How effective is YouTube in creating a fair space for creators and users of copyrighted content?

With the advent of time, Youtube is moving towards the policy for creating a fair space for creators and users. This can largely seen from the rules and policies for copyright infringement that Youtube has adopted and also from the content creator favouring changes brought recently.

The Youtube’s rules and policies for copyright infringement are as follows:-

1. Webforms: It is the simplest way to have unauthorised copies of copyrighted content removed is by manually submitting a copyright notification under DMCA;

2. Copyright matching tool: This tool uses the power of Content ID matching technology to find re-uploads of videos on YouTube;

3. Content ID: Content ID is the solution for those with the most complex rights management needs. It is digital fingerprinting system of Youtube that allows rightsholders to upload content that they have exclusive rights to as reference files, and then scans videos uploaded to YouTube for matches of that content. When a user uploads content, Content ID scans against the database for matching videos. If there is a match, then an action is taken based on the predefined rules or policies that a content owner sets themselves:

• Block a complete video from the platform. 

• Monetise the video by running ads against it or sharing revenue with the uploader.

• Track the video’s viewership statistics.

Further to this, there is shift of Youtube towards making Youtube a fair space for creators/ users. Before 2019, copyright owners did not have to say where infringing content appeared when making a manual claim. That is been very difficult for creators, who would find themselves searching through lengthy videos to determine exactly what part was even at issue. The lack of detail made it hard to dispute the claims, and it meant that if a creator tried to edit potentially infringing content out, they’d have to wait and see if the copyright owner agreed that the problem was resolved before the claim would be let go.

Now, the changes which Youtube made, video creators will be able to see the part that’s been claimed, and YouTube will allow them to mute the audio during that portion, replace the audio with a free-to-use song from YouTube’s library, or cut out that chunk of the video. If they choose any of those options, the copyright claim will automatically be released. (All of those options were previously available, but creators had to figure out on their own what they needed to cut out.)

CONCLUSION:

Therefore, in my opinion it is evident from the above discussion that the Youtube is creating a safe platform, in other words, a fair space for creators and users by adopting new policies and latest technology (AI tools) to prevent copyright infringement. Also, apart from making the changes in the rules and policies there is option given to the content creators/users to make changes to avoid copyright infringement so that the hard work done by them does not goes in vein.