How YouTube’s Copyright Match Tool Can Make You Money
While YouTube has a very powerful tool to help catch reuploads in its Copyright ID tool, it’s not as proactive as many would like. For instance, Copyright ID might flag a video for using your music, but many times it’s up to you to catch a problem by just searching around to see what happens. Now the platform has introduced an updated Copyright Match tool that allows you to manually take control of the process directly on your channel.
What It Is
Copyright Match comes up under the Copyright tab on the left tab area of your channel and provides several parameters to find and process channels using your content. First comes a Matches column that shows where YouTube has found your music or video content, then a Removal Requests that shows your requests to delete your content, Messages shows your messages to the offender, and Archive, which archives your matches.
Each match shows the video where the content came from, the date you originally posted the video, the channel that’s using your content, and how much of the video they’re using.
At that point you have three choices – archive the match and do nothing, request that the channel remove your content, or send a pre-written direct message to the channel.
According to YouTube, this is the way it works:
“The Copyright Match Tool is available to any YouTube user who’s submitted a valid copyright takedown request. Once your takedown request is approved, the Copyright Match Tool will start scanning YouTube uploads for potential matches to the videos reported in your takedown. We’ll surface these potential matches to you so you can decide what action to take next.
For partners in the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), or any channel that’s filled out this form and shown a need for an advanced rights management tool, the Copyright Match Tool will scan for full reuploads of your videos on other YouTube channels. The tool scans videos uploaded after yours, so it’s important you’re the first one to upload the content to YouTube.”
Just because there’s a match it doesn’t necessarily mean that the user is infringing on your copyright. Says YouTube, “Before you review your matches, keep in mind that just because we’ve found a matching video doesn’t mean it’s infringing on your copyright. It’s your responsibility to review each matching video and consider whether fair use, fair dealing, or a similar exception to copyright applies.“
Making Money
So how do you make money? One of the options that Content ID gives you is to monetize the content that the reuploader is using. That means, you can had an ad placed on the video and some of the money earned goes to you.
This is actually the big secret in how superstar artists make money on the platform. It’s not necessarily being made on the official video, it’s from the hundreds and thousands of user-generated videos that use the music. Record labels have big staffs dedicated to finding and processing these, but Content Match means that you can do much of that yourself.
You can find out more about the Copyright Match tool here.
