If you receive a copyright claim on YouTube and your content is blocked, all is not lost.  It can be reversed and I will show you how I did it for one of my videos.

Video blocked after 4 years

YouTube allows copyright holders to either place adverts on your video or even completely block it if you use any elements of copyright protected materials. Should you try and upload a full Star Wars film, don’t be surprised to get the video blocked from the owners, Disney.

I uploaded a video 4 years ago that had the full visuals from the opening sequence of the 1967 TV classic, The Prisoner (owned by ITV), however there was a unique element to it; the music. I created an original theme tune and tested my ability to see if I could make music fit an existing visual sequence. There is a fuller story with more reasons behind why I created this that can be found on the Unmutual Website, dedicated to all things Prisoner and Patrick McGoohan related and it can be found here.

When I originally uploaded the video I quickly received a notification from YouTube that ITV claimed copyright. They could place adverts on the video if they wanted to and that I would not be entitled to any monetisation. It also stated that they were not going to place a block on the video and it could remain visible on YouTube. That was perfectly fine with me and entirely expected. I never had any intention of placing any adverts on my video to make money. It was purely something that I thought some Prisoner fans might enjoy and I published it on the 50th Anniversary of UK broadcast of the first episode.

Four years passed and we were about to hit 2,000 views. The 29th September 2021 was the 54th Anniversary of the first broadcast so we tweeted about our now 4 year old video:

Today marks 54 years since #ThePrisoner was released.

Four years ago we shared our demo music for a Prisoner #ComputerGame to celebrate the 50th Anniversary.

Should we do another one for the 55th Anniversary?🤔https://t.co/CS9CgO2CTh

— Jeppstones (@Jeppstones_) September 29, 2021

The very next day, ITV blocked the video in a number of territories:

Fair Use

YouTube have published their guidance on when copyright-protected material can be used:
“Fair use is a legal doctrine that says you can reuse copyright-protected material under certain circumstances without getting permission from the copyright owner”.

“Courts typically focus on whether the use of copyright-protected material is “transformative.” This means whether the use adds new expression or meaning to the original material, or whether it merely copies from the original.”

I disputed the claim by clicking on the SELECT ACTION drop-down list in the image above. I stated that I believed that the video was “transformative” and added “new expression” as it was an original piece of music and that 100% of the original audio had been removed.

Copyright holders have 30 days to respond to a dispute, after which, Youtube remove the claim.

I submitted my dispute at 12:28PM yesterday:

Just over 1 hour later, at 1:37PM, the copyright claim had been released:

It is good to know that content creators can successfully challenge copyright claims and get their videos unblocked.

And as you are probably wondering, here is the video in question:

You can follow me on Twitter here: https://Twitter/PeterJeppstones