That relies on their detection actually detecting the right piece.
I once recorded myself playing Beethoven's "Pathetique" sonata, mvt 2. It gave me a strike for a recording of Beethoven's "Moonlight" sonata, mvt 1.
edit: of course, in both cases, the thing is public domain, and no company has any right to claim copyright on it. The fact that YouTube lets them is fucking criminal. And it was the piece itself that copyright was being claimed on, not the recording.
I really wish there was some form of user protection in regards to DMCA. The claimant should be required to face penalties for false claims.
IP holders are not damaged by stolen content as significantly as smaller users who have had claims made against them, regardless of legitimacy.
There are protections against false DMCA claims. I think a false DMCA claim is actually perjury.
The thing is though, the vast majority of claims on YouTube are not DMCA. YouTube has their own extra-legal system called Content ID. Where a DMCA claim carries the force of law and requires the allegedly infringing content be removed from the platform, claims under Content ID are essentially a contract with YouTube, and they give the claimant the choice of taking the video down, muting it (if the allegedly infringing content is audio), or monetising it and taking all the money for the claimant. They can also do different things by region, which is why at least historically a lot of videos were taken down in Germany but available elsewhere.
The number of times it's handed me a copyright strike for recording tunes that are >400 yrs old is simply tiring. Used to be infuriating, but now I'm just tired lol
So the composition and the performance are two separate things. Sure the music was written and composed a long time ago and if you were to play your own version that would be fine. But the recording you have is not that old and has it's own copyright attached because they have transformed the public domain composition into their own performance.
The wild part for me, though, is when I basically played the basic Greensleeves on the lute from memory in a livestream, then slipped into playing Francis Cutting's version (the best, IMO, the elegance of the compound meter is just badass) after the first playthrough, again by memory, I was copyright struck after the fact twice, with a strike for each, one after the other.
TBF the proper way of doing it would be to improv it into your own direction, which I did afterwards and didn't get struck for, but it's just crazy to me how much the recording industry tries to clamp down on anyone performing anything even vaguely sounding like a preexisting recording. I contested the strikes, largely standing on principle that I was doing the performing myself and that the music itself was ancient and they were dropped.
Longest wait on a song was 15 years, with 3 years of searching on reddit. The artist uploaded the song one day, and it was found. It turned out that he became a dentist instead.
A thread with no answers referencing a dead website. Dead website also has no answers but speculation. One person posted "mediafire. com/?xfj7p38y97z8dey - 04 Fly.mp3" which is likely either the same track, the actual Jars of Clay song, or possibly a virus. I couldn't get the link to work.
(Not linking to it, but) a music piracy website which has the track listed under Jars of Clay, but no copy of it available.
What a mystery. The only idea I have is that someone figured they could "publish" their song by putting it on piracy websites under Jars of Clay's name, but the background vocals make me doubt that. I'm not sure someone would have the resources to do that but not to publish.
Yeah, that first forum post was also by me. My best guess is it was a track that got recorded but never released, then found and falsely attributed to Jars. Might remain a mystery forever, though.
I once played Samsung Tune in one of my videos (it's now deleted because I felt like it) and I immediately got a copyright claim saying it was anything but Samsung Tune.
I guess that song is where the ringtone originated from.
[Paneled meme featuring text paired with images of a brain where it becomes increasingly glowing.]
Panel 1
Search the Song by lyrics
[Image of an X-ray of a person facing the left of the panel. Their brain is visible in the picture, and it is substantially smaller than the person's skull.]
Panel 2
Search the song by humming
[Blue diagram of a person facing the right of the panel; their brain has several glowing areas lit up in purple.]
Panel 3
Use Shazam
[The person's brain is now almost completely glowing; it emits bright white light and the image is now filtered in red-brown.]
Panel 4
record the song, post it on YouTube and wait for copyright strike to tell you which song you stole
[Diagram of a person now facing the bottom left corner of the panel; the brain glows bright blue, and it shoots out bright blue, pulsing beams of light.]
I like the fact that a couple of times I've printed misheard lyrics, there were sites dedicated to that. I believe the last time it was something from RHCP that I've seen misattributed to another band.