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Somebody Claimed That My YouTube Video Was Theirs

So I logged into one of my YouTube channels that I use specifically for video gaming and when I clicked on the “account” link, there was a notice on my page that said “You have videos that may contain content that is owned by someone else. Please review these videos.”

I clicked on the link and it turned out that it’s only one of many of my videos. It’s a video of me playing Resident Evil 5 on the Xbox 360.

When I clicked the “Copyright Info” button, I was assuming that it was going to be Capcom or a related company who had a part in creating the game.

Well, I clicked through and it said that my video “may include content that is owned or licensed by CNET.” If you’ve never heard of CNET, they’re basically a large media company that specializes in news, reviews, downloads, etc.

What I’m guessing is that they did a review or something of Resident Evil 5 at some point and then saw the video I posted and assumed that I stole it from them. If they cared to compare my video to theirs, they would probably find out otherwise.

Anyway, I’m told by YouTube that my video is still available worldwide, but that ads would now appear next to it.

I really don’t care all that much about it, but I wanted to dispute this, just to see how it all worked.

I clicked on the link that said “Learn more about the dispute process.” The next page took me to an explanation about valid and invalid reasons of disputing a claim.

YouTube Dispute

I THINK that my reason is valid.

On the dispute form page, there are several warnings of submitting a false claim or in bad-faith. If either of these are found to be true, there could be penalties taken against the account or the account could possibly even terminated.

I submitted the dispute anyway in hopes that my account wouldn’t be terminated. I didn’t steal the content from anyone and I don’t believe CNET has the rights to it.

Anyway, that was about a month ago now, and I never heard anything back about it. I guess my claim turned out to be valid. Either that or they didn’t really care that much and just let it go.

So if someone claims one of your videos as their own, now you know what to do.

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Been to YouTube? Get Ready for a Lawsuit

Prison Fence and Razorwire

It seems that the judge presiding over the federal court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Louis L. Stanton has made one of the most idiotic decisions in the history of the internet. And guess who’s gonna take the flak? That’s right, it’s you.

Judge Stanton has ordered Google to give Viacom all of the IP addresses of any user who has ever viewed YouTube videos on the massively popular video sharing site. If Viacom is looking for such data, it’s obvious that they want to go after the people who’ve watched their videos, and will very likely take legal action. If you want more information about this horrible decision check out a much more detailed story over at Mashable.

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VH1 Must Have Had an Impact On YouTube

YouTube Annotation
If you’ve ever watched VH1, you’ve likely seen those shows where there are pop-ups that show while a music video is being played. They usually contain funny or interesting facts about the artist or band. Well, it looks like YouTube would like you to have the opportunity to create your own videos like that, by adding video annotations functionality. This will let you add text bubbles to anywhere you want within the video which can show up at the desired time of your choosing.

If you want to set this up on one of your own videos, just log in to your YouTube account, choose a video and select the “Edit Annotations” button. You’ll be able to select from three different options which are speech bubbles, notes, and highlights. So head on over and make your videos more interesting.

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Google Launches Adsense for Video

Google Video Advertising Solutions

Since video is probably one of the most popular things to do while on the web, Google has found a way to monetize it. Actually Google has had this program in pilot since last may but after lots of testing, Google’s Adense for video is now in the beta testing phases.

If you’ve noticed that some videos on YouTube have advertisements contained within them, than this is what you can expect to see on videos that are in the Google Content Network. These ads are text overlay ads that are contextually targeted to the content of your videos as well as your site. So if you are interested, visit Google’s Video Advertising Solutions page to learn more.

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Google Video Sitemap Introduced

If you own your own site, you’ve likely had the great fortune of keeping a sitemap.xml up to date. Well, now you have the great fortune of keeping a video sitemap up-to-date. Sorry for the sarcasm, it’s just been a tedious process for me in the past, especially when I come from an SEO agency in which I had to manage more than 70 clients at a time.

A video sitemap is actually a great idea.

Hopefully, most likely actually, all of the other search engines out there will follow suit and will begin to adopt this new feature. We’ll all still have to submit our videos to sites like YouTube, but now we can really get some visibility for the stuff the search engines can’t usually find.

Learn more about creating a video sitemap from Google’s Webmaster Central Blog.