I've had a number of issues, but that's because the whole theme of my channel is taking copyrighted content and modifying it. Almost half of my videos have been claimed. I've disputed every claim and all but 1 or 2 have been rejected. I'm appealing every rejected dispute and 1 or 2 released the claim, about half have gone to expire, and the other half have resulted in DMCA takedowns with a 7-day period where I can choose to cancel the appeal.
Besides claims, I've had 1 video taken down by the creator of the original video, most likely because he is a fellow YouTuber and was offended at my use, and the other 2 were by the organization IFPI, each about an hour after upload, and they were both Taylor Swift songs. IFPI's whole thing seems to be ending piracy and sometime last year, I think, they reported their 50 Millionth takedown. From what I can tell, they only deal in DMCA takedowns and not with Content-ID. No matter what you say in your email when asking for a retraction, as long as you actually did use their content, they always reply with the same canned response that they won't retract it.
Some of the conversations I've had with other companies when discussing my videos being fair use and them taking down my video have led me to believe that most of them either don't care about fair use or they don't fully understand it. Some quotes from them include:
You are using our copyrighted content, you do not hold any rights. What makes you think you have rights?
...
how you can claim any kind of ownership of our rights is beyond me.
I get Fair Use, and across most of the things we release, this would just be monetized.
This means they think something being fair use just means they aren't going to block it or take it down, just monetize it. They don't seem to realize that fair use means they don't have the rights to anything of that new work.
We understand the audio has been manipulated and transformed, however the audio still contains several of the original compositional elements including, but not limited to, lyrics and melody. We represent the rights of the songwriters who have created the original composition and, as a result, we retain the right to assert our claim. Therefore, we have reached the conclusion to reject the appeal due to our copy written material being a part of the video.
So, interestingly, their idea of fair use is one where none of the original content remains. That is what I'd call original material. There has to be an actual use of another's copyrighted content to even be considered fair use.
As stated in your previous email, your video does have several of the original composition elements. The video itself is a distorted version of the original song, the only element that was changed is the actual sound. As we represent the rights of the songwriter, we have concluded that there were no key changes in the actual composition that would fall into the usage of fair use nor was this video used in any manner as it related to fair use. Please note a modification of the Sound Recording does not fall under the definition of fair use.
So fair use is now an exclusive list of usages? Anything that it doesn't specifically list is out? Also, again, a lot of the original elements were there, as if fair use requires no use. So, by this example, a movie review wouldn't be fair use because at least some of the original sounds and visuals from the movie were included.
We will be keeping our claims on the videos since we own the rights to the composition, but I will not takedown the video. Although you are slightly altering the song in your videos by slowing them down, you are still using the original composition and thus these videos are seen as covers of the original.
A cover? Seriously? A cover is one party performing the song of another party for the exact same purpose. A parody is using elements of the original work for a different purpose, such as making fun of the original.
We will continue to claim for any of our songs that you cover on your youtube channel. You are using the original compositions to create your videos, and thus you are using our property without permission.
So basically, they don't care if someone's use is fair or not, they are going to claim videos that use their content no matter what.
