ARTFXSTUDIOS
Music producer
So there we go, I have been fighting ContentID claims during the last week and I'm going to share my story here as it unfolds right now.
Last week I made a video about sampling in music and the history on it, the video clearly used some copyrighted material and I acknowledged the claims that I expected to get. No problems on that. However the second video in this small series I'm doing is using a music recording from 1939 called "Swingin On The Campus" by the Johnny Hodges Orchestra which is licensed under the 'Public Domain' policy and is therefore free of copyright. I uploaded the video today, scheduled the time for publishing and then... BOOOM! A copyright notice!
This is the public domain recording: https://archive.org/details/JohnnyHodgesOrchestra-SwinginOnTheCampus
So I looked at the notice and I saw that the company IODA had claimed the music used in my video as theirs, which to me felt weird since it's a public domain recording. It also told me that the music claimed was "Swingin' On The Campus" by Duke Ellington. Now that is nothing weird since Johnny Hodges was part of the Duke Ellington Orchestra. So I went and searched some more about the piece of music and I realized that the original has been released on a old 78RPM disk in 1939 under the artist name 'The Johnny Hodges Orchestra', which is the recording used in my video. The claim is actually for the re-released version released under the artist name 'Duke Ellington' released in 2009. The 2009 release is a remastered and cleaned up version of the original in which all the audible noise from the old recording has been removed. This means that they claim the rights on a track that isn't even the one that they're trying to claim the rights for.
Next to that, the recording is also used in a way that should fall under 'Fair Use'. The video in which the music is used is a educational video, it's transformative in nature and it doesn't harm the potential market for the 2009 release in any way. This is what makes it classify as fair use.
I of course disputed the claim and I took out the scheduled publish time and made the video private, since I don't think that the claim is valid and I don't want them earning revenue over something they don't even own. I then went as far as contacting IODA themselves, which is now called 'the Orchard'. They are a licensing and distribution company who maintain the distribution and licensing of music and video material for independent artists and record labels. I explained them everything in detail and I asked them to remove the claim, I'm currently awaiting their response and I'll keep you up to date on this.
The problem with it is that most people won't even bother to try and dispute a invalid claim, the process itself looks frightening to most casual users and they don't want to have legal actions taken upon them. However in cases like this you have a valid ground to stand on, their claim is invalid and shouldn't even have been made to begin with. I searched for this online and it brought up a insane long list of people who get claims on Public Domain music on their uploads, guess what? Most of these invalid claims on Public Domain music are actually made by one and the same company: IODA also known as the Orchard.
Long story short: the ContentID system is open for fraud and big corporations are sucking away money from us the hard working content creator.
So what is your thought on this? How would you respond to this problem?
Last week I made a video about sampling in music and the history on it, the video clearly used some copyrighted material and I acknowledged the claims that I expected to get. No problems on that. However the second video in this small series I'm doing is using a music recording from 1939 called "Swingin On The Campus" by the Johnny Hodges Orchestra which is licensed under the 'Public Domain' policy and is therefore free of copyright. I uploaded the video today, scheduled the time for publishing and then... BOOOM! A copyright notice!
This is the public domain recording: https://archive.org/details/JohnnyHodgesOrchestra-SwinginOnTheCampus
So I looked at the notice and I saw that the company IODA had claimed the music used in my video as theirs, which to me felt weird since it's a public domain recording. It also told me that the music claimed was "Swingin' On The Campus" by Duke Ellington. Now that is nothing weird since Johnny Hodges was part of the Duke Ellington Orchestra. So I went and searched some more about the piece of music and I realized that the original has been released on a old 78RPM disk in 1939 under the artist name 'The Johnny Hodges Orchestra', which is the recording used in my video. The claim is actually for the re-released version released under the artist name 'Duke Ellington' released in 2009. The 2009 release is a remastered and cleaned up version of the original in which all the audible noise from the old recording has been removed. This means that they claim the rights on a track that isn't even the one that they're trying to claim the rights for.
Next to that, the recording is also used in a way that should fall under 'Fair Use'. The video in which the music is used is a educational video, it's transformative in nature and it doesn't harm the potential market for the 2009 release in any way. This is what makes it classify as fair use.
I of course disputed the claim and I took out the scheduled publish time and made the video private, since I don't think that the claim is valid and I don't want them earning revenue over something they don't even own. I then went as far as contacting IODA themselves, which is now called 'the Orchard'. They are a licensing and distribution company who maintain the distribution and licensing of music and video material for independent artists and record labels. I explained them everything in detail and I asked them to remove the claim, I'm currently awaiting their response and I'll keep you up to date on this.
The problem with it is that most people won't even bother to try and dispute a invalid claim, the process itself looks frightening to most casual users and they don't want to have legal actions taken upon them. However in cases like this you have a valid ground to stand on, their claim is invalid and shouldn't even have been made to begin with. I searched for this online and it brought up a insane long list of people who get claims on Public Domain music on their uploads, guess what? Most of these invalid claims on Public Domain music are actually made by one and the same company: IODA also known as the Orchard.
Long story short: the ContentID system is open for fraud and big corporations are sucking away money from us the hard working content creator.
So what is your thought on this? How would you respond to this problem?
