And we won’t back down

Hey you. Ya you, the music labels of the industry. Enough is enough. I’m here with millions of others to fight the fight for FAIR USE! You’ve gotten away with the nonsense of harassing the wonderful people who bring the best of the best to their audiences, only to be plagued with so called infractions of your rules. They’re tired of it. So are we.

Different countries/regions have different rules about when it’s OK to use material without the copyright owner’s permission. For example, in the United States, works of commentary, criticism, research, teaching, or news reporting might be considered fair use. In the case regarding the Professor of Rock, every video he has produced falls under the Fair Use Act, yet he and others such as Rick Beato, continue to fight against claims brought against them. While many of these claims come from the music industry, lately illegitimate ones are being spawned by no-names simply trying to make a quick buck.

You may say, well so what. If they ain’t legit, what’s the big deal? Well, that’s where it gets sticky because any strike against you, counts. Doesn’t seem fair, or right? You got that, but as you’ll see, a strike is a strike is a strike.

What happens when you get a strike

When you get a strike, you’re told via email. You can also choose to have notifications sent to you through your mobile and computer notifications, and in your channel settings. We’ll also tell you:

• What content was removed
• Which policies it violated (for example harassment or violence)
• How it affects your channel
• What you can do next

If your content violates our Community Guidelines, here’s how it affects your channel:

Warning

We understand mistakes happen and you don’t mean to violate our policies — that’s why the first violation is typically only a warning. To have this warning expire after 90 days, you can take an optional policy training. However, if your content violates the same policy within that 90 day window, the warning may not expire and your channel may be given a strike.

Sometimes a single case of severe abuse will result in channel termination without warning. If you think we made a mistake, you can submit an appeal.

Optional policy trainings

Policy trainings are short in-product educational experiences based on the specific Community Guidelines policy you’ve violated.

If you receive a Community Guidelines warning, you can access the policy training from your Studio account anywhere you typically check your policy violations. This includes the Studio dashboard and the Content tab. You’ll also see a link to open the training from the email and banner notifications. Note: Not all Community Guidelines warnings are eligible for policy trainings.

If you complete an optional policy training, your warning will expire after 90 days. The 90-day period starts from when the training is completed, not when the warning is issued. If you violate a different policy after completing the training, you will get another warning.

Repeated violations of our policies– or a single case of severe abuse– may still result in the termination of your account. We may prevent repeat offenders from taking trainings in the future.

First Strike

If we find your content doesn’t follow our policies for a second time, you’ll get a strike.

This strike means you will not be allowed to do the following for 1 week:

• Upload videos or live streams
• Start a scheduled live stream
• Schedule a video to become public
• Create a Premiere
• Add a trailer to an upcoming Premiere or live stream
• Create custom thumbnails or posts
• Create, edit, or add collaborators to playlists
• Add or remove playlists from the watch page using the “Save” button

Your scheduled public content is set to “private” for the penalty period duration. You have to reschedule it when the freeze period ends.

Note: Penalty starts from the date of acknowledgement.

After the 1-week period, we restore full privileges automatically, but the strike remains on your channel for 90 days.

A strike may also result in losing access to advanced features. Learn more about how to regain access.

Second Strike

If you get a second strike within the same 90-day period as your first strike, you will not be allowed to post content for 2 weeks. If there are no further issues, after the 2-week period, we restore full privileges automatically. Each strike will not expire until 90 days from the time it was issued.

Third Strike

3 strikes in the same 90-day period may result in your channel being permanently removed from YouTube. Each strike will not expire until 90 days from the time it was issued.

Note: Deleting your content doesn’t remove a strike. We may also issue a Community Guidelines strike on deleted content. You can learn more about when we retain deleted content in our Privacy policy.

If your Official Artist Channel gets a Community Guidelines strike, the channel will be suspended and become a standard channel. Learn more.

I never understood this bullshit if you’re playing by the rules. First off, how many of us have heard one of the YouTubers play a song we’ve forgotten about or a tune we’ve never heard before and said, “Man, I love that,” then ran out to buy the music or download. They’re doing the artists and the labels a HUGE favor by turning us onto their songs. Hey, it’s free advertising. I wish someone would do that for my books. I’d give them a big hug and a kiss and thank them profusely for the plug! You get an accusatory letter? Well hell, you’re on your own. You have to prove that you’re NOT guilty and it’s not an easy task. Remember you are fighting against a huge industry with mega money and mega lawyers.

Listen to Rick’s recent video, How Major Labels Continue to SCAM YouTubers. He makes it easy to understand the ridiculous process.

If you’re reading this and not aware of the issue with Fair Use, here’s some information to help you.

Fair Use comes from Section 107 in the Copyright Act allows for some uses of copyrighted works without the need for licensing. However, they must fall under the following purposes:

1. Criticism
2. Comment
3. Teaching
4. Scholarship
5. Research

Even if you claim to use it for one of these purposes, it is still possible to lose an infringement case. The court is the one who decides whether something is fair use or not, NOT the user or the author. The court uses a series of guidelines commonly referred to as The Four Factors to determine if something is a fair use or not:

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit, educational purposes

• ​​​​​The purpose of the work is usually categorized in the same way as the list above.
• The nature of the work is usually to determine whether something is transformative. Did the user dramatically change the work so that it takes on a different meaning? An example of this is parody, which is considered a form of criticism or commentary and is generally considered fair use.

2. The nature of the copyrighted work

• ​If the copyrighted material is informational, scientific, or factual, there is generally more room to use this than artistic works. After all, facts cannot be copyrighted.

3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole

• ​If a person uses a short excerpt from a work, it is generally less of an impact on the author and their market than if they use the whole work.
• Quantity is not always a factor, however. The courts also consider what the “heart of the work” is. If a short bass solo in a song is incredibly unique and immediately recognizable and an artist copies only that line, a court could rule that it is stealing from the heart of the work, and therefore taking away from the impact of the original work.

4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

• This is often the most considered factor. If someone steals enough of a person’s work that it adversely affects their market, a court is more likely to rule in the favor of the original author.