing for notes to be repeated, along with a brazilian possible timing variations of the notes, it probably approaches the number of atoms in the entire universe.

[PaulKay]

I would like to just copyright the note 'A' at 440 hz. Anybody who dares use it in a song will have to pay royalties.

[John B]

I wonder if anyone's been flagged for excerpting John Cage's 4'33"?

[Rob Hanesworth]

When I sing a song, nobody claims to have written it.

[Dub]

Aug 18, 2022 8:27:15 GMT -5 PaulKay said:

I would like to just copyright the note 'A' at 440 hz. Anybody who dares use it in a song will have to pay royalties.

OK, then I’ll copyright `A’ at 436,437,438,439,441,442,443,& 444 Hz. Since these are the notes more commonly played as A.

[Dub]

Aug 18, 2022 8:28:31 GMT -5 John B said:

I wonder if anyone's been flagged for excerpting John Cage's 4'33"?

So… who is John Cage and why four minutes thirty-three seconds?

Is John some relation to Nicolas Cage?

[PaulKay]

Aug 19, 2022 9:24:29 GMT -5 Dub said:

Aug 18, 2022 8:28:31 GMT -5 John B said:

I wonder if anyone's been flagged for excerpting John Cage's 4'33"?

So… who is John Cage and why four minutes thirty-three seconds?

Is John some relation to Nicolas Cage?

[Dub]

Oh, that John Cage. Doesn’t look like a guitar. Must be a giant autoharp.