Did BMI & ASCAP Commit Copyright Fraud?

What do you call it when BMI and ASCAP issue a copyright claim against a public domain song written in 1566? Is it FRAUD??? Join me as I discuss this ridiculous situation.

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[chordsoforion]

Thanks for alert viewers observing that Broadcast Music, Inc IS BMI and that both ASCAP and BMI are non-profits. Everything else goes!

[bryantwalley]

They are falsely claiming lots of things. Not just public domain. Rhett Shull got a claim on his own solo.

[TimMer]

Welcome to 2020: the entire world has gone insane and the corruption at the top has grown to an all time high.

[BassBusMusic]

I commented on this on Rick Biato's channel. It's time all the big name YT channels pooled together and knocked ever so firmly on YT's door with some kind of block of your own. YouTube will not make any change to this until their own bottom line is strongly affected.

Channels by Rick Biato, Adam Neally, Paul Davids et al hold a lot of power on this platform, having millions of subs between them. Not until YouTube's income is severely affected will they take any notice.

[taunoctua]

I got a copyright strike on a diminished chord.

[Neymarinet]

Tom Scott did a video about copyright law and its failings. Its nice to see more complaining about how bad it is.

[chrissullins]

I've seen other musicians on YouTube who said they had their own music removed. Won't be long before words, phrases, and sentences are copyrighted and you won't be able to utter them without first seeking permission or paying a royalty.

[Hellseeker]

The thing is if they are falsely claiming this, what else are they claiming fraudulently?

[photios]

Most of the fault here lies with YouTube's ContentID filter. It scans every upload against its reference database of copyrighted content submitted by the big record labels. This massive database covers millions of song performances, including commercial choirs singing public domain hymns. Unfortunately, it isn't sophisticated enough to distinguish in many cases between two different performances of the same public domain song or hymn. Two different performances of the same song can sound *very* much alike. It's a difficult technical problem to teach an algorithm to tell the difference between them, and hence your wrongful claim.
Sadly, this is a very widespread problem. In May of this year, _The Washington Post_ published an article titled, "Copyright bots and classical musicians are fighting online. The bots are winning" which echoes your frustration. I thank you for speaking out. Anyone performing public domain music who gets victimized by a copyright bot's wrongful claim needs to put pressure on YouTube to improve their algorithms to correctly distinguish between different performances of the same song. I acknowledge this is a challenging software problem, but Google is a multi-billion dollar company that hires some of the brightest minds on our planet. They can figure this out if they get serious about it.

[Scoots]

Years ago there was a copyright claim on a series of home videos by the Jones family visiting Indiana. I think it was Warner that made the claim based on "Indiana Jones". Youtube has long since lost the right to argue this case. It needs to be a change in the laws Youtube has been berated into. The platform should be protected from policing the users and it should be unfiltered. The "take down" should be a notice to the individual from the claimant and not be automatic. Each claim can be argued by the corporation with the individual youtuber or that youtuber can be taken to court by the corporation if they don't agree, but youtube should not be in a position of policing their users, and certainly not for a 3rd party. We need to roll the copyright laws back to where they were initially ... 28 years of rights protection is MORE than enough. Then we get the fundamentally broken technology patent laws we've got going now.

[Apophis]

I appreciate you addressing this publicly on this channel. It is important that people understand the different ways in which the music industry is being cheated by the greed of the powerful. I sincerely love both your songs and your videos btw.

There is lack of ethics and oversight over knowledge, understanding and copyright ownership of music is so deplorable! I'm with you. Write back and let me know!

[MeAlexSenna]

Thanks for bringing this up, keep Us posted please.

[shreddedcheese]

The only thing I can think may have happened is that there's a modern arrangement of the song (which can get registered as a new composition with ASCAP or BMI), and the Content ID system thought it was similar enough to flag, even though that's not infringement. Having dealt with ASCAP and BMI regularly at work, I've never known them to actively seek out videos to flag the way publishers and labels do, but maybe that's changing.

[XIIMonkeysMusicGroup]

They totally abuse the system! Pre-Covid, two restaurants I gigged at were shut down for live music, when all they hosted were originals bands and musicians like us!

[marketaebert]

I got a copyright claim by BMI for a song by a 17 century composer. I was completely confused as the score is in public domain and everything in the video was produced by my madrigal group. I am disputing it but don't have a resolution yet.

[multistring]

It would be great to hear, see or understand the rationale behind their (BMI, et al) claims. I’m wondering how many legitimate claims actually go unchecked. Perhaps an apology is in order? Being the year 2020 doesn’t give anyone an excuse to lose their mind. Hopefully, we can make it to 2021 and beyond with some clarity on these issues... A.K.A. “did someone change the copyright laws and forget to announce it?”

[AmbientMusicStudio]

Thanks Bill. It seems the old adage "Power corrupts..." holds true. The music industry is very corrupt in my opinion. Even when the system is functioning within it's own rules, artists get paid almost nothing for their work.

[nathanschad]

It burns me up too, if I want to play a newer song when I live stream our services I put the ccli tag in it, for that very reason. But I typically use old hymns to avoid issue. Crazy they tried to tag that.

[MishaSkripach]

BMI - Broadcast Music Inc., VCPMC_CS, FILSCAP issued fRAUDULENT claim on public domain Bach music.