As Christine pointed out already, yesterday was a bad day in the Sidepodcast office. In part because due to what can only be described as "some confusion" from the people at YouTube, we were served with a copyright infringement notice.

That kind of thing is never going to set your day off well, especially when it turns out to be completely false. Or at least we think it has, YouTube appear to have taken a vow of silence over the whole affair.

Just an ordinary day

The morning started pleasantly with some non-taxing file uploads planned for the latest video of Inside Track, when just after 11am, the following email arrived:

It was a copyright claim notice from YouTube's content identification team, and the important bits read (emphasis mine):

Motors TV has claimed some or all visual content in your video F1 Barcelona Race Preview 2008.

As long as Motors TV has a claim on your video, they will receive public statistics about your video, such as number of views. Viewers may also see advertising on your video's page.

That's pretty much all we had to go on. No further details were given as to which part of the video was the issue, nor if this was an automated or manual process. Neither did it tell us much about Motors TV, other than they'd probably be making some money out of this.

As a matter of principle

At Sidepodcast we've always been pretty careful to make sure we recognise content owners whenever possible. Be it photographs, audio or video content, and you'll often see a hefty list of credits at the end of our podcasts. We've never had any problem with previous shows, and this week's wasn't hugely different from the rest.

As a matter of course, YouTube do offer a 'disputes' process should we feel in the mood to disagree with such claims, but without knowing exactly which part of the video was the subject of the claim, defending yourself is quite difficult.

Long story short is we spent a great deal of time contacting all the relevant people and checking / rechecking to ensure we weren't in the wrong before submitting our complaint.

Thus far we've heard nothing back.

Nobody's talking

Interestingly a copyright claim warning notice that had appeared on our account this morning, has now vanished, so presumably we're in the clear. But who knows for sure?

We've no idea what the problem was, nor can we be certain that it won't happen again. Couldn't YouTube have at least contacted us to acknowledge receipt of the dispute and / or to confirm that all is now well?

We've wasted a good many hours and are absolutely none the wiser. Ontop of this, we may now have to rethink our approach to content distribution, because after spending 20 - 30 hours working hard to put a show together, it's sure not nice being called a thief at the end of it.

Innocent until proven guilty? That's not the YouTube way.