Youtube - What exact (copyright) criteria causes videos to be taken down?

[The Stig]

I managed to secure a Youtube account with my desired name, although to make it less ugly I added a z at the end. I'm a bit late to the scene byt hey ho, here I am.

So, I'm working on a mini game related project, which won't make money but it's just a hobby. I also plan to make other none-game related videos.

Naturally, it'll probably contain some sort of music track, like 99% of all youtube videos. I'm not a music composer, so it'll be music of someone else's property.

But I might also considering putting in scenes from a movie/anime/etc eventually and talking about them (maybe review)

Fairly trivial stuff.

Now, I've noticed that some videos stay on youtube indefinitely despite probably breaking all types of copyright laws, whereas some videos get taken down ASAP (but others like it, stay alive fine)

However, you can find all manners of material on youtube, including full movies and soundtracks, which never get touched.

I know that it'll take someone official to report a video as breaching copyright stuff for it to be taken down, but largely this doesn't work too well, as one goes down many springs up in its place.

Do people simply care less/don't care anymore due to the absolute mass amount of users and content out there? I don't want to risk my videos being reported or taken down.

Chances are probably low, but hey you never know! So I was wondering if anyone has experiences on this type of stuff.

[avelle]

I'm not sure if this is the reasoning or not, but I've noticed a lot of videos have music information underneath the video that says something like "Buy this song in iTunes!" and then gives credit to the original artist or whatever. I don't know if Google has some agreement with the recording industry or what, but that might have something to do with it. Sorry for the lack of information, but maybe it will somehow point you in the right direction.

[Xanthe]

I would say it's a combination of giving credit where credit is due and the aggressiveness of various copyright holders.

[Callisto]

I would say it's a combination of giving credit where credit is due and the aggressiveness of various copyright holders.

The latter especially, youtube doesn't go out of its way to enforce copyright laws except when the creators' lawyers are on their backs about it, obviously some artists don't know, don't mind, or actually encourage their work being thrown into random shit.

I was somewhat wondering what their 'matching' process consists of though, I've posted a lot of Street Fighter 4 videos recently and about 1 out of every 10 gets a note that it has 'matched copyrighted material', it's just a generic warning and nothing has been taken down/had further action on it, but it will happen on one video without happening on other videos featuring the exact same BGM, I can't tell if it is actually matching to Capcom's copyrighted music or if the combination of music and sound effects are causing false flags to go up.

[Senoska]

Use creative commons music. Videos will fall under fair use if under a certain time limit and used for certain material. Look up the fair use law to make sure you comply with it. If you get DMCA'd, you can challenge it if you're within the bounds of fair use.

[The Stig]

Sorry BG was down for me all yesterday so it took a while for me to catch up and reply.

The CC music seems like a good idea, but seems to be a bit of a ballache to see if X track (probably very old) is under the license.

I'll probably risk the same as Callisto and just to proceed to upload. I'm not going to be uploading masses of amounts or rarely any, but I suppose I'll be active enough to be under any sort of radar.

Crediting/linking to the artist homepage or somewhere online to buy (i.e. amazon/itunes) was top in my head to do, so it's glad the same thought is lined up here.

Thanks for sharing the informations!

[Dmitry]

I upload videos that get flagged for copyright. I always include the copyright to the artist or label in my description, but still get flagged. Nothing happens though.

[Celeste]

I don't think your project will get shat on by copyright holders, provided you do indeed not make profit off it.

[Avanarius]

Just don't upload any youtube videos with music owned by Warner Bro's. They have an algorithm to basically autoflag everything with music owned by them or so it seems.

I had a few videos flagged as copy written material even though the songs were covers which I had permission to use. It's pretty BS and youtube wont even revoke it.

[Ksandra]

I don't think your project will get shat on by copyright holders, provided you do indeed not make profit off it.

eh, they could still take it down. My husband back in the day had to make a movie trailer for one of his classes and he used shots from the old Street Fighter movie. He put it up on youtube a few years ago to share it with some friends for the lulz and it got taken down lol.

[Kiarax]

Copyright holders can hit you with strikes for whatever the hell they like if they feel like it. As someone else mentioned, there's lots of audio tracks (as well as videos) that will automatically count as a copyright infringement the instant they're uploaded. Either making the video unwatchable for others or just limiting what countries can view it. Just recently a few people I know got strikes on their account and videos removed for uploading footage of a game a couple of days before it was released. Once the game was officially released they didn't bother removing any videos. I've also had stuff removed in the past, disputed it and had the strike removed only for them to remove it again a month later. If you end up uploading stuff from movies/anime like you said you may, chances are you'll eventually get hit for something. It's worth attempting to dispute it (say it's under fair use, yadda yadda) in an attempt to get the strike removed, half the time they won't care enough to bother fighting you on it. Something to note is you'll lose the ability to upload videos longer than 15 minutes (if your account has this available anyway) as well as Unlisted videos if you have any strikes. So it's worth being paranoid about if you're in need of uploading long videos a lot. As for unlisted videos, you can always just make an alternate account for those anyway so it's not really a big deal.