This article was inspired by two questions from Jerry Thompson. He first asked whether the extra media shipped by Apple for Motion and Final Cut Pro X was royalty free, and, second, why was YouTube flagging legitimately licensed music as a copyright violation?
IS APPLE’S MUSIC ROYALTY FREE?
Here’s how to find the specific agreement.
2. Search for and select Final Cut Pro X, or Motion. In this example, I’m using the license agreement for Final Cut Pro X.
3. Click the App License Agreement text button in the top right corner of the App Store.
As the text in the EULA is not selectable, here’s a screen shot of the applicable section.
So, if you need to prove to a client that you have rights to the material from Apple that you are using, you now have the proof.
However, Jerry also pointed out a second problem. YouTube has a warning message that is emailed to you when you are posting copyrighted material.
This message is particularly embarrassing if you send a completed project to a client, only to have them get this flag when they post your project to YouTube. It makes us look like musical thieves or cheapskates, even when we have properly licensed the content.
To understand why this warning message exists, we need to go back into the murky history of YouTube. YouTube was founded in February, 2005, by three former PayPal staffers. It began solely as a video sharing site and it exploded onto the web. People started posting everything – including copyrighted music.
The major music companies – Universal, EMI, Capital, Warner, Sony, et al – became seriously alarmed at the amount of copyright infringement YouTube represented and threatened legal action. In response, YouTube created Content ID, which is a means to digitally identify copyrighted music which was uploaded as part of the video into YouTube.
Allow ads to be placed on the video, where the ad revenue is split between YouTube and the record company; and, in a few cases, with the video poster.
Replace the audio using Audio Swap. This is a feature that YouTube provides that “swaps out” (replaces) the copyrighted music with other music that YouTube obtained the rights to.
NOTE: Audio Swap was originally seen as a way to resolve copyright disputes. However, with over 150,000 tracks in the YouTube library, this has become a way for various artists and music companies to license their music and make money from it.
This system of Content ID and Audio Swap work fine for music that is owned and licensed by one company – think the major record labels. However, it totally breaks down when working with music licensed to multiple sources – think royalty-free music.
In royalty-free music, the composer sometimes licenses the music to a variety of different companies. In this instance, YouTube’s Content ID recognizes that the music is copyrighted, but has no ability to recognize where the track came from. In other words, you can be the legal purchaser of royalty-free music, with a license to use it in your production, and YouTube will flag this as a copyright violation.
Actually, this isn’t an issue of copyright violation, per se, but rather a confusion of who has properly licensed the music for distribution. The problem is that whatever action is taken next is entirely up to the person that holds the copyright, not licenses the copyright. Theoretically, in the example above, if BFM Digital decides at any time to block distribution of their musical content, they can do so, and (as the message states) it is up BFM Digital, not the person that licensed their music, whether or not to monetize the video through advertising.
Giving that decision-making power solely to the copyright holder, while failing to provide proper checks to ensure the accuracy of those claims, is also what results in absurd cases like this, where Rumblefish effectively removed a man’s video from YouTube based on a music copyright claim, even though the video didn’t contain any music at all; just the sounds of birds chirping.
The problem is that Content ID improperly flags licensed music as a copyright infringement – leading to embarrassment for producers and editors that have legitimately licensed their music from a reputable company.
That said, as more music artists look for ways to maximize their revenue on their creations, this is likely to grow. The good news is that, as it does it will put more pressure on YouTube to address this issue once and for all.
So, here’s the short answer. You cannot prevent YouTube from emailing you that your music violates copyright. But you CAN send a copy of your music license – a receipt of purchase – to YouTube with a request that they remove the ads and remove the Content ID flag.
Share your thoughts on how this should work with YouTube. And, as always, I’m interested in your opinion.
Great source of information for copyright and FCPX music usages. Do you have any suggestions as to what I should put in the description part of the post that will communicate that the music used in a video is licensed and permitted through Apple?
This is a REALLY good question, because I don’t think anyone human reads those comments and I don’t know how to flag music that is royalty free.
This has caused problems for others in the past. If any reader has a suggestion, I’m happy to share it.