(4) Example of Copyrights in Action

Show me an example of Youtube's copyright policy.

Youtube is always checking its content for copyright infringement, as stated in the previous blog post. I will provide an example of a video that has mild copyright infringement.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVpnLZ5_wp8

Here is the information that you should know about the video. The visual content is of an anime series called Dragonball Z. This series is owned by Toei Animation, a company located in Japan. The music used in the video is part of the Dragonball Z soundtrack. All other audio was created by me. Now then, after uploading this video, I was given a notice that it was being blocked in certain countries. When a video is blocked by Youtube's ContentID, you are responsible for seeing the reasons and conditions for the block. In this particular scenario, the video was blocked in Japan, meaning that anyone trying to watch the video in that country would be unable to. In addition to this, the video was initially not viewable at all. I was required to acknowledge that the video would be blocked in Japan before it would be made available to everyone else.

This is how the copyright for this particular video worked out. I was allowed to keep the video up, despite it containing content from somebody else's work. There are a few reasons for this. First, the video itself did not contain a large amount of the copyrighted work. Had I uploaded entire episodes of the series, it is very likely that it would have been completely removed. Second, the video contained some original content. While the video was nearly identical to the original work, I included my own audio. This would make it fall under the first statute of fair use. The work was not directly copied, rather it was altered. Keep in mind though that despite believing that something falls within fair use, the copyright holder can still take action against you. You must be certain that your content is justifiably not infringing upon someone's content.