Can I put a video of me playing Morrison's Jig on YouTube?

[OldSausage]

So the other week in the song a week group we were all doing Morrison's Jig. Here's my version, nothing special.



Today I noticed while checking out my videos, a little note by it saying: "Matched third party content." When I clicked on that it said:

Your video may include the following copyrighted content:"Morrison's Jig", musical composition administered by: One or more music publishing rights collecting societies

and then below

What does this mean?

Your video is still available worldwide. In some cases ads may appear next to your video. Please note that the video's status can change, if the policies chosen by the content owners change. Learn more about copyright on YouTube.
This claim does not affect your account status.

And then a couple of links to click saying whether I think this claim is valid or not. So, I've no idea really - anybody know? And what gives in general? "Ads may appear"?

[Folkmusician.com]

It sounds like Youtube has an agreement with the publishers to be able to allow your video, if they give the publisher a portion of the advertising proceeds (or some sort of compensation). You should be fine.

[Ed Goist]

I don't know about all that copyright mess, but that sure is some nice playing on a great sounding instrument.
Well done.

[katpiercemusic]

That's weird. Isn't it a traditional tune? Publishers can't make any demands or agreements if it's traditional... unless you're playing a particular arrangement, which you weren't. Weird, but if they didn't take it down, then you can post it.

[foldedpath]

Standard "I Am Not A Lawyer" disclaimer, but I think you can safely click on the link saying the claim of infringement is not valid. Here's some history on the tune from the Fiddler's Companion web site (a useful resource for looking this kind of thing up, as well as the tune database on thesession.org):

"MORRISON'S JIG [1] (Port Uí Mhuirgheasa
This well-known tune is named after the renowned Sligo-born Irish-American fiddler James Morrison, who recorded in the 1930's, however, Morrison did not compose it but rather had it from a Dromlacht, County Kerry, accordion player (a member of his band) named Tom Carmody who knew it as "The Stick across the Hob" (Taylor, 1992). Carmody learned it from his father, Maurice. ”

That info (if accurate) establishes a tune "written" well out of current copyright protection, and what most folks would consider "traditional" at this point.

Just for grins, I looked up the tune in the Harry Fox database (the outfit that licenses recordings here in the USA), and there are four separate listings for Morrison's Jig, all by different people not named Morrison or Carmody. I believe these are for specific arrangements of the tune, not the tune itself. For example, one HFA listing is for an old recording by the guitarist Davey Graham.

If you're not copying someone else's arrangement of the tune note for note, then I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be in the clear. But again, IANAL. There are hundreds of videos of people playing Morrison's Jig on YouTube, and your upload probably just triggered an automatic note recognition program that thought something in your intro sounded like a different tune that's under aggressive corporate copyright protection (i.e. some recent, major pop hit).

[Don Grieser]

I got flagged for posting Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring, but only calling it Jesu. Apparently there's a pop band named Jesu or pop band with a song called Jesu.

[greg_tsam]

I'd bet they are keying in off the title and not an "automatic note recognition" program. (Do those things really exist, FoldedPath?) For sure it's public domain but maybe youtube thought you were playing the latest from LadyGaga's Bluegrass/Old Time album.

[OldSausage]

Well, thank you very much Ed.

I'm gonna click the link that says "I believe this copyright claim is not valid" and see what happens...

Here are the choices you get:

Morrison's Jig
I believe this copyright claim is not valid because:

I own the CD / DVD or bought the song online.

I'm not selling the video or making any money from it.

I gave credit in the video.

The video is my original content and I own all of the rights to it.

I have a license or written permission from the proper rights holder to use this material.

My use of the content meets the legal requirements for fair use or fair dealing under applicable copyright laws.

The content is in the public domain or is not eligible for copyright protection.

I chose the last one. Then they made me click another box that said

I am sure that all the content is ineligible for copyright protection, and I want to dispute this claim.

Am I sure? Well, I'm not really sure, but I'll pretend I am. Then they asked me for a reason, so I quoted what FoldedPath said.

