Unsubstantiated Claims On Your Intellectual Property
Imagine you have created your own original video with your own original content, it took you hours to create, you post your video on Facebook and suddenly a massive company that must be partnered with FB in some sort of way makes a claim that your ORIGINAL video violates their intellectual property because apparently 30 seconds of your video content matches their video content somehow???
Well this is what just happened to me. See the screenshot below.
At first I did not really read that they claimed that 30 seconds of my video matched theirs, I first thought it was the image in the screenshot that they claimed was the violation and the reason I send them a link to where I obtained the image legitimately.
After my response I realised that they mention that 30 seconds of my video apparently matches theirs and they blocked my video from being seen in 259 countries.
The company that made the claim is Universal Music Group which is a massive and super rich organisation.
If you look at the dispute I completed in the screenshot I would like you to notice that I made use of the maximum characters I could. So that is all the characters that Facebook allows you to defend yourself which makes it almost impossible. I then decided to make use of the comments section on FB underneath my video in order to explain the situation further.
And what was the outcome five days later ..................
So here is my question?
They made an unsubstantiated claim on my intellectual property which kicked in straight after I streamed my video live on MY OWN FB PAGE. So just as all the traffic started coming my way my video got blocked in 259 countries and remained blocked for a period of 5 days.
What consequence are there for big organisations that makes unsubstantiated claims on your intellectual property and causes you to lose out on all your traffic? If I was the one that did that to them, they would probably sue me for loss in revenue.
I guess the answer is probably, nothing will happen to them. It can probs be compared to the high school kid that bullies the primary school kid.
This lead me to write this post "Do Not Build Your Business On Social Media" as it can be compared to building your business on sand instead of on a solid rock.
Has any of you ever experienced this? Unsubstantiated claims on your intellectual property? Do you think there is anything that can be done when big organisations makes unsubstantiated claims on your intellectual property?
Ps. Should anyone want to watch my video that got flagged to see for yourself how ridiculous the claim was, then you are welcome to navigate to my YouTube channel as posted in my WA profile section. The video is called: "Jobs During Coronavirus"
Recent Comments
16
Very Interesting. You handled this well. I think we do need to speak out when this happens and fight for what is yours. Thanks Jen
Thanks, Jen. I think you are right. I was considering just deleting my video coz I could not be asked to put up a fight. However I then felt that no, this is a principle issue and for this reason I did decide to stand my ground although I felt it was more time spent on something that was not going to bring me a lot of traction anyways.
However, this was a principle issue. I am upset that companies like UMG however are making unsubstantial claims all the time it seems and gets away with it. It even makes me reluctant to even make use of social media much as I cannot be bothered to constantly have to defend myself against false claims from big companies that wants to infringe on my intellectual rights without any consequence whatsoever.
I will now rather spent the majority of my time creating articles, building my online real estate where I have 100% control over my intellectual property.
You can bet that this is not the first instance of this thing happening. I suggest you look around and see if you can find someone else who has suffered the same thing from UMG.
You have done a great job here of highlighting the problem and this will find some traction on the web.
Now to pursue it further. I am not suggesting anything that you have not already thought of, and I hope you follow up.
Unfortunately, I would say passively at first, as an active program would probably draw unwanted attention.
With any luck, you will find others and start a group and proceed from there.
Good luck.
Alex
You are so correct in what you are saying as others seemed to have unwarranted claims from UMG as well. I have come to the conclusion Alex that social media promotion does not provide the ROI I currently feel is worth my time. I am of course still going to make use of social media to bring awareness of my brand, but article creation will now be my focus.
Thank you for taking the time to provide me with your very valuable feedback. Wishing you the very best of success!
That is crazy and I am sure you lost major traffic. This would fall under the category of your lose and nothing can be done about it. Thanks for sharing and sorry this happened.
Yes, this is pretty crazy lol and the first time this ever happened to me on Facebook. I still do not understand how this response was triggered? It did make me realise however that although social media may play an important supplementary role to bring awareness to your brand, the primary focus should always be to build your real estate (website), as a priority, where you have full control. Creating content that belongs 100% to you where you have full control provides the best ROI.
See more comments
Oh my, I don't think I would have handled it as well as you have. I am pleased that it has all been sorted for you, but, yes... how rude and inconvenient for you.
All the best for your future videos.
Cheers
Jo
Many thanks, Jo! I think the lesson learned is that you get a much better ROI creating articles for your website building your online real estate where you have full control over your intellectual property, than relying on social media promotion. I will of course still make use of social media to bring awareness of my brand, but will much more focus on article creation and a lot less on social media marketing.
Interesting how the tides turn, and in turn guide us to the right direction in life... It sounds like it has put you back on the right track.
You have got this!
Kia kaha
Jo
Absolutely! Thanks Jo for the positivity. Yes, it is actually a good thing this has happened coz it just confirmed what I already know. But you see sometimes it is more convenient to try justify spending more time promoting on social media than is necessary to try justify to yourself that you have been working hard, but instead all I have done is choose what is more convenient as is much easier to share on social media all the time than doing the hard work doing research and writing more article content which is what I should be doing a lot more of.
So this is certainly a good thing that happened - just what I needed to finally give me the push I needed to focus on what I knew I should have been focusing on much more, all along.
I am pleased you have found the positive in it all. Thank you for sharing your experience, as I will be doing videos for my niche and will be heeding caution after reading your experience.
All the best with moving forward :)
Good luck with that. I am wishing you the very best with your video creation endeavours!
Thank you, and to you too.