This has been a very interesting week for me in terms of copyright infringement. Earlier this week, I decided to hop on OfferUp to see if there were any good deals on some camera gear. I wasn’t necessarily looking for a cage for the Sony a6300, but this one caught my attention because of the thumbnail photo. I had no doubts about it, this is the same photo that I used for a YouTube video where I reviewed the same product.
In this situation, I just found it more funny than anything that someone was too lazy to take a quick photo (even with a cellphone) and would rather steal someone else’s photo. This should be common knowledge, but don’t steal other people’s work especially when it is used in advertising and for monetary gains. That’s a good way to get a lawsuit launched at you. Obviously, there’s no gain on my part from doing this because this person is only selling the cage for $30 but the advice still stands. DON’T STEAL OTHER’S WORK!!!
They say lightning never strikes the same place twice, but I’d say that this next case strikes pretty close. Moments ago, I went to check the business email that I have attached to this website and noticed that I got an email with no subject and just a YouTube link. This email was in my spam folder so my first thought was that this was just some spammer trying to send me to a scam. Against my better judgements, I clicked the link anyways and am glad that I did because it sent me to a direct re-upload of a previous review that I made for the Fujifilm Instax Mini 90.
This situation is a little more upsetting because the uploader wasn’t just stealing one still image like the previous person, this uploader reused my entire video with watermark/logo and all. They even added their own links leading people to their online store to buy the camera. Going to the user’s YouTube account, it is clear that this person just steals other creator’s work and re-upload them in an attempt to drive traffic to their store.
As a content creator, the work that I put out represents me and my efforts. This type of theft is not something that I’m willing to accept. Of course, we live in the digital age and this type of stuff is all handled online. At this point, I’ve filed a copyright claim against this account and am waiting for a reply from Google. Hopefully, they see the obvious copyright infringement and not only take my stolen video down but reexamines the entire spam YouTube account.
I’ll add an update to this post when I get an update on the situation.
*UPDATE*
After filing the first YouTube copyright claim, it came to my attention that there were two other accounts that had done the same thing, downloaded my video and re-uploaded it to advertise for the user’s online store. I also filed copyright claims against these accounts and am happy to say that all three videos were taken down.
*UPDATE 2*
I recently received an email from YouTube saying how they’ve implemented a new copyright system where they are able to match my content up with possible re-uploads. After checking out the new system, it was apparent that my original Instax video was a lot more popular with these re-uploaders than I thought. A few of my most popular videos were actually stolen. Luckily with this new system, I’m able to file a copyright claim much quicker and was able to take all of the re-uploads down.
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