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In its latest “How Google Fights Piracy” report, Google made a point about the substantial revenues that its copyright detection system, Content ID, is helping to generate for creators on YouTube.
Content ID is Google’s proprietary system to help content rights-holders and creators manage their copyrighted content on the platform. Videos uploaded to YouTube are scanned against a database of copyrighted files, submitted by rights-holders. When a piece of content is flagged, the copyright owners can then decide to either monetize, track, or block the piece of content. Over 8,000 rights-holders have used Content ID to manage their content on YouTube, with more than 90% of these users choosing to monetize videos that contain their copyrighted material. Google says it has invested over $60 million into developing Content ID.
To date, Content ID seems to have worked well for copyright owners:
- Effective at detecting copyrighted content. About 98% of copyright management on YouTube takes place through Content ID, with only 2% handled through Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) copyright-removal notices. Record labels, meanwhile, have claimed that YouTube’s copyright detection systems were underdeveloped, forcing them to depend on human labor to manually scour YouTube and file DMCA takedown notices. In this instance, the evidence seems to dispute the record industry’s allegations.
- Churning out significant revenues for artists. Overall, YouTube has paid over $3 billion to the music industry to date, and more than $2 billion of this was generated by YouTube’s Content ID system. In particular, fan-uploaded content – such as song covers, remixes, or recordings at concerts – claimed through Content ID accounts for about half of the music industry’s revenue from YouTube. Meanwhile, the number of YouTube channels earning revenue of more than $100,000 per year is up 50% year-over-year. That being said, there is still a large gap between the growth in music streaming consumption and music streaming revenues – or what the record industry calls the “value grab.”
YouTube has been under increasing pressure from record labels and musicians for the lack of revenues that it dispenses. In March, Cary Sherman, president of the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA), criticized YouTube, saying that it was not generating enough revenue for musicians, especially given the enormous consumption of music streams on the service. In April, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the global trade association for record labels, echoed a similar grievance.
Yet the record industry’s discontent is also partly aimed at the DMCA, which they believe makes it too easy for services like YouTube to profit off copyrighted content. In June, nearly 200 artists, along with major record labels, signed a petition calling for wholesale reform of the DMCA, particularly over the so-called "safe harbor" provisions that allow platforms like YouTube to skirt legal liability for copyright infringement that occurs on its platform.
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