Fairwhat?
Can you imagine watching a YouTube video of a sneaker review, or a makeup review, or any review for that matter, and it actually not showing any footage of the product being reviewed? How boring would that be? I’d listen to the verbal critique of the product, but if I can’t physically see the product being reviewed then what’s the point?
Something similar can be said about the YouTube genre of reaction, critique and review videos. These videos consist of a YouTuber simply reacting to a video, showing a small snippet of the video, then beginning to commentate and add their comedic opinion about said video. It may not seem enjoyable, but the way these creators react to the videos and how they rip into the original material makes it a free comedy show.
However, an increasing problem with these videos is that they are becoming harder to find on YouTube. Why, you may ask? Copyright striking. Copyright striking is when an individual or organisation submits a formal complaint to YouTube regarding a violation of their copyrighted material, in the hope of getting that specific video removed.
It seems reasonable to submit a copyright strike if someone uses your video or copyrighted material without your permission, right? The answer is yes, but also no. And this is why a lot, and I mean a lot, of copyright strikes are submitted due to the lack of knowledge surrounding ‘Fair Use.’ Now, the average person would have no clue what Fair Use is, and that’s understandable. Organisations and other YouTuber’s that decide to submit a copyright strike but don’t understand the laws of Fair Use is where it becomes a serious problem.
Let’s say that a YouTuber’s channel is primarily about reaction or critiquing videos. They need to show the material they are reacting to so that the audience can follow along. How much they show is where Fair Use comes into play. Fair Use is a law created to reduce the burden on creators and allow them to build on each other’s work, allowing them to reuse, remix, critique, and parody limited portions of others’ work without the need to secure explicit permission. Now this definition may seem very vague in some areas, which is exactly the problem. How much is a limited portion? This question has landed numerous creators in hot water with copyright strikes and even a million dollar court case.
YouTuber ‘PaymoneyWubby’ posted a video called ‘YouTube STILL does not care about Fair Use’ in late 2018, where he goes on to explain how his original video of him reviewing TikTok videos got deleted due to copyright infringement.
This copyrighted material was the TikTok videos themselves. However, as he was reviewing the product, or TikTok videos in a comedic way, it was well within the Fair Use guidelines and therefore should not have been deleted. As a result, he lost all monetisation for the future on that video, which could have been between $2000 — $10,000 as it was well within the million views range.
As he was a smaller YouTuber at the time with only 100,000 subscribers, he didn’t have the money or mass following to take this unlawful copyright strike to court. This is an example of how big organisations and YouTuber’s use their power to abuse and literally destroy smaller creators work that is well within the Fair Use guidelines. However, another YouTuber by the name of ‘h3h3 productions’ faced a similar scenario regarding a copyright strike surrounding Fair Use, but in his case, it got settled in court.
Back in 2017, h3h3 productions uploaded a video reacting to a self-scripted, fitness-themed short film starring Matt Hoss, in which h3h3 criticised him for his portrayal of women in the video. After uploading the video, Matt Hoss copyright struck it as it consisted of clips from his original video. As a result, Matt Hoss took h3h3 to court where h3h3 emerged victorious.
However, h3h3 still had to deal with the financial stress they endured over the course of the past year and 5 months. In just the first month of the lawsuit, h3h3 had to pay more than $50,000 in legal fees.
As they stated in one of their videos, they had to use most of their life savings to pay for legal expenses, which inevitably took a toll on their mental health. After this long ordeal, h3h3 productions shared their success on Twitter as this was a monumental event for YouTube and for smaller creators surrounding Fair Use.
Now this court case doesn’t help any YouTubers like PaymoneyWubby who’s videos have been removed and are no longer able to generate money, but it is a step in the right direction. Sadly, not all YouTubers have the money and millions of subscribers like h3h3 did, so large/popular YouTube channels are able to bully smaller creators and abuse the copyright strike system.
If YouTube continues to allow these organisations and larger creators to continuously abuse their power and take down smaller creators’ work, then YouTube will no longer be about testing the boundaries of creativity, but will be bland, boring and generic. After reading this you may feel like ‘so what, I don’t even watch these types of videos on YouTube, so why should I care?’ Once these organisations and large creators continue to take down smaller creators’ videos, what’s to say they won’t find another loophole in another genre of videos on YouTube? What’s to say shows like Saturday Night Live or Ellen won’t be able to be put on YouTube due to them talking about different companies or showing certain videos? It’ll be like a snowball effect and once it gets going, it won’t be stopped. YouTube needs to improve the copyright striking system and be more specific around Fair Use, it’s that simple.
