The Unexpected YouTube Millionnaires

I have been aware of this issue for some time now, and was recently reminded of it by an extremely popular thread on Reddit (top scoring this month). It centers around YouTube's method of enforcing IP protection laws, and companies that take advantage of this to every extreme possible.

YouTube employs a very novel piece of software that combs each uploaded video for possible copyright infringing material. This can contain images, or even entire video clips, but usually it is not the visual content of the video that is disputed, but the audio it uses. The software compares the contents to a library of material that has been requested to be protected by someone, usually a third party company. Most notable among these companies is UMG, the largest music publishing company in the world. Their entire library is compared to newly updated video's content, and this library is updated many times daily.

If a possible infringing video is detected by the software, it is completely blocked pending approval. If the video is indeed found to be infringing, the user that uploaded it has the option to take it down entirely, or allow it to be monetized with ads by the company that owns the copyright. Now, this is where the truly interesting part of the system comes into play. Following a successful copyright claim, the copyright owner also has the option to withdraw the claim at any time, and thus give the user permission to use their material for the video. As you might imagine, this makes quite a bit of sense since the software does not distinguish between videos, and therefore has no idea whether or not the user that uploaded the video actually does have permission to use the copyrighted material.

Ah, but a keen individual would also pick up on the huge flaw that this system has, and the reason why entire companies are built upon the exploitation of this process.


Rumblefish is a company consisting of "an interesting blend of music, technology, and intellectual property experts" according to their web site. What they really are is a group of lawyers and business majors that have created an entire company out of exploiting IP laws and the copyright system of YouTube. They own the rights to millions of copyrighted songs and audio files, and their entire library, similar to that of UMG, is synced with YouTube's copyright protection software. They also license the copyrights out to just about anyone, for a fee, and this is their main claim of revenue. Where they actually turn a profit however, is with YouTube's content ID system. It will identify a piece of audio copyrighted by the company, and then begin running ads along side the video to compensate Rumblefish.

Another interesting, I would say almost criminal, form of the revenue for the company is with disputed claims. If a user disputes the claim, Rumbfish will send out an email to the individual asking for a certain sum of money in exchange for a license, or they will have the video taken down completely. This happened to a youtuber that I follow regularly (username Zisteau), who had purchased the license for the use of music to use in a video intro from another company, but later got a notification that Rumblefish owned the copyright to the audio. This was entirely false, however a recording of the same song was owned by Rumblefish, and was flagged by YouTube's content ID software. After disputing the claim, the company demanded he pay them to keep his videos from being taken down.

A similar case, with an even more bizarre situation, is seen with the Reddit thread I mentioned earlier. In this case, the sound of a bird singing in the background of someone's video had been matched to a piece of audio that Rumblefish had the copyright to, and so the video was monetized with proceeds going to Google and Rumbfish alone. It was disputed, and Rumblefish confirmed that they did indeed own the rights to a bird chirping. It was not until an article written by the video's creator went viral that the claim was taken down, and apologies were sent out.

The system is clearly being misused, and the ancient copyright and IP protection laws are being used to support claims that any reasonable person would deem unfair. This, along with many other examples of the ineffectiveness of hundred year old laws that are supposed to control modern content, tells me that some serious discussion and thought should be put into how we deal with property protection over the internet. It is clear to me that more than just simple amendments or additions to these laws should be made, and that eventually a complete re-imagination of the concepts that created them in the first place should be done, with special consideration to how they will be used in the current technological era.