When copyright protection mechanism bite the bands who own the music

[Andrew Smith]

I'm wondering if there are similar situations for audio only artists to this one with YouTube and bogus royalty/contentID claims.

Two men have been indicted by a grand jury for running a massive YouTube Content ID scam that netted the pair more than $20m. Webster Batista Fernandez and Jose Teran managed to convince a YouTube partner that the pair owned the rights to 50,000+ tracks and then illegally monetized user uploads over a period of four years.

To protect copyright holders YouTube uses an advanced piracy recognition system that flags videos or music used on users’ channels without permission.

Through this ‘Content ID’ system, infringing content can be removed or monetized by funneling ad revenue to copyright holders, which can be quite lucrative for the rightsholders in question.

https://torrentfreak.com/u-s-indicts...d-scam-211203/

[John Nantz]

There is another customer of "the system" who is dissatisfied:
[read the complete article from the link: https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-58643787 ]

Abba’s Bjorn Ulvaeus launches campaign to fix £500m music royalty problem Sep 21, 2021

Bjorn Ulvaeus said there was "no excuse" for record labels not to credit writers properly. Abba star Bjorn Ulvaeus has launched a campaign to ensure musicians don't miss out on millions of pounds in royalties. Called Credits Due, the scheme aims to ensure all songwriters and musicians are correctly identified when a song is recorded.

At present, missing and incomplete data means that about £500m is unallocated or misallocated globally every year. "It happens frequently," Ulvaeus told the BBC. "Which means that streaming services don't know who to pay."

The scheme will also ensure fans see the correct credits for songs - from the writers and producers to the session musicians and engineers.

"We want to get back to that experience we had when we opened a double-sleeved LP and listened to the songs while reading the liner notes," Ulvaeus explained. "I think that's a very valuable experience that young listeners today are missing."

The scheme will ensure that every person who is involved in the creation of a song will be "clickable in the digital liner notes", allowing you to look up every other record they have worked on. .......
[it is a long article]
Edit, Key words: about £500m is unallocated or misallocated

[Paul R Johnson]

He was very vocal about it here. He pointed out they don't actually need the money like struggling artistes do - but their income plummeted. In the UK - the royalties paid out by PRS (the Performing Rights Society - I'm a member) still seem based on CDs in the main. One of my friends had a modest hit in the 70s and got decent royalties every year, then when streaming started, his money dropped and dropped each year. He's older and totally non-computer literate so didn't even understand streaming. His music is not on spotify and the others because he didn't know he had to do this. We also have PPL - in the UK these people deal with recording royalties - so the people in the studio get money. I get a little from them, not a lot. One of my recordings was of a popular song from the 70s - and got some airplay on the BBC. I get nothing from PRS because I didn't write it, but I do get a little from PPL for the recording rights. PPL get their BBC play info so that works - but PRS and PPL have never paid me a penny for anything streamed. This is what ABBA are complaining about. Thousands or even millions of downloads and streams just ignored by the two biggest rights organisations. I do get money from my 'go to sleep' music - own compositions that are so dull people fall asleep. Maybe $20-30 a month, so not that exciting, but that's with me doing all the distribution and stiff like that, and Songtradr who I use for my own work don't do the cover versions. I've just gone with a new company and am trying them out, because they licence them for the USA - oddly, covers in the UK seem unregulated at the moment, but without the US licence, Youtube is a problem.

It's a real mess. It's broken and needs fixing. My Distrokid cancelled account took my royalties from Tik Tok and just refused to pay them to me (and loads of others) I can't do anything about it. I contacted Tik Tok and complained Distrokid were claiming my royalties. Tik Tok solved it. They removed the videos with my music on them! No wonder people are bitter.

[Andrew Smith]

You might be interested in this development: This $23 million YouTube music royalties heist is a huge reminder that online copyright is deeply flawed

Need an easy way to make $23 million? Have you ever considered just claiming music others uploaded to YouTube as your own and collecting the royalties?

That's basically all two Phoenix men did to swindle Latin music artists like Daddy Yankee and Julio Iglesias out of millions of dollars in royalties, as detailed in a new piece from Billboard last week.

According to Kristin Robinson of Billboard, Jose "Chenel" Medina Teran and Webster Batista set up a media company called MediaMuv and claimed to own the rights to various Latin music songs and compositions. In total, MediaMuv claimed to own more than 50,000 copyrights since 2017, when Teran and Batista began their scheme.

There is more at the article, and more still at the referenced Billboard source article.

Ultimately it was "an investigation by the IRS and their indictment that month on 30 counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and aggravated identity theft" which took 'em down.

This quote from the Billboard article will resonate with you. "Batista’s plea agreement revealed that it didn’t take a criminal mastermind to rob music creators of their rightful royalties. According to multiple industry sources, hustles similar to MediaMuv’s are well-known among those in the music business who work in digital rights management..."

Andrew

[Paul R Johnson]

On YouTube you have people like mr beast earning so much that they give away houses and even desert islands, yet they are totally reliant on YouTube paying them what YouTube say they owe them. You sell items on ebay and you know what you will get. Imagine ebay if they paid you three months later and just listed your sales data and you just had to trust they got it right. I had somebody claim one of my songs, I disputed it and eventually just got a note saying they have dropped their claim, not sorry, or even any details about why they thought they owned it anyway, just, they’ve closed the request. Stinks, but that’s how it is nowadays. That said, YouTube, Spotify and the others now pay me more than out official rights organisations have ever done. They are totally useless, so how much of my money did they simply miss over the years?

[Andrew Smith]

... and reports are in that it's getting worse on yet another level with the "visual claim" being put to use by schemers. Even if the footage is from NASA and therefore copyright can't be claimed by anyone.

Andrew

This Is NOT Legal!!!!! - YouTube

[Andrew Smith]

Well as they say, the wheels of justice turn very slowly ... at least until lunch time.

In 2021, the US Department of Justice launched a criminal proceeding against two men suspected of running a massive YouTube Content ID scam.

By falsely claiming to own the rights to more than 50,000 songs, the pair generated more than $23 million in revenue.

Looks like someone has woken up to the scam. The US government is seeking a prison sentence of 70 months for one of the guilty offenders.

One of the plea agreements revealed:

[W]e discovered there were recorded songs of musicians and bands on the internet that were not being monetized. We began searching and downloading these songs. Once songs were downloaded, Batista would then upload them to Y.T. as mp3 files.”

“We falsely claimed legal ownership over these songs to receive royalty payments,” Teran adds, noting that the scheme brought in millions.

Plenty more at https://torrentfreak.com/u-s-seeks-7...cammer-230623/

Andrew