To Avoid Demonetization, YouTube and Twitch Streamers Sing Badly Over Copyrighted Songs

To avoid copyright claims, "YouTube creators and Twitch streamers have been performing terrible a capella covers of popular songs," reports the Verge: React videos are a huge part of YouTube's current culture; people lift popular movie trailers and film their reactions to what's happening on-screen. These videos are typically monetized... In recent months, YouTube creators have run into copyright issues while making TikTok reaction videos, where they collect cringey TikTok clips and either react or provide commentary on them. [T]hose TikTok videos contain music from artists signed to labels like Sony and Warner, and those labels will issue copyright claims, preventing creators from monetizing their videos... TikTok videos include less than 10 seconds of music, yet that can still be enough to receive a copyright claim -- on TikTok itself, the music is all licensed from the labels...

To work around that, creators like Danny Gonzalez and Kurtis Conner have started replacing the music with their own singing. Gonzalez and Conner half-heartedly sing songs like Linkin Park's "In The End" and Imagine Dragons' "Believer" while the corresponding TikTok video plays on screen... It's a little painful to hear, but ultimately a very fun loophole in the copyright system that YouTube has to enforce... The hope is that major labels like Sony Music or Warner Music Group can't claim copyright infringement, or at least that the singing won't trigger YouTube's automated system for finding copyrighted content.

Why??

[PeeAitchPee]

Who the fuck would actually spend their time watching this shit? Apparently there are more idiots than we thought.

Re:

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Yep, and the idiots are milked for all they're worth. That's what monetization is.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the fuck would actually spend their time watching this shit? Apparently there are more idiots than we thought.

They are taking advantage of the recommendation algorithm of YouTube, the one that selects the next video to automatically begin playing in a never ending parade of videos that will stream one after another, like chain smoking cigarettes and ironically just about as addictive to bored people with too much time on their hands. These types of videos are popular among those who fire up YouTube and watch whatever is served up for hours on end, playing on the natural inclination of our brains to seek out and cra

Re:Why??

[Megol]

Some spend time on youtube watching shit, some spend time on slashdot...

Re: Why??

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah just like your generation ignored everything, including homework - can you imagine kids ignoring homework, that's surely unthinkable! - in favor of listening to that rock or roll music.

God you're a fucking moron. Thank God humanity survives regardless of morons.

Re: Why??

[aliquis]

You did the same with porn, speeding and shootings.

Re:Why??

[dissy]

Who the fuck would actually spend their time watching this shit? Apparently there are more idiots than we thought.

Yes, you make an excellent point:
All of your interests and past times are wrong, and you should feel bad for partaking in them. They reflect poorly on you.

I also highly agree with your posts moderation.
It is very insightful about you to admit these negative character traits of yourself.

Perhaps you should list out your hobbies and interests? That way we will all know what opinions are the correct and proper ones to hold, and that all others are incorrect and shameful.

TL;DR You're eventually just going to have to accept that fact that not everyone else is exactly like you.

Re:

[Hognoxious]

All of your interests and past times are wrong

Not as wrong as you.

past times = history
pastimes = hobbies

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[Gilgaron]

You don't need to try to watch it to end up with it on: I saw a band had released their new album on Youtube, so I gave part of it a listen. Come back later to listen to the rest and their is an autoplaylist that looks like it is the album, but it contains more than that: so after a few songs, then there are interviews with the band which were interesting, then some reaction/review videos which consisted of watching a guy bob his head and mutter for a bit, followed by a cursory review of the track. He pr

Re:The songs are copyright

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Yes, but the automatic copyright violation detector thingy doesn't trip over bad singing. Youtube needs real human moderators to detect this kind of violation, meaning it's costly and about impossible to scale up for Youtube - which is is exactly the point of this tactic.

Re:

[Cipheron]

Dude, he said upload. He's streaming.

Re:

[Mal-2]

And then if they do start getting shut down, they'll change the lyrics and call it parody. Weird Al does not need permission to do what he does, although he generally asks for it simply to remain on good terms with the artists. Sometimes they regret giving him that permission (Nirvana, Coolio) but they have no power to make him retract it.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that since it is a cover it is no longer the recordings copyright that applies.
The song writer can claim copyright infringement but the record company can't claim that their recording was copied.

Now if you do this with a song that already is a rehash of something older (Like House of the Rising Sun.) it becomes very obvious that the copyright claim is bullshit.

Re:

[Cipheron]

The contents might be owned by a different company for the bad-singing version. For example, the tune and lyrics are owned by the writer of the song, not the record company.

Additionally, any interpretation remains the property of the creator. In this case, the bad-singing version is owned by the bad-singer.

The social bargain of copyright has failed.

[Whatsisname]

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

Doesn't sound like there's any progressing at all, besides legal trickery.

Re:

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

People want to get paid for a work which uses copyrighted stuff. Where is the trickery?

This isn't some "I would never have paid for it anyway" argument. This is straight out copyright violation by someone deliberately profiting from it.

Re: The social bargain of copyright has failed.

[Anonymous Coward]

10 seconds of music is absolutely not copyright infringement. If you follow that line of thinking then it's a small leap to start charging people every time some says or types the name of a song, book, or movie.

