YouTube copyright claim on live opera performance

[Type 2501]

To begin with, I work in a opera production company, so we had quite a lot of recording of pass productions, staged with our own orchestra and vocal artists (without using any audio recording by others).

When I tried to upload some of the past production to the company's youtube channel, we got tones of copyright claim (sometimes over tens of airas (songs) got claimed in 1 video). Even some Mozart and Puccini prices got claimed.

 

Is there anyway way to duel with it other than asking for the mercy of those "right holders" one by one?

And what if they didn't agree with my augment? Is there any other way to resolve the issue?

 

[mbntr]

2 minutes ago, Type 2501 said:

To begin with, I work in a opera production company, so we had quite a lot of recording of pass productions, staged with our own orchestra and vocal artists (without using any audio recording by others).

When I tried to upload some of the past production to the company's youtube channel, we got tones of copyright claim (sometimes over tens of airas (songs) got claimed in 1 video). Even some Mozart and Puccini prices got claimed.

 

Is there anyway way to duel with it other than asking for the mercy of those "right holders" one by one?

And what if they didn't agree with my augment? Is there any other way to resolve the issue?

 

the copyright situation is so retarded that it could very well be that mozart is still the copyright holder...

Actually what might have happened is that the performance is similar to something, so the AI flagged it.

As I said the copyright laws make no sense and on youtube the algorythm has gone rogue

[Semper]

10 minutes ago, mbntr said:

the copyright situation is so retarded that it could very well be that mozart is still the copyright holder...

Actually what might have happened is that the performance is similar to something, so the AI flagged it.

As I said the copyright laws make no sense and on youtube the algorythm has gone rogue

Just so that we're clear: I am not a copyright lawyer, I hold no law practicing license of any kind, matter of fact. I believe this to be true of most people that you will get help from here.

Have you tried disputing the claims with YouTube directly? If so, the best thing you can do is what @VegetableStu has suggested. Get in contact with a copyright lawyer. For the time being, I believe it's best to keep your videos private/unlisted, until you're able to resolve your issues. They will be able to guide you through what is and isn't copyright protected, the laws around it, and if your works are part of a protected group, creative commons, public domain, etc.

[Type 2501]

3 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

consult a copyright lawyer. if your production company is basing off works that have been released to public domain, companies who have done the same should not have the right to claim the interpretation of such material by others as their own 

 

again, consult a copyright lawyer

Or cause Mozart is in public domain, since I am quite sure he didn't sign with any record company back in 18th century.

 

8 minutes ago, mbntr said:

the copyright situation is so retarded that it could very well be that mozart is still the copyright holder...

Actually what might have happened is that the performance is similar to something, so the AI flagged it.

As I said the copyright laws make no sense and on youtube the algorythm has gone rogue

You are right, it looks like an AI mishap. Hope those company would see the light and get it resolved quickly.

 

Thanks very much for your suggestion.

[Kilrah]

There are copyrights both on the performance and the composition. If the composition's protection hasn't expired, which is an ungodly amount of time then you still need proper licensing from the rights holder to distribute a performance of it.

 

But yeah, any claims need to be dealt with manually.

 

 

[Type 2501]

3 minutes ago, Semper said:

Just so that we're clear: I am not a copyright lawyer, I hold no law practicing license of any kind, matter of fact. I believe this to be true of most people that you will get help from here.

Have you tried disputing the claims with YouTube directly? If so, the best thing you can do is what @VegetableStu has suggested. Get in content with a copyright lawyer. For the time being, I believe it's best to keep your videos private/unlisted, until you're able to resolve your issues.

I am quite sure the contain is in public domain, I was looking for a way to quickly resolve all the claim if possible. Or else I would have to spend my day dispute all the claim one by one. We are not planing to make money out of the YouTube channel, to be honest we would like to turn off all ad.

 

Lucky that most video is unlisted for now. So nothing bad could happen to the channel.

[Type 2501]

27 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

There are copyrights both on the performance and the composition. If the composition's protection hasn't expired, which is an ungodly amount of time then you still need proper licensing from the rights holder to distribute a performance of it.

 

But yeah, any claims need to be dealt with manually.

 

 

Bad luck to me I guess, it would take hours and hours for me to dispute every claims. But thanks to you, I now got a good video to play along the progress.

[Kilrah]

For the record a friend of mine has a production company that mostly stages musicals, at a small scale (regional theatre kind) and they obviously make their own stage design, often rework/translate the music/lyrics etc. For any performance they do they still have to license rights to the show from the copyright holders, and the contracts are often very limiting. Most of the times recording is even strictly prohibited altogether since a license for that would cost many times as much.

 

So if it's the same in your field it would probably be a good thing to dig up the contracts you had for those old performances before publishing them. Your company might have signed a contract prohibiting it from doing so.

[Type 2501]

4 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

For the record a friend of mine has a production company that mostly stages musicals, at a small scale (regional theatre kind) and they obviously make their own stage design, often rework/translate the music/lyrics etc. For any performance they do they still have to license rights to the show from the copyright holders, and the contracts are often very limiting. Most of the times recording is even strictly prohibited altogether since a license for that would cost many times as much.

 

So if it's the same in your field it would probably be a good thing to dig up the contracts you had for those old performances before publishing them. Your company might have signed a contract prohibiting it to.

Lucky that 99% of our old production were written by someone who are dead long ago. So public domains got us covered in most cases. For those newer opera which we did bough the right for preforming, we don't upload video of those, because we know it could be problematic.

[NineEyeRon]

1 hour ago, Kilrah said:

There are copyrights both on the performance and the composition. If the composition's protection hasn't expired, which is an ungodly amount of time then you still need proper licensing from the rights holder to distribute a performance of it.

 

But yeah, any claims need to be dealt with manually.

 

 

What? Those magic words don’t work?

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, Type 2501 said:

To begin with, I work in a opera production company, so we had quite a lot of recording of pass productions, staged with our own orchestra and vocal artists (without using any audio recording by others).

When I tried to upload some of the past production to the company's youtube channel, we got tones of copyright claim (sometimes over tens of airas (songs) got claimed in 1 video). Even some Mozart and Puccini prices got claimed.

 

Is there anyway way to duel with it other than asking for the mercy of those "right holders" one by one?

And what if they didn't agree with my augment? Is there any other way to resolve the issue?

 

If they are claims on the production, pushback on those and file a counter-claim. They can not claim copyright on the production (mechanical rights) of something that doesn't use their exact thing. Particularly if it's performed by your orchestra.

 

For theatrical rights, you may need to individually negotiate for anything not in the public domain. But recording and putting it on youtube is a separate thing. As long as it's PD, just pushback politely saying it's PD and not theirs.

 

Youtube's entire system for reporting and counter-claiming assumes you're a baby pushing random buttons, so make sure to actually have someone familiar with copyright law actually look at everything you're using in the opera to see if there might be some, remote, claim on it, but as long as you know it's PD, nobody can claim to own it.

 

I've only ever pushed back on two things before, as they were claimed by third parties who produced covers of another rights owner's music. I never got a claim from the original rights owner, only this third party, and since it's impossible for me to have copied the third parties music (it was generated by a simulated instrument on the computer) it was pretty easy to push back on. With that said, had the first party claimed it, I would have just left the claim as-is, as deleting the music from that part of the game would have defeated the purpose of pointing out what it sounds like on that device.