Google responds to music biz critics, points to $2B it has paid out

Rightsholders want more money from YouTube, along with changes to the DMCA.
The back-and-forth war between YouTube and the music industry continues, this time with a new privacy report from Google. In the company's "How Google Fights Privacy" report released today, the company details data showing that YouTube has paid $2 billion (£1.5 billion) to copyright holders through its Content ID system. That's double the payout it announced in 2014, which covered the payments received by the music industry since Content ID was introduced back in 2007.

Content ID is YouTube's way of scanning user-created content for copyright infringement, and it also has the music industry up in arms. When a creator uploads content to YouTube, the Content ID system detects if there's any trace of copyrighted material in the user-generated content, such as music. The copyright holders have the power to use Content ID to either report, block, or monetize videos that are identified as containing copyrighted content. In Google's report, YouTube claims that 90 percent of the more than 8,000 rightsholders choose to monetize that content, and 50 percent of the music industry's revenue from YouTube comes from this monetization.

While Google and YouTube have consistently reported how much they pay copyright holders, the music industry claims that the $2 billion it has received is not enough and that the Content ID process is inefficient. It's true that Content ID hasn't been completely accurate in the past; it erroneously flagged content that has been protected under fair use, such as Let's Play videos that include gaming content owned by gaming companies. Some reports also note that Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) estimated that Content ID "fails to identify upwards of 40 percent of the use of UMPG’s compositions on YouTube."

Google notes that it has spent $60 million on Content ID since its inception, reiterating the fact that YouTube has become a revenue-generation tool for the music industry. That argument is unlikely to sway the recording industry, which has recently been pressing for changes to the DMCA "Safe Harbor," which provides legal protection to Google and other service providers who remove content identified as infringing when notified by the copyright holder. Recording Industry Association of America President Cary Sherman has called the DMCA an "antiquated" law that locks artists and rightsholders into "below market" deals.