Copyright is currently the bane of internet creators all throughout streaming platforms and the real world as people are no longer allowed to perform songs unless they are permitted to do so.
This law allow is making becoming famous online increasingly difficult and even making and prompting personal, self-made music twice as difficult as there is evidence of a creator making a song by himself and then getting it claimed. Its claim, a remix of his own song. And it is not only music creators that are getting copyrighted, gamers and bloggers are getting copyrighted for music in the background or even passing a cafe that is playing music.
However, famous people such as James Blunt and Sir Paul Mccarthney side with this law, wanting to protect their musical property and creativity. This is famously known as the dreaded article 13 which was stated to not only enable stricter rules on copyright, but also ban the use of memes in Europe. On internetsociety, it stated that the “information society service providers” will be required to use “content recognition technologies” to scan videos, audio, text, photos, and code to the detriment of open-source software communities, remixers, livestreamers, and meme creators. This meant that even spilt seconds of footage could be claimed for featuring something that was copyrighted and could even destroy people who use covers for songs on the internet.
In the UK, we have an actual law for copyright that includes music, film, books and other forms of media. This being called the ‘The Copyright, Design & Patents Act 1988‘. This act allows people to protect their creative property and grants the creators the right to control how their work is viewed and broadcasted. This lasts your entire lifetime and then 70 years after your death, unless these songs are for public access e.g. Happy Birthday, nursery rhymes and that one Beetles song.
According to OpenMicUK, ‘Copyright protects creators from the unfair exploitation of their work‘. The UK Legislation is defined in far greater detail here, it explains the Copyright, Design & Patents Act 1988 in far greater detail.
News about copyright law has been quite hectic and at most times, it is negative. When you dive into the world of YouTube, you will notice that a lot of YouTubers are getting Copyrighted over what seems like the most farfetched things. For instance, one YouTuber was copyrighted for the music that was playing in a Cafe that he passed on the street where he was blogging, another created a song and was copyrighted by a remix of his song.
The copyright on YouTube
On YouTube, people have argued that the reasons for copyright strikes are extreme. All kinds of people on YouTube have experienced a copyright strike on their videos, the most popular have been the cases of two YouTubers
Paul Davids, a YouTuber, who in 2018 recieved a copyright infringement on his own music. Here is an article explaining the situation in better detail.
TheFatRat, a YouTuber, who creates music and recieved a copyright strike on something that he made by himself and is his own creative property, this is the most well known copy strike as the came from somebody who had remixed his song.
SmellyOctopus, another YouTuber, who recieved a copyright strike on his own voice when testing out a microphone during a stream.
Pewdiepie, the most subscribed YouTuber, who’s gaming videos for FireWatch were attempted to be claimed due to the fact that the owner of FireWatch did not like him due to his controversy.
YouTube explains in better detail of their copyright rules on their help website, this can be found here.
ChloeMusicScene 