How to Deal with False Third-party Matches on YouTube

This guest post is by Jenny Dean of Floppycats.

Several months ago, I met  Michael Strange through YouTube. I noticed immediately the success of Michael’s YouTube endeavors and asked him if he could please help me out.

He was game, thank goodness, and he walked me through the steps on how to fix my YouTube channel. One of these was to address false third-party matches on the service.

Third-party matching indicates that your video is understood to infringe some third party’s copyright. You can’t monetize videos on which these matches are outstanding, so if you’re trying to make money through YouTube, third-party matches can be a problem.

Finding third-party matches

First and foremost, you might not even know if you have third-party matches. I knew I had some, but I wasn’t aware that videos that were entirely mine were flagged for copyright issues!

To see if you have third party matches on YouTube, just log in to your account and go to your Video Manager. On the left side of the Video Manager you’ll see an entry for Copyright Notices.  Select that, and you’ll see all your movies that have third-party matches.

In the list of movies you’ll see notes like “matched third-party content”. You have to address each one as a separate dispute, so hopefully you don’t have many.

To get started, click the blue hyperlink that states the reason for the copyright notice.

You’ll be taken to a screen that looks something like this:

Here you can see a general information statement about copyright matches, followed by a link that states, “I want to learn more about the dispute process.” When you select that, you’ll see some information about when you can and can’t dispute things.

Disputing the match

If, after you have read all the reasons to dispute or not to dispute the matches, you still feel that you should not have copyright issues, then you will want to dispute the claim. For example, a video that I’d created in my backyard had been flagged as a third-party match, but it was all my own content, so I decided to dispute it—and won.

To dispute a copyright notice, go to the bottom of the dispute information. You’ll see a link that says, “I believe this copyright claim is not valid.”

You will be taken to a screen that asks you to select the reason for your dispute.  Carefully select your reason and click on Continue.

You will then be taken to a screen where you will be asked to confirm that you own all the rights to the content.

Please note: the example that I am using here is not a valid one to dispute—a song plays in the background of my video that is not my content, therefore technically I cannot dispute it. I am using these screenshots to show the steps only.

After you click Continue, you will be taken to the dispute form.

Fill in the form and submit it. Then, you’ll want to walk through the same steps with any other videos that have false third-party matches flagged for them.

The dispute process

YouTube has recently improved the dispute process and will send you an email when a dispute claim has been received.

At that time you should check the status of the relevant movie and add the monetization details if necessary. You may need to manually check your disputes to see if you’re still awaiting an outcome, or some other problem has arisen.

If the dispute is resolved in your favor, it just drops off the copyright match list. You’ll need to go hunting for the movie in your video manager to then monetize it.

Unexpected matches

Like me, you can sometimes have a problem if the TV or radio was playing in the background when you recorded your video, as legally you would then be using that music in your movie without a valid license, and recording industry companies such as Sony could have a legitimate dispute against you.

In those cases, there is nothing you can do if you wish to monetize the movie, other than to remove the movie from YouTube, replace the audio track, and then re-upload the corrected movie.

Have you had third-party matches on YouTube that you’ve disputed? How have they gone? Share your stories in the comments.

Jenny Dean is the Editor over at Business Blog Writers, online SEO content writers.  She also has some of her own blogs, Floppycats, Antioxidant-fruits and Guide to Couponing. Business Blog Writers offers a YouTube enhancement service.