Youtube take your clip down lately? UPDATE

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on February 18th, 2009

Seems as though Youtube is taking down a lot of clips lately, at the behest of large music companies like BMG or WMG or UMG. They’re employing a bit of software that identifies a song’s “fingerprint” and then alerts the company that owns the copyright to the song and then it takes the video clip down. If you notice a clip of yours missing, click on your “Account” button and there’ll be a brief explanation of why it was taken removed.

We just had this happen to us. Our “A Man And A Woman” video was up to 15,000 views when it just disappeared. The Female Half investigated and eventually got to the bottom of it: The music, “A Man And A Woman,” from the Academy Award-winning (Best Foreign Language Film, 1966) movie of the same name, was identified by Youtube’s software and the Warner Music Group, looking out for the interests of composer Frances Lai, had Youtube take it down.

Here’s the interesting part: You can dispute the take-down.

It’s a simple process and, following simple directions from the video below (also on Youtube!), you can dispute it, claim Fair Use and also state that you are disputing the claim in good faith.

The guy who made the video claims that it works 99 per cent of the time.

He also says that if, after disputing the take-down and (possibly) having your video restored, the company that owns the copyright tacks a small advert onto your video that tells folks where and how they can purchase a copy of the song in the video.

Sounds like a sensible way to make everybody happy. (In fact, when we were in the outraged, sputtering and grousing phase– just after we discovered our clip had been obliterated– we suggested that the conglomerates were being rather unreasonable and, by golly, what would be so wrong with letting folks use their music as long as they drove people to Amazon or Itunes! Turns out that’s exactly what they’re doing!) Could Big Music finally be figuring out how to deal with new technology? Maybe. Might it be too little too late? Probably. We’ll see.

Will the dispute work? We’ll see. Judging from the wording of the Copyright Act of 1976, the use of the song constitutes Fair Use. At least we think it does. (Otherwise, we wouldn’t have dared to claim that we were making the claim in good faith.) We hear it takes a while for resolution. We’ll keep you posted.

UPDATE: Minutes after filing our resolution application, the “A.M.A.A.W.” video is BACK! And there doesn’t seem to be any sort of link to a site where the music can be purchased. Hmmm… a mystery. But we’re glad it’s back! (It’s at 15,213 views and still going strong!)

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