Then I had to type my real name in full to represent my signature. Now I feel like I'm in a court (caught) of law. To my statement they appended the words

I have a good faith belief that the claim(s) described above have been made in error, and that I have the right(s) necessary to use the contents of my video for the reasons I have stated. I have not knowingly made any false statements, nor am I intentionally abusing this dispute process in order to interfere with the rights of others. I understand that filing fraudulent disputes may result in termination of my YouTube account.

I clicked "Submit dispute". A dialog box came up asking "Are you sure you want to dispute this claim"? Seems like they really don't want me to dispute it, no? I clicked "Yes".

Now my dispute has been submitted. I'll let you know if there is a chapter 2.

[OldSausage]

I got an email back from YouTube almost immediately saying:

One or more music publishing rights collecting societies has reviewed your dispute and released its copyright claim on your video, "Morrison's Jig". For more information, please visit your Copyright Notice page

[foldedpath]

I'd bet they are keying in off the title and not an "automatic note recognition" program. (Do those things really exist, FoldedPath?)

They sure do. Here's an example at the most basic level, and something people here might actually find useful, if you haven't heard about it.

A few days ago I ran across a streaming audio version of "The Choice Wife/An Phis Fhliuch" on flute that I liked, and wanted to study for the ornamentation (I'm learning how to play Irish flute, badly). It was a demo sample on the web site of my flute's builder (Forbes Christie/Windward Flutes). The player (Daniel Payne) followed The Choice Wife with another neat slip jig I didn't recognize, and it wasn't identified on the site.

I wanted to ID that second tune, so I captured it with Audacity, saved to an MP3, and asked my fiddler S.O. if she recognized the tune. She didn't, but then she whipped out her iPhone, loaded something called TunePal, and held it up to the cheap speakers connected to the kitchen laptop computer where I was playing back the file.

I was sure it wouldn't work... there were lots of ornaments around the melody line. But sure enough, TunePal identified that second tune as "Elizabeth Kelly's Delight," also known as "Catherine Kelly's" and a few other variations. It turned out that we had several versions of the tune under the Catherine name by various player's like Martin Hayes and Liz Carroll in our MP3 collection (all paid for, by the way, either rips from purchased CD's or MP3's from Amazon).

My S.O. has astounded me by using that same iPhone trick to identify tunes in actual sessions, just by recording a snippet of an unknown tune.... "Hey, anyone know the name of that thing we just played?".... and her phone magically identifies the tune. Well, most of the time. It ain't perfect, it's just amazing that it works at all.

TunePal is a little $5 audio analyzer app aimed at trad musicians. The big legal outfits with an interest in protecting the most valuable intellectual properties have much more sophisticated software. And they can afford to run networks that do nothing but scan through new YouTube uploads 24/7, and do that tune-matching trick based on simple analysis of pitch sequence and comparing that to a huge database.

I don't think it's quite there yet for video (i.e things like unauthorized movie captures), because image recognition is trickier. If someone tries to upload, say, a cellphone capture of the new "Brave" movie from Pixar, they'll probably be ID'ing it by looking at the audio track. Much easier to process and compare with existing files in a database.

That IP protection process can be mis-used when the software goes haywire on legitimate public domain tunes, like it probably did, in this case. And obviously there are hundreds of thousands of uploads on YouTube that are technically copyright violations -- covers of pop songs, etc. -- but you usually see only the more valuable IP's taken down.

[journeybear]

Well, now! Learn something new every day around here! I thought the story was something like what Greg had said, as I have run into that before - youtube is indeed keen on unique titles, which can be a bit silly sometimes when lots of people post the same thing - and that may still be a factor. But the note recognition technology - I didn't know we were there, but I guess it was only a matter of time, in the digital age. BTW, OldSausage, I am super-impressed with how quickly the youtube experts got back to you to give you the go-ahead.

[foldedpath]

I got an email back from YouTube almost immediately saying:

Good on ya, for following through and not being scared off by that first message! Well done. And some nice playing there.

[Bertram Henze]

I had this once. I deleted my video from youtube immediately, changed the name of the file to upload, uploaded again and chose the same title as before - the whole claims thing was gone.
So, I guess at least part of the story is file names. Just a simple automation process to get maybe 90% of real legal claims off their hands. We amateur youtube players may fall for this easily because calling your file, e.g., "morrisons.mov" is very probable - I have come to choose unlikely file names (e.g. "m0r150n.mov") for this very reason.

