YouTube will require content owners to provide timestamps when claiming copyright on a video

YouTube is making significant changes to its manual copyright claim tool.

YouTube really wants everyone to rely on Content ID.

This month, the platform is rolling out a change that prevents content owners from filing a manual claim if they already have one Content ID claim pending for the same video.

For the uninitiated, Content ID is an automated system with a huge library of reference files. Those files can be songs, movies, clips from TV shows, audiobooks – pretty much anything audiovisual that can be copyrighted. Content ID constantly scans YouTube, looking for content that matches those reference files. If it finds a match, it will automatically flag the video, notify the owner whose content has been used, and give that owner a few choices about what to do with the video.

YouTube’s manual marking tool, on the other hand, requires a person or organization to find and mark the video themselves. Manual flagging is not available for all YouTube users. It is typically reserved for multichannel networks, music labels, entertainment companies, studios, and other larger rights holders.

Ideally, YouTube would want all copyright claims to come from its own Content ID. The manual claim tool is intended to supplement, not replace, the automatic claiming of Content ID matches.

In a Help Center post about the changes, YouTube said it is implementing the multiple claims rule, as claims must be submitted using the “best existing asset, which reflects all relevant co-ownership and policy information.” And, as we mentioned above, YouTube wants the best existing asset to be a Content ID reference file.

Manual copyright claims will soon be timestamped.

The second change is a big one for YouTubers. In the coming months, YouTube will require content owners to provide timestamps that show exactly where their copyrighted content resides in creators’ videos.

“This change is in part to provide feedback that you would like [referring to content owners] happy to spend less time managing your dispute queue,” YouTube said in its post.

Creators whose videos have been manually fl

tagged have two main options. They can remove the copyrighted content and re-upload their video, or if they believe there is no copyrighted content in their video, they can dispute the content owner’s claim.

Once a dispute is filed, the content owner has 30 days to respond. They can react in different ways. If they agree with the YouTuber’s appeal, they can release their claim to the video. If they believe their claim is still valid, they can request immediate removal of the video or schedule a delayed removal. They can also wait the full 30 days and just let their video claim expire, which will have no positive or negative effects for either party.

But the problem with manual claims and disputes is that these YouTubers often don’t know exactly what content is being claimed manually.

When Content ID claims a video, it tells the YouTuber exactly what is being claimed in the video and where. Claiming manually doesn’t currently provide a timestamp, and as a result, YouTube said it saw a pattern of YouTubers filing unnecessary disputes simply because those creators can’t find where copyrighted content appears in the video. Going through the dispute process can take a long time for everyone involved: creators, content owners, and YouTube itself.

“Manually claiming has been an area of ​​confusion and frustration for many in the creator community,” he said Ryan Bosakfounder of rights management provider SuperBam. “For the thousands of creators who have received these kinds of claims, there is little to no transparency about what is being claimed. These changes are good for the maker community.”

YouTube also said that “with this change, uploaders will be able to better understand these claims, which should also take some of the work out of adjudicating disputes” off content owners’ plates.

YouTube added that it is making these changes due to feedback from the content owner and creator communities. Many YouTubers have spoken out about having a hard time finding copyrighted content in videos. MrBeastin other words Jimmy Donaldson, is one of the largest and newest. He currently has 15.9 million subscribers, brings in over 200 million views per month and recently said this:

In replies to that tweet, Donaldson said he’s “probably lost a few hundred thousand” due to videos being demonetized. And again, that demonetization doesn’t happen because YouTubers don’t want to remove other people’s content from their videos. This happens because they don’t know if or where there might be copyrighted content in their videos and therefore simply can’t resolve content claim issues or go through the tedious process.

YouTube has not announced a firm date for the launch of the timestamp feature.