Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
YouTube is changing how it handles copyright claims around brief or unintentional clips of music in an attempt to make the system fairer to video creators. In the short term, however, YouTube warns that the changes could lead to more videos being blocked entirely.
Creators on YouTube have increasingly struggled with record labels claiming copyright on their videos when snippets of music appear momentarily in the background, like from the radio of a car passing by. YouTube’s new rules don’t stop these claims from happening, but they attempt to discourage the claims by removing a key incentive for copyright holders: the ability to make money.
Now, when a copyright claim is manually filed for “very short clips” of music or for music that…