Anyone successfully with a copyright claim on YouTube can probably talk about the complicated, confused, and prolonged nuisance that comes with them. Fortunately, the platform is launching a tool to proactively notify creators of possible copyright issues with their videos before they are published.
On Wednesday, social media analyst Matt Navarra tweeted a screenshot of the feature, which started to be released in February, that screens a video for “any copyright issues that may restrict your visibility” while it is being uploaded.
The screenshot doesn’t show much about how this tool, dubbed Checks, will work, but other reports speculated that it uses YouTube’s automated system Content ID technology which is currently used by copyright holders to scour the sea of YouTube content and find videos or music they own. If a video that infringes your copyright is uploaded, they are allowed to block the entire video from playing, or they can show ads in the clip to earn revenue from the offender’s channel.
In an email, a YouTube spokesperson confirmed the new Checks feature, which can be accessed on YouTube Studio, sknowing that the feature is intended to help creators upload videos that comply with their rules. The company also published Details about the new pre-publication tools in a post on the community website.
G / O Media can receive a commission
The “informal” Creators Insider, which is done by people working on YouTube, have a few more details about the broader pre-publication verification system in the video below. While all creators can use this type of scanning for possible copyright issues, creators who are showing ads on their channels can see how suitable for advertisers YouTube evaluates your video before uploading.
If it worked well, Content ID would be a fantastic system, but as the Electronic Frontier Foundation showed in a report on YouTube’s technology last December, it’s one that historically left creators falsely flagged for copyrighted content, or flagged multiple times for a single video.
Even though Checks doesn’t use Content ID, it still doesn’t promise to be foolproof. As noted in the screenshot from Navarra, the results of the scan “are not final”. Even if a creator is allowed to post a video, it can still be hit with a copyright claim later.