Copyright infringements on Youtube

[koopakool]

I just saw that ALL my performances of classical pieces that I put on youtube have copyright infringements alerts. For example

"Your video is blocked in some countries. Details: Misha Fomin-Piano Sonata No. 3 in B Minor, op. 58: III. Largo", sound recording administered by:   0:25
[Merlin] Phonofile"

I understand that they have bots crawling and identifying copyrighted material, I'm a little surprised it applies to classical music performed by a low grade amateur from his living room.  Do ALL musicians posting classical stuff on youtube infringe the law? One of my friend that has the exact same kind of channel as mine doesn't have any warnings on his vids. They put ads on my pages to pay the "owners" of the music, that's fine I guess but block the videos really? I'm really not familiar with copyright laws, could someone please explain me the basics? Do you guys have the same on your vids? Should I contest the claims? I bought the freaking sheets and make no money out of these, it's just a hobby you know... Thanks a lot! (and sorry for the bad english)

[perfect_pitch]

Most of the videos I've had have had claims I'm infringing someone elses playing... I just dispute it and they go away.

[Derek]

I posted a video where I was giving a talk about improvisation and this included a snippet of a Keith Jarrett performance, and I got one of those warnings. Makes me wonder if some automated thing searches for matching sounds in anything for copyrighted material. But yeah, it is kind of ridiculous. How is giving a talk about something even remotely close to infringing copyright? You can't possibly enjoy the Jarrett recording in its original form just by watching my talk, there's extraneous noise, its quiet, etc. etc.

[daro]

I posted a video where I was giving a talk about improvisation and this included a snippet of a Keith Jarrett performance, and I got one of those warnings. Makes me wonder if some automated thing searches for matching sounds in anything for copyrighted material. But yeah, it is kind of ridiculous. How is giving a talk about something even remotely close to infringing copyright?

It's not infringing; using a snippet as an illustration in an educational presentation would be considered "fair use" (though there could be some questions regarding the distribution). IOW, generally speaking, copyright law actually explicitly protects your right to use the music in that context.  The youtube bots obviously have no way of knowing that's what you're doing so they default to issuing the warning.

I think it's great that youtube is making a conscientious effort to protect artists' livelihoods. You've got to figure, for example, that there might be 100 published "professional" recordings of a particular Chopin nocturne. Within a certain margin of error they're almost certainly going to be pretty similar; they might be within a few seconds of each other in length, if the performers are following the dynamic markings then the general pattern of those fluctuations will be the same etc. I would think that any "amateur" performer whose work is a close enough match to one of these recordings and gets one of these notices should be flattered, though it can be a little exasperating and slightly inconvenient to have to dispute it. I think they should consider it a small price to pay for making it possible, should they ever want it, to receive compensation of their own for the hard work that they put it in to learn the music.

Copyright law as it exists today, at least in the U.S., is the best chance artists have ever had in history to make it slightly more than theoretically possible to actually make a living from one's work. I think that's good, and anything that weakens that or works to prevent that is bad, at least IMHO.

[koopakool]

Arg if only I was fluent in english  

I think it's great that youtube is making a conscientious effort to protect artists' livelihoods.

The image that comes in my mind: special agents working for Tropicana driving through the cities to bust children selling their mom's homemade mix of lemonade at the corners of the streets lol.

Copyright law as it exists today, at least in the U.S., is the best chance artists have ever had in history to make it slightly more than theoretically possible to actually make a living from one's work.

I thought copyright laws were to protect intellectual property and own  performances/interpretations. (btw, what % of the profits the labels make goes to the composers' families?). It's not like I'm posting interpretations of others to make it seem like my own. Why don't the different publishers make cases of the bots discovering they're advertising the same product and don't try to block each others publicity? The market is saturated with extremely talented players. It's business no? Do videos of performances from piano competitions get the same treatment? Does this logic also apply to other spheres of "human performances" like sports? In general people will pay for quality. Posting my stuff recorded using a 1000$ keyboard and a mono jack though a 10 year old audio card is certainly fair use IMO. I have limited rights to display the fruits of years of practice just because it's a hobby?  I read that if Youtube refuses my claim contest, they might suspend my account so I won't risk it lol. It's not the end of the world, but I find this a little exaggerated.

[ronde_des_sylphes]

Normally just disputing the claim gets it to go away. They have some sort of automated tool checking material against a database of recorded sound; possibly checking the video tags and info also. The tool is deeply flawed. See this for an example: https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=48946.0

Tagging a video as that of a recording artist means Youtube gets to place an advert by the video, so it's obviously in their interests to generate false positives (well, that's my suspicion).