(This is a re-blog from my Medium account, in case you came to this website without context)
Seven years ago, Believe Music was dumb enough to try and claim they own the copyright to a piece of background music used in a bunch of my YouTube cooking videos.
I blogged about it back then, which elicited an apology from the company and put a stop to their attempt to illegally steal my content — https://jackiem.com.au/2018/06/13/how-i-deal-with-fake-youtube-copyright-claims-by-believe-music/
TLDR: The piece of music in question? It’s called “Smells Like Summer”, by a musician named Del. Which is a “No Copyright” song listed in the Audio Library — No Copyright Music channel.
I even captured a screenshot of a public statement by Del, who said the copyright claims were not coming from him, and that they were fraudulent —
And on my end, I made sure each video’s description gave proper attribution to the music —
So, open and shut case, no?
Well, after a 7-year reprieve, it’s déjà vu — dumb Believe Music has now been replaced by dumber We Are Era — another so-called content rights management company that thinks they can go around claiming copyright on content they clearly don’t own.
And they are being enabled by YouTube’s system of tackling these kinds of claims, because they are presumed the rightful owners from the get go, while we the content creators are presumed guilty and are made to jump through hoops and lodge appeals as to why they should effectively cut us some slack and not steal our ad revenue.
We Are Era claim they own the exact same piece of music I’ve previously proven they don’t.
This is how they go about it —
Step 1:
I get a bunch of these notifications about their initial claims (while I was on holiday in Malaysia, which meant I was on the road, didn’t have easy access to my laptop, and had to submit the appeals on my phone — and if you know me you know I HATE typing on my phone, which made me even more angry).
Notice the wording from YouTube’s team which immediately assumes they are right and we’re the pathetic crims —
In response, I submit “appeal” after “appeal” on every single video for them to release their illogical/fraudulent claims — which makes me sound like the needy one and you KNOW I hate being needy. A needy, pathetic crim, no less.
Step 2:
Surprise, surprise — after up to 30 days during which time my revenue is on hold (all two cents of it — yes I am that petty because I know they count on people not sweating the small stuff), they REJECT my appeals –
Again, notice the wording — “The copyright owner”. We’re still guilty until proven innocent. They’re still presumed to be the rightful owner.
And I get a warning from YouTube that says (I’m paraphrasing) — if I choose to appeal one final time, and the “copyright owner” (ie. We Are Era) rejects it again —
i) I will get a copyright strike on my video.
(What does a copyright strike mean? It means, three strikes and you’re out — ie. my YouTube channel could get removed.)
ii) We Are Era can sue me.
What effect does this have on most YouTubers, especially if they’re young and inexperienced and think they need thousands of dollars in lawyers’ fees to fight this? They back down.
So We Are Era steals their ad revenue and that of an incomprehensible number of YouTube channels. No wonder they’ve grown so fast over the last few years.
But of course, I’m nothing if not Hakka. So I submit final appeal after final appeal, using the same evidence in each one, referencing my prior blog post about Believe Music. This is a copy-paste of what I write in my submissions—
I’ve previously published an article on Medium about this same piece of music, claimed by a different company. It contains a screenshot of the response from the real music copyright owner confirming he made it a copyright-free piece of music. Here is the article, and all options are on the table if you maintain this fraud and refuse to release your claim — https://jackiem.medium.com/how-i-deal-with-fake-youtube-copyright-claims-by-believe-music-b9cb9067fff9
Step 3: We Are Era BV releases the claim.
How magnanimous of them — or maybe they decided it’s not worth their lawyers’ fees fighting me in court over two cents.
I don’t know if We Are Era actually read what I write in my submissions and are suddenly persuaded by the evidence I provide, or if they are just playing a stupid game of who blinks first.
I’m leaning towards the latter for the following reasons —
1) they continue to lodge new claims on videos which use the SAME piece of music on my YouTube channel. Sometimes within minutes or hours. This has dragged on for a month, so it’s not like they needed a day or two to remove Smells Like Summer from their music assets database after seeing my evidence.
2) in my latest submission, instead of the copy-paste of my argument above, I just wrote — I’m done with this. You’ll be hearing from me.
And guess what? They released their claim after “assessing” this non-argument.
For the record, since I like to cover all bases and there are always brown nosers out there who try to pander to big companies in the hope of getting a job or whatever (get a life, you sellout saddos), I did contact their digital rights management team the other day —
Did they respond within 24 hours? Initially, yes.
But then they wanted me to do even more work on top of the weeks I’ve spent appealing their copyright claims — could you send us links to all your videos we’re claiming on, and “if applicable” (???!!) we will release them?
I said no, you’re not making me do your work.
They replied — well, we can’t see them at our end — it must be either that you have your videos set to private (wrong) or it’s a YouTube bug.
Read: It’s everybody’s fault but ours!!
So I sent them the link to what I thought was the sole outstanding video they were claiming — and it was released within 24 hours.
No follow-up email from them to say — hey, we fixed it, sorry to trouble you, it won’t happen again because we are going to (implement whatever stupid steps are required to make sure it doesn’t).
Nada. This makes me even more angry.
Especially since within minutes of that claim being released, I get an update on another outstanding appeal (which I didn’t realise was still unresolved) —
When will this madness stop? Do I have to create a website for We Are Era BV and blog about their practices there?
I mean, I’ve already registered the domain and set up the hosting. So yeah, when I say “you’ll be hearing from me”, I’m not kidding.
If you’re someone who’s been stuffed around by We Are Era, get in touch — you know how to reach me.
Jackie M.
