Mike Hudack

DMCA is punishing me for using my own material

Alright, so I run a Web site named HackCollege. It’s a blog for college students. We’ve also produced video segments in the past.

While we could take the “We’re poor college students” approach to music and images, we have always tried to take the high road and never use copyrighted materials in our videos. Several of our videos have recently been invited to participate in the YouTube rev-sharing program.

There are some songs that a friend made for us as a favor. There was no record of the transaction other than a simple verbal conversation. He just had the tracks laying around and was just gave them to us. But because we don’t have a paper-trail tying the song rights to us, YouTube is punishing us. They invited and then subsequently denied us to the rev-sharing program. For using music, we are automatically viewed as potential criminals until we prove ourselves innocent (which I’m not sure quite how to do). The inadequate automation is hurting both YouTube and us (neither of us are making money on the video).

The video in question is the “How to Build a Homemade A/C.”

The DMCA is not to blame for this. In fact, the DMCA should prevent this problem. It’s the music labels who are doing this: they’ve forced YouTube into a preemptive strategy for resolving music conflicts in exchange for more favorable music licensing terms / no lawsuits.