YouTube announced changes to rules around its music copyright policies Thursday. It said the changes were “intended to improve fairness in the creator ecosystem, while still respecting copyright owners’ rights to prevent unlicensed use of their content.”
YouTube Striving For Fair Balance
In a post on its creators blog, the video platform explained that copyright owners will no longer be able to monetize videos using short or unintentional bits of music via its Manual Claiming tool. That is the tool through which a rights holder actively reviews a video. A video containing someone else’s content without permission can still be claimed.
The change “meant some copyright owners may choose to leave very short or unintentional uses unclaimed,” said YouTube. Clearly, that is meant to offer some support for creators. The policy will come into force in mid-September. Claims through the Content ID match tool are unaffected by the new policy.