YouTube is bringing out some extra protection to their content creators with a new tool that is sure to make plenty of people happy. The Verge reported that this new notification system will roll out to creators with more than 100,000 subscribers sometime early next week. For those with a heavy subscriber volume, the innovative and helpful service will scan and check to find out if the content already exists, or if it is similar to other videos on the site, and notify the appropriate parties via a notification.
Copy Match tool will be the name for YouTube’s creation. The company is happy to announce this protection, and stated on its YouTube Creator Blog that they understand the expressed frustration of creators and have heeded the long-awaited call for more protection against video and copyright theft. If a copied video is found, content creators can then decide which action to take. Options include contacting the person who has uploaded the copied video without expressed permission, do nothing, or simply ask YouTube to remove the offending video. For YouTube to honor this, a person has to be considered the original creator of the recording. That does leave open the possibility that someone who is already on Vimeo or Facebook copies your video and uploads it to YouTube first. As stated on the company blog, “The time of upload is how we determine who should be shown matches.”
“We know how frustrating it is when your content is uploaded to other channels without your permission and how time consuming it can be to manually search for these re-uploads.”
A similar program from the company is already in place, called Content ID. Content ID helps copyright owners locate anyone using their content without permission; however, it is limited in its availability. Also unlike Copy Match, the Content ID tool allows content owners to monetize any unauthorized uses of a video.
Apparently YouTube has been testing this tool with certain creators for nearly a year now. They state on their blog that the testing was in an effort to make it more safe and effective for the entire community, while also thanking those involved for all of their feedback in helping to “build a product that will help a lot of creators.”
YouTube also stated that the tool can only be used for full re-uploads, urging creators to continue contacting YouTube in the event that they locate a clip of their content being used. Also mentioned in the blog regarding this new tool, YouTube says they plan to continue expanding the program outside of only followers with high volume followers.
“As this is a powerful feature, we will monitor usage closely and will continue to expand over the coming months with the long-term goal of making it available to every creator in the YouTube Partner program.”