[journeybear]

But doesn't that affect searchability? Not sure how well tags work.

[foldedpath]

Bertram, I don't think it's as simple as a filename scan. It might have helped to change the name in that one case, but I think the IP identification is based on file content scans, not the submitted file name. I could be wrong about that.

I did a little more digging, and it looks like Google/YouTube itself is doing the first pass on scanning submissions, and then the IP holders may be running their own routines on top of that (which would explain take-downs after Google has already had material up for a while).

Here's what Google's "ContentID" system does, according to their Stats page:

Content ID

• Content ID scans over 100 years of video every day
• More than 3,000 partners use Content ID, including every major US network broadcaster, movie studio and record label
• We have more than eight million reference files (over 500,000 hours of material) in our Content ID database; it's among the most comprehensive in the world. The number has doubled in the last year
• Over a third of YouTube's total monetized views come from Content ID
• More than 120 million videos have been claimed by Content ID

That's along with some other mind-boggling statistics on that page, like the fact that "72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute."

That's.... staggering. No wonder they're building server farms in places where the the local climate is cool and dry, and land is cheap. If you think about that upload rate, there can't be any simple process based on filenames, or actual humans looking at the file content. They're doing brute-force, automated data comparisons against a reference database.

Anyway, here's a link to the ContentID page if you want to dig into it, and see what it looks like from the IP holder's side, and what Google is saying about their policies.

[journeybear]

Sounds like a fun read. And it looks like I was wrong about the uniqueness of file names, or things have changed since the last time I looked. There are a bunch of videos with the name "Morrison's Jig."

[Ivan Kelsall]

OS - That is one heck of a piece of nice mandolin playing & the instrument sounds superb.What make is it ?.I'd never heard of 'Morrison's Jig' before but it's right up my street.Thanks for putting it on here - you just made my week !!!,
Ivan

[mandotim1955]

UK joke; Morrison's Jig is the tune formerly known as Safeway'sJig....

[Jimdalf]

UK joke; Morrison's Jig is the tune formerly known as Safeway'sJig....

I never made that connection, it makes Morrison's jig sound a bit cheap though.

[Beanzy]

UK joke; Morrison's Jig is the tune formerly known as Safeway'sJig....

Or it's what you do if you get taken short at the checkout.

[Marty Henrickson]

I don't know about all the youtube and safeway stuff (we only have the Tannehill Opry and Foodland here in Woodstock), but that is some very fine playing there, David.

[Francis J]

OS, thanks for bringing this up. I just checked my own Youtube video manager and had a similar notice, not for "Morrisons Jig", (which I also have recorded), but "The Galway Hornpipe". I'm following your lead on this and have committed myself to a daunting legal wrangle! Vive la musique libre!

[Bertram Henze]

If the name of the tune is the problem, you can always do what the Irish do in such a case - take evasive action and resort to the name in Irish:
Port Ui Mhuirgheasa
Now where is the IP holder calling dibs on that...

If all else fails, do what Irish musicians frequently did and invent a new name for it, such as
- David's Favourite
- The Glass on the Nose
- Sausage before Breakfast
- The Mold on the Mike
- ...

And if they ever invent software to recognise a tune by sound detection, they'll have one hell of a time classifying Irish tune versions, and David is among those least in danger of getting caught.

[mandotim1955]

I really like your intro to this, David. There's always a temptation with dance tunes to simply 'have at it' and dive straight in. Much better your way. (Explanation of UK joke above; Safeway in the UK was taken over by Morrisons, another UK supermarket company)
Tim

[OldSausage]

OS - That is one heck of a piece of nice mandolin playing & the instrument sounds superb.What make is it ?.I'd never heard of 'Morrison's Jig' before but it's right up my street.Thanks for putting it on here - you just made my week !!!,
Ivan

Thanks very much, Ivan, and all you guys for the nice comments The mandolin is my 2012 Silverangel, made by Ken Ratcliff.