One Millionth Anniversary!
It seems not that long ago, I was celebrating 100,000 views. Now, I don’t regularly check and obsess over my YouTube channel view-count. But this week, while trying to catch up on my replies to an ever-increasing backlog on my YouTube inbox, I noticed that my view count was in the high nines. Well, this morning, this is what I saw:
This is truly a mind-bender.
I recorded a quick video to say thanks to everyone, and to solicit some feedback for my future projects. I also talk a bit at the end about Jerry Seinfeld’s motivational technique for tricking yourself into getting things done. Don’t Break The Chain!
Play on!
Treble and Bass
In my tone capacitor video, I demonstrated the typical use of the capacitor as a low-pass filter in a guitar tone control. On a home stereo, this would be called a treble control, as it is used to roll off the high-end treble frequencies.
But what if you also want a bass control- a high-pass filter to roll off the low bass frequencies?
In the circuit diagram shown here, from the G&L S-500 guitar, you’ll find both a treble and bass control. They call it their PTB system (which presumably stands for passive treble bass, but I’m just guessing here).
Copyright or Wrong?
After several emails back and forth with the YouTube Copyright and DMCA compliance team, their primary message was:
Please note that YouTube does not mediate copyright disputes
Thanks very much. I got that. I repeatedly asked “What’s my recourse if the copyright claimant has mistakenly confirmed their claim to my content?” They simply wouldn’t answer my question. “YouTube does not mediate copyright disputes” is all I could get.
Finally, they sent over an email address of a specific person at Spinnin Records. I wrote yet another email to this guy, trying to be polite despite my frustration after all the emails and messages I had already sent. And this morning I was rewarded with a quick mildly apologetic reply that they had released their claim on my video. Thank you!
However, seriously, WTF?! I can understand that false positives are inevitable with an automated content-ID matching system. However, the official process of disputing the claim on YouTube is obviously deeply flawed if the claimant can simply press a button and now “All content owners have reviewed your video and confirmed their claims”.
This took me a week to get resolved, during which time Spinnin Records was earning income from my work. Both the content-ID matching system, and the official YouTube process for disputing the claim all completely failed.
At the end of each of my videos, I have a copyright notice like the one at the right.
Does this actually provide any protection to the content that I create? Or am I kidding myself?
Goliath as Content Pirate
Astonishingly, the status on my copyright claim dispute now says:
All content owners have reviewed your video and confirmed their claims to some or all of its content: Entity: Spinnin’ Records Content Type: Visual content
Really?! Somebody at Spinnin’ Records took the time to watch my video and confirmed that they own some part of my 10 minute production? That’s preposterous. More like “Cha-ching, another sucker whose video we can hijack for our monetary gain!” What motivation do they have to make it right, when YouTube offers no recourse to the creator (me), and all power goes to the copyright claimant (them) who can just sit back, relax, and make money from other people’s efforts.
I’ve emailed Spinnin Records, and sent a message through YouTube to user “SpinningRec”. No response. Meanwhile, my video now has an advertisement and link to buy some Guy’s song “Quantum”. So they’re receiving ad and click income from my work.
On the one hand, we’re not talking about millions of $$$ here. On the other, it simply feels unbelievably unfair, and that I am being wronged here. It’s hard not to feel a bit like David vs Goliath.
I found this website run by a law student with an interest in copyright law. Clearly I’m not alone in this. I particularly like his paper Why YouTube’s Content ID dispute process does not work the way YouTube says it does.
Attack of the Content-Matching Bots
Last night, I received this rather nefarious “content ID match” email from the youtube content-matching bots:
Dear johnplanetz,
Your video, Simple JFET Preamp for an iDevice guitar Interface, part 2, may have content that is owned or licensed by Spinnin’ Records.
No action is required on your part; however, if you are interested in learning how this affects your video, please visit the Content ID Matches section of your account for more information.
Sincerely,
– The YouTube Team
If I’m reading that right, they’re saying that if I don’t do anything, the guys at Spinnin’ Records can hijack and monetize my video, and start making money from my work. Niiiiice!
I’m generally very careful in my videos to avoid copyright issues. My intro/outro music is all composed and performed by me. And the guitar riffs I play are usually just improvisations or noodling, or perhaps inspired by another song (as with the riff inspired by Faces’ Had Me A Real Good Time at the beginning of my K-Tone Travel Guitar review).
Very occasionally, I’ll play a short riff by another artist, but this should be covered under fair use. For example, I played a bit of Weezer’s Say It Ain’t So in my treble bleed video, and a riff from Oasis’ Champagne Supernova in my AC15 cabinets video.
As I was initiating the dispute process,