Dodgy YouTube copyright claim

[Melakon]

My parody film, which I have unlisted and only linked to here, has had a copyright claim placed on it by some German company ending with the name 'cannabis' because I used "The Cage" theme I had ripped from my own CD.

Is anyone else seeing things like this happen? This is why I was reluctant to post it on YouTube in the first place.

Okay, I'm slightly wrong but evidently that single track is matching

"Heiter Bis Wolkig-Raumschiff Cannabis", sound recording administered by: 0:51 [Merlin] finetunes

There have only been 100 views on my video, it's been up for a year, and no claims when I originally posted it.

Someone posted the same Main Title on YouTube and it looks like there's a claim on it too when I searched for youtube claim and the German title. There's an ad for the recording on that guy's video too.

 

[Sean_McCormick]

Heiter bis Wolkig seems to be a group whose offering range from punkrock songs to comedy. Raumschiff Cannabis , judging by a sample on amazon seems to be a parody on Trek with TOS music and sound effects.

So this looks to me like a automatic systems tasked with finding unauthorized copies marked this (based on the music from TOS) and the results were just fed into an DCMA reporting tool without being checked for false positives.

Those guys probably have licenced the use of TOS music and sound effects but they can't have an exclusive licence, so this is not even dodgy but clearly wrong.

 

[Melakon]

A later Google search revealed dozens of people complaining about Merlin Finetunes, who have in some cases claimed ownership of some artists' original works and compositions. The fact that my parody got hit even though it's not publicly available surprised me though, and it's obviously something that happened long after I originally posted it. So either YouTube's subroutine is either checking private content as well, or someone who saw the link here told Merlin about it.

I just uploaded an old video from 2005 where I use Jerry Goldsmith's original Man from UNCLE theme, so it will probably be flagged soon as well. I was seeing this happen on some of my other videos with claims on them by UMG and Orchard Music last year, and moved them to private as well.

These "rights holders" even place claim on clearly public domain properties taken from archive.org, so it's all a scam and it's ruining YouTube as a user's outlet.

 

[Maurice]

My guess is it's their automated system after a content update, which works a lot like music ID programs like Shazam. I seriously doubt anyone here "ratted you out" as the saying goes. Years ago I had a video which got dinged and deleted for using a chunk of Jerry Goldsmith TMP music when a zillion other videos using music from that film didn't. Luck of the draw, I'm afraid.

 

[Melakon]

Yeah, I suppose I was a bit perturbed in the "heat of the moment", as the old song goes.

 

[Start Wreck]

It's automatic, using YouTube's ContentID system. Private or public videos, makes no difference.

You can dispute the claim under fair use (parody) and the lock will likely be lifted if the content owner agrees. Well, actually, the lock will lifted automatically and the content owner has two months to disagree. That's assuming they bother to even look at it, which they probably won't.

 

[Melakon]

Well I guess the worst that can happen is they close my account, which is no big deal anyway. It was just a way to put stuff out there without providing a download link from my personal site. The whole video is authentic sound effects, voice clips, and music from the series to tell a new poorly animated story, the visuals are the only thing I created myself, and the re-arranging of voice clips into a barely comprehensible story.