YouTube is planning to come to the rescue of some of its content creators should they come under heavy pressure from copyright holders. The goal is to provide up to $1 million in legal fees should a case require it.
There’s a U.S. copyright law known as The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and it is designed to protect copyright holders and their contents, whether they may be on web or offline.
“We are offering legal support to a handful of videos that we believe represent clear fair uses which have been subject to DMCA takedowns,” according to YouTube copyright lawyer Fred Von Lohmann.
Here’s the kicker: any video that is successfully protected by YouTube’s legal team will be placed in the YouTube Copyright Center to help highlight fair usage policy.
Still, even if some YouTubers have a strong defense against takedown requests of their videos and have been brought into a lawsuit, YouTube might not be able to help. At the moment, it’s not certain which YouTubers will be favored, and there is also no explanation as to why this new policy cannot protect everyone on the platform.
Von Lohmann is hoping that this move by YouTube will make for a better ecosystem where creativity is respected and rewarded.
Over the years, YouTube has been one of the major focuses for DMCA video takedowns. This is due in part to some users going as far as to upload full-length movies on a regular basis. However, the DMCA also takes into account the fair use policy that allows YouTubers to make clips from news broadcasts, TV shows, video games and others things to create original content.
Despite this, copyright holders do not always follow the fair usage policy rules, and on many occasions request a takedown of several videos on YouTube despite the laws of the DMCA.