Public Domain infringement
The Harry Fox agency claims administration of Bach’s Prelude #1 in C Major (incredible!),
I’ve noticed that when I use Google’s “what’s this song?” applet on my phone while listening to classical music, it will frequently find the wrong performance of the right song. I believe that this is an indication that ContentID is non-functional for classical music.
Michael Tiemann
This morning I started to tangle with YouTube’s ContentID. With any luck, my legitimate disputes will be accepted and I won’t have to worry about ads appearing on videos I’ve made of +Kimiko Ishizaka, Pianist performing Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier at +Manifold Recording . Standing up for one’s rights has risks, however. The Harry Fox agency claims administration of Bach’s Prelude #1 in C Major (incredible!), and YouTube warns me that if they prevail with their claims against me, I’ll lose my YouTube account (which has about 100,000 views).
It should be an open-and-shut case: Bach’s work is clearly in the public domain, and Kimiko Ishizaka developed her interpretation from Bach’s manuscripts, which are also in the public domain. But I have seen enough complaints from classical musicians who have uploaded videos of their own performances of Bach, Mozart, Chopin, and other composers whose work has passed into the public domain to know that It Ain’t Over Until It’s Over.
I have read that one thing that greatly helps is popular support. Namely, if this posting were to get 1,000 +1s (for example), then YouTube people doing their research will not blow it off and assume that their ContentID system is perfect. So if you agree with this position, give me your +1 and reshare!
Curtis Olson November 19, 2013 10:34
I dink around on the piano as a stress reliever sometimes and one time uploaded my rendition of Beethoven’s moonlight sonata (played by myself) to youtube. The movie was immediately flagged as a content violation. I was half ‘pissed’ since it was my own performance of a piece written several hundred years ago, and half amused/flattered that I was good enough to trip a match of their algorithm. I sent them a strongly worded email and so far haven’t had my youtube account cancelled over it.
Curtis Olson November 19, 2013 13:14
Update: my video has already been flagged as matching 3rd party content … maybe that’s different being flagged as a copyright violation, but let’s give there algorithms some time to catch up with me. :-)
Michael K Johnson November 19, 2013 16:03
And then send an invoice to the fraudulent claimant?
Curtis Olson November 20, 2013 09:09
It would be interesting to see what the view is from the other side of the coin. I’m sure it’s just youtube’s content matching algorithms firing off a hit. Do they notify the other party even? Does the other party have the opportunity to escalate or say no match? I discovered I had another video show up as a match too … this was of my RC plane flying … just raw video and audio right off the onboard camera … so it was 100% wind and motor noise … matched somebody’s poetry apparently. I’ve disputed all the matches … the RC video was quickly resolved, but my Prelude in C performance is still under review.
Imported from Google+ — content and formatting may not be reliable