Problem is lack of support for fair use

[Solandri]

Fair use allows [copyright.gov] using parts of copyrighted works without permission for the purpose of reviews, or when only a small portion of the copyrighted work is used, or how transformative the use is (are you just regurgitating the copyrighted work, or using part of it to create something entirely new).

Unfortunately, Youtube's demonitization policy completely ignores fair use. If you use a 5 second snippet of a copyrighted song in your 15 minute video, the copyright holder can get your video demonitized (all the money the video makes goes to them instead of to you). At the very least, the system should limit the demonitization to the duration of the copyrighted clip, so 5 seconds of a song in a 15 minute video only results in the song copyright holder getting just 0.6% of the ad revenue.

Re:

[religionofpeas]

If copyright holders only got paid for the percentage of time their work was used, you'd see people showing a full length music video followed by 2 hours of them scratching their balls.

YouTube could pay only for the portions of the video that were actually watched.

This may work in rare instances

[SmaryJerry]

People still get demonetized just for singing or even humming songs. MrBeast got a video demonetized for singing less than 3 seconds of a a song. Yes, just singing it, and the person claiming the copyright had 1 video uploaded. But because Youtube lets the claimant decide whether it is fair use or not, random people like that can just do whatever they want, and particularly the big studios are basically free reign to choose what lives and what dies. There was also a guy who got demonetized for playing a son

Key then is pre-emptive strike

[SuperKendall]

MrBeast got a video demonetized for singing less than 3 seconds of a a song. Yes, just singing it, and the person claiming the copyright had 1 video uploaded.

This suggests a strategy - make videos where you sing yourself, then immediately after upload claim copyright on any official videos that claim the song... you could imagine YouTube not allowing inverse copyright actions to be filed without renewing them both more carefully, or possibly the first always taking precedence.

Or they could pick public domain music

[Sigma 7]

There's plenty of royalty free music around, no worry about licensing even when the song is correctly identified by an algorithm, and even in the unrealistic case where the algorithm can detect remixes of existing songs.

It can be pubic domain from copyright expiry, because the author decided so, or otherwise be close enough to public domain that there's no need to worry (e.g. Creative Commons license)

Re:

[Leuf]

You would think so, but if there's some asshat singing over the top of that music somewhere they claim that your use of the song infringes on their use and unless you are willing to sue them they win, even though it's their use of the music that is against the terms. And it's dealing with that crap that has caused some people who used to allow royalty free use of their music to stop doing so because it became too much of a hassle. The only safe bet is to use music straight from the YouTube music library w

Re:

[SuricouRaven]

You've got to be careful about expiry. I compiled a big collection of expired music for my website, and found lots of things you can get caught out on.
- A remastered or restored release counts as a new work.
- What is expired in one jurisdiction may not be in another.
- In the UK, weirdly, it's possible for recording of music to be public domain but the music itsself and the lyrics to both be still covered by copyright. You can play the recording, but you make a derivative work. I think. I'm not sure how this

Re:

[Dan East]

You're missing the entire point. TikTok allows people to create 15 second videos with officially licensed music clips for the background music. People share these videos, etc. That is all legal, licensed, etc.

What the YouTube personalities / commentators are doing is creating 10-15 minute long episodes where they pick out TikToks that are somehow exceptional (good or bad) and showing them while commenting on them. In a 15 minute episode they might have a dozen TikToks they show and talk about. Sometimes

Shady Companies already make copyright claims

[SmaryJerry]

There are companies out there that basically mass copyright claim people hoping to steal their money. Twitch streamers and youtubers are approached by those companies so they can basically just attack any video with that person in it and try to claim it. The person gets a percent of the claimed video and the company takes a percent. It is insane how bad the system at Youtube is right now. You can't let the people trying to take more money decide whether something is fair use. That is just insane, in every case the claimant will say it isn't fair use just to steal the revenue from a video. It happens tons even to the biggest streamers in the world.

I’m really conflicted about this

[93 Escort Wagon]

Normally I am strongly against the overzealous and unfair misuse of copyright that is regularly practiced by the major labels. But I’m also of the opinion that these gawd-awfully-stupid “react” videos - and their creators - need to die in a fire.

Is there any way both groups can die in a fire?

Re:

[Aighearach]

Is there any way both groups can die in a fire?

Yeah, just remember to savor your victory in the final moments when WWIII comes and everybody burns.

Re:

[Musical_Joe]

I have to agree.

When watching other people watching something became "a thing", it felt like the entire world was disappearing up its own arsehole.

Re:

[Kyr Arvin]

The I figured out what reactions were and why they were a thing, is that, at least for the ones "doing it right," they're trying to forge a connection between viewer and reader. IE, they're you're "friends," whether they are in reality or not. Have you ever enjoyed showing a movie or TV series to someone, watching it with them even though you've already seen it because you want to experience it again with then? And you wanted to see how they liked the show? A reaction is sortof an Internet version of that.

T

Rights to use the copyrighted composition?

[ZipK]

They may avoid licensing issues with the recording, but they're going to need licenses to use the underlying copyrighted composition. BMI, ASCAP, SESAC, SoundExchange and others will no doubt be coming around to discuss performance, reproduction and synchronization licenses.

Um no

[slashmydots]

It's not a loophole. It's considered an unauthorized cover of the song and with most music labels, that means they can't claim it but you're not allowed to put any ads on it at all. You can go to the youtube audio library, look up the name of a song, and it will tell you the rules about directly using and doing a cover of it.