The Rise Of ContentID Trolls: Dan Bull Has Someone Claim His Music, Take His Money, Issue Takedowns

from the that's-bull... dept

Hopefully you know who singer Dan Bull is by now. We've written about him many times. He's written and performed a bunch of songs about topics that we're interested in (and recently composed the awesome new theme song for the Techdirt Podcast (which you do listen to, right?). Dan has been able to build a career around giving away his music, and letting others do stuff with it. But he keeps running into ridiculous issues with YouTube's ContentID system. There was the time his video got silenced after another singer used the same sample he did, and then claimed the original work as his own. Or the time he got his video taken down because another rapper, Lord Finesse, was pissed off that Bull was criticizing Finesse's lawsuit against yet another rapper, Mac Miller. While YouTube has been a key place where Bull has built his audience, his run-in's with bogus claims and other problems even led him to write an entire diss track about ContentID.

And, wouldn't you know it, he's having yet more problems with it. As we've discussed, in the last few years, there's been a rise in a new breed of trolls, known as ContentID trolls, who claim to hold the copyright in music that they don't have copyright in, and then use ContentID to "monetize" other people using that work for themselves. There are a number of companies and middlemen that help them do this, including one called Horus Music, which has become the perfect tool for ContentID trolls. The trolls take someone else's work, sign up with Horus, upload that other person's music, claim it as their own, and then start making claims on other people's videos. Free money.

That's what just happened to Dan Bull -- who actively encourages people to use and share his own music (over which he claims no copyright restrictions). A fan of Dan's reached out to him, after a video he had made received a copyright claim, supposedly covering a song that the fan had used from Dan Bull. Bull reached out to Horus Music, telling them that its user, "DrewMCGoo72" was claiming copyright on other people's music, and asked the company to investigate the situation, and to explain "how this happened, and what exact steps will be taken to prevent such a thing from occurring again."

The company issued a weak apology, saying that the DrewMCGoo72 account had already been suspended but "this must have been missed." And then they tell Dan (who encourages people to share his music) "It is a real shame that people feel that it is acceptable to steal someones music!" Except this isn't about "stealing music." This is about filing bogus copyright claims and claiming revenue or harming individuals who used music that they knew to be without copyright restrictions. Dan responded to Horus noting that he wasn't satisfied with the company's response:

Horus Music's system has been exploited with the following results:

A) An anonymous stranger has walked away with revenue from fraudulently claiming my music as their own, facilitated by Horus Music
B) A child has received a copyright claim through Content ID from Horus Music and as a result has removed his 100% legitimate video out of fear of the consequences
C) I look like a hypocrite and a dick for telling kids they can use my music, and they then receive a copyright claim on their videos for using the very same music

You say you can only apologise - is an apology really all you are going to do?

Horus' only response was that since the kid took down his original video, the company can't do anything to release the claim "but I assume we aren't claiming it any longer."

It seems pretty clear that this is not the only time this has happened, since you can find other examples of Horus being used in this manner. This seems to raise a pretty serious question about how those companies are allowed to continue using the ContentID platform. After all, ContentID has a three strikes program for people who receive copyright violation claims. Why doesn't it have a similar three strikes program for those who abuse ContentID to claim copyright over projects they have no right to?

Either way, we'll leave you with Dan's song about ContentID, as it seems only fitting:

Filed Under: claims, contentid, contentid trolls, copyright, dan bull
Companies: google, horus music, youtube