- If you get a copyright claim on your YouTube video,
you can't earn any ad revenue from it, simple as that.
And you don't want that happening
to your channel, do you?
So in this video,
I'm gonna show you how to avoid copyright issues,
how to fix copyright issues,
and how to never worry about copyright issues ever again
in just five minutes.
Put simply, copyright is automatic.
That means whenever an original piece of work is created,
the author automatically owns a copyright.
Whenever you publish a video, it's your copyrighted work.
So to keep things simple,
assume that anything you didn't 100% create yourself
or that you downloaded from the internet
could be considered copyright material.
And that is the first rule of YouTube copyright.
Music tracks, movie clips, other creators' YouTube videos,
it's all copyrights of the author.
And to keep things simple,
copyright basically means this.
don't copy other people's work without their permission.
The problem is technology and the internet
has made copyright incredibly easy to circumvent
and almost impossible to enforce.
But to YouTube's credit,
they, mostly, have one of the most sophisticated
and comprehensive copyright protection systems in existence.
So if you decide to ignore the concept of copyrights
and use whatever you want in your videos,
one of two things is very likely to happen.
Your video will either receive a copyright claim
or a copyright strike.
And we'll start with the less severe
and most common occurrence, the copyright claim.
Copyright claims work off of content ID.
YouTube is able to automatically detect
if the content already exists
and claim it on behalf of the copyright owner.
The checks for this start as early
as the video upload process.
By the time you've finished adding a thumbnail
and writing a description,
YouTube should be able to tell you
if there are any copyright issues
before you even have the chance to publish the video.
YouTube will notify you
about copyright claims in a few ways,
be it on the content screen of the YouTube Studio,
on the YouTube Studio dashboard and through an email.
And ultimately, the headline statement is this,
"If your video has a copyright claim on it,
you will not earn any ad revenue from that video."
Now the copyright owner may choose to run ads on your video
but they're gonna pocket all of the ad revenue.
And while this may sound annoying,
you should count yourself lucky
because copyright claims
do not negatively impact your channel.
The summary of the copyright page will confirm this,
although the video may be blocked in some regions.
And it doesn't matter whether or not
you are in the YouTube Partner Program,
adverts may still be run on your videos
with copyright claims.
And as a quick side note,
until you are in the YouTube Partner Program,
YouTube can actually run adverts on your videos,
whether or not they've been copyright claimed.
That is part of the terms of service you agree to
when you do sign up to YouTube.
The solution to that is to get monetized
so that you can choose
whether or not you have adverts on your videos.
Anyway, back to copyright.
Removing an audio copyright claim is actually quite simple
if you use YouTube's own tools, as outlined here.
You can trim out these segment
containing the copyrighted material,
or replace the audio.
Alternatively, you can dispute the claim.
If you do this, YouTube will take you
through the copyright dispute workflow
to make sure you understand what copyright is
and the reason you think the claim is wrong.
I won't go into detail on all of these
but the most common dispute tactic
you've likely heard of is fair use.
YouTube will do its best to explain fair use
but it is quite complex.
Ideally, fair use should be treated on a case-by-case basis,
but the scale at which YouTube operates
makes this almost impossible.
As you can see, you should be prepared
to explain your rationale for fair use.
So I recommend studying examples of fair use
that YouTube have put together on this support page
linked in the description below.
So while copyright claims are irritating for creators,
they're not that much of an issue.
As for copyright strikes,
yeah, they're really bad.
While copyright claims are automated by YouTube,
strikes require the copyright owner
to submit a takedown notice and YouTube needs
to comply with copyright law in this case.
If you do get a copyright strike,
that acts as a warning
and you need to go to copyright school.
Yeah, I know.
Copyright strikes may affect your ability
to monetize your content.
And if you get a strike during a livestream,
you won't be able to live stream for seven days.
And if you get three copyright strikes,
your channel will be terminated.
If you are in a YouTube Partner Program,
you've got seven days to try and fix this.
Copyright strikes do expire after 90 days.
But if you want to resolve it before then,
you can either contact the copyright owner
or dispute the strike itself.
So in short, copyright strikes are bad, really bad.
But weirdly, they don't impact monetization requirements.
While community guideline strikes do prevent you
from applying for the YouTube Partner Program,
copyright strikes do not.
But what about copyright claims?
As far as I know, YouTube doesn't explicitly say anything
about copyright claims and the YouTube Partner Program.
But let me put it to you like this.
If most of your views and watch time
is coming from copyright claim videos
that YouTube are already running ads on,
why would they bother letting you
into the YouTube Partner Program?
That's just an opinion, not fact.
Copyright issues always stem
from not having permission to use a content,
but there are many tools and services
that give you permissions,
such as YouTube's Audio Library,
the "use sound" feature in Shorts
and third party stock footage providers.
We covered a lot there
but not everything there is to know about copyright.
So here are three things you can do.
If you have further questions about copyright,
post them in the comments below.
And if I get enough good ones, I'll turn it into a video.
Secondly, we had Ian Corzine
on a vidIQ max coaching session,
where he revealed some copyright secrets
that are too hot to even publish on this video.
So if you wanna learn more
about the inner workings of copyright on YouTube,
do make sure to check out vidIQ max.
It is an incredible service.
And a topic that's closely related to copyright
is reuse and repetitious content
that could impact your ability to apply
for the YouTube Partner Program and monetize your content.
If you wanna learn more about that,
then watch this video over here.