How copyright filters lead to wage-theft
A Red Queen’s race with fraudsters.
Last week, “Marina” — a piano teacher who publishes free lessons her Piano Keys Youtube channel — celebrated her fifth anniversary by announcing that she was quitting Youtube because her meager wages were being stolen by fraudsters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcyOxtkafMs
Marina posted a video with a snatch of her performance of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” published in 1801. The composition is firmly in the public domain, and the copyright in the performance is firmly Marina’s, but it still triggered Youtube’s automated copyright filter.
A corporate entity — identified only by an alphabet soup of initialisms and cryptic LLC names — had claimed Ole Ludwig Van’s masterpiece as their own, identifying it as “Wicca Moonlight.”
Content ID, the automated Youtube filter, flagged Marina’s track as an unauthorized performance of this “Wicca Moonlight” track. Marina appealed the automated judgement, which triggered a message to this shadowy LLC asking if they agreed that no infringement had taken place.
But the LLC renewed its claim of infringement. Marina now faces several unpleasant choices:
- She can allow the LLC to monetize her video, stealing the meager wages she…
