New copyright claim changes introduced by YouTube

Many people in California have at a minimum viewed a video on YouTube at least once. It is almost impossible to avoid having a video on the platform show up in a web browser search in some situations. The service offers companies and individuals a place to house and share their content. YouTube has also produced its own set of celebrities and an entirely new form of entertainment. Along the way, it has been plagued with problems related to copyrights and the protection of these rights on such a dynamic medium.

As reported by Gizmondo, a person who holds a copyright to a particular work could manually file an infringement claim against another content provider on YouTube. When doing so, the person making the infringement allegation would not be required to provide many details, only asserting that a particular piece of content infringed on the copyright. There was no way to know if an entire hour-long video was the problem or a short five-second clip.

The company’s CEO has recently announced a change to the manual claim process. This new process will now require anyone entering a claim to provide the specific timestamp on the piece of content that is supposed to represent the copyright infringement. The hope is that providing this level of detail will facilitate better resolution to issues and fewer haphazard claims.

While this may be a positive step, there are many issues that YouTube content creators continue to face, including how to address assertions from others that a work is displayed for educational or research purposes and therefore not subject to copyright protection.