As a content creator myself, I had my share of copied photos and articles. As I start to transition to creating video content, I didn’t think that copyright will be an issue because for one, unlike articles or photos, videos are difficult to edit or crop. I didn’t think people would spend so much time downloading videos, editing it then uploading it in their platform of choice as their own.
I was wrong. Just today, YouTube has sent an email regarding their new Copyright Match Tool. This tool will basically locate content on YouTube that matches your own content. As I have said, I didn’t put much concern on my videos being copied, edited then reuploaded, however, curiosity got me clicking to the Copyright Match Tool.
Copyrighted Videos Copied
To my amazement and frustration, the copyright match tool yielded several results. There were 4 videos that were copied and upon checking I realized that those who copied my videos downloaded my YouTube video and uploaded it in their channel without any recognition of the source, in one of my videos, the watermark is intact and the person who stole my video did not even bother to remove it. What is worst about all this? I only have a handful of subscribers but the content thief has thousands of subscribers and you know what that means, they can monetize the videos with YouTube ads and for this particular content thief the videos were monetized.
To create a video content one has to research, create a storyboard, shoot the video, post-process then upload. Normally for a short video of about 1-2 minutes it would take a total of 8 hours minimum to finish the entire video from research to upload. Content creators put in a lot of hours, blood, sweat and sometimes tears in order to have a video that will be uploaded on YouTube for their audience, this is why a lot of content creators are disheartened when their work are copied and the content thief is benefiting from their video. YouTube recognizes the frustration of content creators this is why they developed the Copyright Match Tools
How Does the Copyright Match Tool Work?
It is so easy really, I love how YouTube makes it very easy for content creators to use this tool. If it is your first time to use the tool you will be taken to an explainer page for the Copyright Match Tool, once you press “Agree” you will immediately be directed to the Channel Copyright page and you will already see a list (assuming there are) of videos that were stolen as well as the channel who stole your content. You can also find this tool in your YouTube studio Dashboard, on the left column click on the Copyright Tab.
Once you see that there were videos copied you are given three course of actions. First, you can archive it, Second action is you can request for video removal and third, you can contact the channel that copied your work.
As a disclaimer, YouTube also mentioned that the video match is not iron-clad, there might be some videos that are similar but not necessarily owned by you. So far however, in my case, there are no doubts as to the ownership of the videos.
The Copyright Match Tool by YouTube is really a good weapon for YouTube Content Creators. Hopefully with this tool the incidence of content stealing will drop.
