YouTube Copyright Transparency Report
YouTube, the platform with the largest database of videos, issued its first Copyright Transparency report on December 6, 2021 reporting on activities occurring between January 1, 2021 and June 30, 2021. Within this report, YouTube describes its approach to help protect copyright holders from copyright infringement and shares the statistics on how effective their tools are. Other details include flaws in the system, like when people abuse requests or send invalid requests, and how YouTube empowers their uploaders to fight against these wrongful claims.
In the report, YouTube describes the tools it has to protect the copyrights of creators and how it is trying to expand its features. YouTube identifies its three primary copyright management tools:
the public webform tool which YouTube states is “typically accessed by rightsholders who hold limited copyrights and rarely submit takedown requests.”
the Copyright Match tool which YouTube claims “supports over two million channels who may find some reposted content and need to submit a takedown request,” and
the Content ID system which is mostly used by music labels and movie studios who “experience heavy reporting of [their] copyrighted material” to find and flag infringing material.
YouTube claims that through these tools, YouTube has paid more than $30 billion to creators, artists and media companies over the past three years.
YouTube also revealed statistics relating to takedown requests, disputed claims and the cases in which they would favor either the uploaders or the claimants:
In Exhibit 2.2, YouTube shows the statistics of the copyright actions taken by tool, with Content ID having 722,659,509 uses, representing 99.08% of the actions taken.
YouTube detailed the video level results of three of the copyright removal tools: the webform, enterprise webform and Copyright Match Tool. Very large percentages of claims result in content removal, regardless of the tool used. But YouTube notes that 15% of the time, “our copyright webform is subject to a significant amount of abuse or otherwise invalid use,” which is significant.
YouTube states that 99.5% of the 722 million Content ID claims were undisputed. The Content ID system allows for uploaders to dispute claims between the claimant and the uploader, giving them 30 days to dispute the claim, “and assert their right to upload the content in question.”
3.7 million Content ID claims were disputed, with 60% won by the uploader. The uploader can choose to appeal the copyright claim, causing the claimant to “either release the claim or file a legal copyright removal request.”
Finally, YouTube reported that just under 39,000 videos were removed due to copyright claims. Only 8.9% of uploaders challenged those removals through Counter Notifications, which are requests sent by uploaders to reinstate their videos struck by copyright claims. Uploaders do not file Counter Notifications 91.1% of the time.
After publication of YouTube’s Transparency Report, many groups and experts commented on and/or criticized the Report. For example, the Electronic Foundation Frontier (EFF) argued, “YouTube basically claims that because rightsholders use Content ID to make a lot of claims and online creators continue to upload new videos, then it must be working.” EFF argues YouTube has a sort of monopoly in the market, as it has the biggest platform for posting videos, and due to its size people have to adapt to its rules and system to survive. EFF also criticizes the number of disputes in the report, stating that people fear YouTube and losing their channel, and thus do not dispute Content ID claims despite the fact that uploaders who do challenge claim win the majority of challenges. EFF argues that disputing the claims is a huge risk for creators, and the report doesn’t really address the risks that come with disputing claims.
Another commenter focused on the portions of the Transparency Report where YouTube described its “overblocking” of videos, meaning that they over-enforce unjustified claims and demonetization of the uploaders. The commenter argues that, “over-enforcement (both unjustified blocking and unjustified demonetization) is a very real issue that affects the rights of a substantial number of uploaders on a regular basis.” The commenter notes the changes on how the Copyright Matching Tool is better off being fully accessible, considering that it used to only be for creators who were partnered with YouTube. Lastly, the commenter praises YouTube’s changes to the Content ID system to match uploading in real time, stating, “without this ability it would be impossible to make distinctions between manifestly infringing and not manifestly infringing uploads at the point of upload,” which aligns more with European Copyright Law. So, contrary to EFF, this commenter is more positive about the report, stating that “YouTube’s copyright transparency report is a promising start.”
Further reading:
https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/access-all-balanced-ecosystem-and-powerful-tools/
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/youtubes-new-copyright-transparency-report-leaves-lot-out