YouTube will block copyright trolls from swiping creators’ revenue

YouTube is making good on its promise to defend its creators from copyright trolls, specifically third parties that claim monetization on users’ videos over seconds of content.

On Thursday, YouTube a new that will stop copyright holders from manually claiming monetization of a creator’s entire video over short song clips and unintentional audio.

“Today we’re introducing an update to our manual claiming policies, which prevents Copyright owners from making money on manual claims for short song segments or unintentional audio (such as background music in a coffee shop),” states the company’s new policy.

YouTube says the move is “intended to improve fairness in the creator ecosystem, while still respecting copyright owners’ rights to prevent unlicensed use of their content.” The company will begin enforcing these new policies in mid-September.

Bad faith have YouTube creators.

Prior to this policy, a creator who spent hours producing a 10 minute video could suddenly find that a third-party claimed monetization on their video. This company, which had nothing to do with the creation of the content, would now take any ad revenue it earns because, for example, viewers could hear a few seconds of a song owned by the claimant in the video when a car drove by blasting their radio.

This new policy also extends to cover a short song clip which the company defines as segments in the “single digit seconds (for example, 5 seconds).” YouTube points out that exceptions could be made to the rule for users purposefully looking to take advantage of this policy by, for example, creating compilations of short song clips.

It should be noted that copyright holders can still file a claim that blocks creators from monetizing their videos or file a takedown of the video completely. The policy simply makes sure that the claimant can no longer make money off creators’ hard work because of this tiny copyright infractions.

As for a possible uptick in videos blocked completely due to this policy change, YouTube is encouraging its creators to be more vigilant when it comes to third-party content. The company is also promoting the use of its editing tools which allow creators to remove short song clips without having to re-upload their video.

YouTube also clarified that the policy change only covers copyright holders that manually claim videos. Companies using the site’s automatic Content ID match system will not be affected. Copyright holders who violate the policy will have their manual claiming privileges suspended.

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki explicitly that the company was working on solutions to help creators who were “frustrated” with the increase in “copyright claims that are less than 10 seconds or incidental” in a letter earlier this year. The delivery of an actual policy change is a welcome move for creators who are increasingly with the company.