

The Orchard Entertainment false copyrighted YouTube content claim

Hey guys! It’s been a long time since I last blogged so I really hope some of you are still following me.
Just as always I’m going to post something which is related to me working and developing my brand online. This time I am going to present an issue which I’m sure that many YouTube publishers had to go through while they were trying to promote and monetize their YouTube videos.

I’m talking about copyrighted content claims which are actually false but still make it hard for you to generate some revenue and fuel your next YouTube videos. In my case this isn’t the first time I had to deal with an issue like this so I decided to post it online and hopefully help others to bounce any such disputes which abuse their YouTube revenue.
After so many years online I know a bad practise when I see one so I’m almost sure the claim which follow the pattern mentioned in this blog post is actually made on purpose and not by accident.

Some years ago I received a false copyrighted claim for a Funny Squirrel Video Mashup of mine by YouTube saying that a dispute has been filled and targeted the video above. Claimant was “The Orchard Entertainment” and YouTube approved the claim no questions asked so any revenue generated from that moment and on was sent to the claimant.

Before getting into more details about my case I want to stress the fact that YouTube agrees by default to the claimant dispute without examining it in order to see if it’s a true one. So this YouTube dispute policy created room for a lot of companies to make money out of thin air since they only had to file disputes to random popular videos which later they monetized on their part.

So, in my case “The Orchard Entertainment” disputed the audiovisual content for my video and matched it with the video clip between 1′:02″ and 2′:03″. If you try and play the matched content yourself you will see that there is no audio clip included while the video content was created by an amateur. Back then I was too busy with other ventures so I didn’t pay special attention to it. Also from that time and on all the video revenue has vanished since the disputed part was now enjoying the whole video revenue. I mean even if they had rights to the specific clip, YouTube should appoint them the revenue generated from the duration of this clip which was actually 1 minute and 1 second. Instead YouTube provided them with all the revenue this video generated from the very first second till the last one.

If I had decided to appeal this decision(like I just did) then YouTube wouldn’t care at all; they only give the YouTube account holder the right to send the appeal to the claimant. Then claimant will decide if the appeal has a standing ground or not. Instead sending the appeal to YouTube itself the YouTube account owner actually asks the claimant for a favor. I mean it couldn’t be more stupid and discriminated than this.
If the claimant doesn’t respond in 30 days then you win the appeal, if the claimant responds and decides that your appeal is not valid you can then apply a second appeal to YouTube itself. Usually such claimants fail to respond in 30 days so if users(like me) don’t have the time to appeal or forget to do this or even they’re afraid then they get to loose any generated revenue without actually having a real copyright claim in the first place. If a YouTuber decides to fight back then they usually fail to respond and seek for next YouTube broadcaster to victimize.

If you have free time check the following resources related to similar(or not so similar) “The Orchard Entertainment” cases:

Note: make sure you read the comments below these video; they show the magnitude of these kind of abuse.

So next time your popular YouTube video received a copyright claim make sure to follow up and appeal(twice if needed) or else you will loose all future revenue generated from that video of yours.

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