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The Think Media Podcast
369: Avoiding YouTube Copyright Strikes: What Every Creator Must Know
00:27:21
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, before we jump into the show, I wanted to give you a heads up that my free YouTube strategy class is available right now on demand@thinkmasterclass.com on the class, I reveal the one YouTube strategy we use at Think Media to generate over 330,000 views every single day. So if you're new to YouTube, this will help you start right and avoid mistakes. And if you're a YouTube pro, this training will help you multiply your growth. This class is 100% free, and you can watch it now on demand@thinkmasterclass.com now, let's jump into today's show. Your YouTube channel could be in danger if you don't understand YouTube copyright, if you don't understand fair use, and if you don't understand your rights, then your YouTube channel could suffer as a result. Today I have Ruslan KD, a Christian YouTuber whose channel almost got deleted. And he's going to be breaking down all the lessons here he's learned from this crisis and ultimately how it was turned into an opportunity and a chance for you and I to learn. Ruslan, welcome to the podcast.
- [01:08]
B
Hey, man, thank you so much for having me again, bro. Big, big fan of yours for almost a decade. So I'm super humbled that you'd have me on again.
- [01:15]
A
Well, excited to talk in a couple part series, but I want to really help people because there's so many questions about fair use, about copyright strikes. So can you walk us through exactly what content triggered YouTube's action against your channel?
- [01:30]
B
So we do a combination of live streaming, slash live podcasting, reaction, and some video essay. So it's like a, a mixed style of content. And so when we're doing reaction stuff, sometimes that could be chopped into like, almost like a video essay. Other times it could be me on the screen reacting to it live. It just really depends on the video. And we've, I mean, we've reacted to everybody from Ben Shapiro to Jordan Peterson to Joe Rogan, and we never really had many issues with anyone. Got a couple issues with Jubilee reacting to some of their conversations, and we've never had any issues with Joe Rogan ever. We would sometimes get like a claim where they want to split the revenue. We'd get a claim that it can't be monetized and always just replied back politely. In the YouTube strike system, where they're claiming not strikes, but claiming content id. And we gently reply, hey, guys, this files within fair use. This was probably automated. Sorry for the mix up. Could you please lift this? And they've Always, always, always, always lifted it. No issues. And again, this is one, one of two channels out of the dozens and dozens that we've reacted to that's given us issues. Well, apparently around the time where one of his clips was taken out of context by MSNBC and chopped up in a way that made it look like Rogan was reacting to Kamala Harris and almost endorsing her, they basically spliced up parts where he was celebrating Tulsi Gabbard, and it made it sound like he was celebrating Kamala Harris. They took. They. They went nuclear and they decided to just strike a bunch of stuff. And we kind of got caught up in the crosshairs of that. Woke up one morning to not claims of adsense, not saying videos can't be monetized to 2 copyright strikes. Now the YouTube system is 3 crappy right? Strikes and your channel is deleted. We woke up to two copyright strikes, and we'd never had anything like this happen before. We've never even caught a copyright strike before. This is the first time anything like this has ever happened before. And so that jolted me, and I went down a pretty scary process of trying to deal with it in good faith and not even knowing if it was coming from Joe Rogan or not. And did he even know about this? Is this even authorized by him? Sometimes there are false copyright strikes by people who don't own the material. Like that could happen in the YouTube system. Unfortunately, you're guilty until proven innocent. And we went through a very messy process of that. Thankfully, it got resolved and I can get into more detail as you want me to. Sean.
- [03:57]
A
Yeah, so if you're listening to this and you're new, there's two different things. And, Ruslan, you might know more on this, but you mentioned content ID claims versus copyright strikes. So content ID claims is actually oftentimes an automated system, and the copyright owner might track, monetize, or block the video. There's no penalties for it. The copyright strike is a manual takedown request, and it actually puts a strike on your channel. And if you get three copyright strikes, then your channel can potentially be deleted. And you were in a countdown of what amount of time.
- [04:32]
B
So you get, I want to say, seven days. If you get three copyright strikes, your channel is deleted in seven days. And so we got two. I challenged those two the same way I always do. Hey, we think this is a mix up. This falls within fair use. We were big fans of Joe Rogan. Nothing here is out of context. We have seen him use the same format. We actually Built a lot of our live podcast Reaction, Reaction model from watching Joe Rogan did it, who was kind of early and gently replied. And then we woke up and we got a response basically saying, well, because you had links to your Patreon that you're not allowed to use fair use, unless it's strictly for educational purposes. And we're like, that's not true. Because we all follow all these other channels. They have Patreons, they have products. This is weird. So then we kind of pushed back on that, and we woke up to two more copyright strikes. So now we're at four copyright strikes. With an official notice from YouTube, your channel will be deleted in seven days. So we already crossed the that threshold into. Into three, and the channel was scheduled to be deleted.
- [05:42]
A
Wow. So to also. If someone's going through this process, how long does it take you? You're going to the YouTube backend. You have a place to enter text, you're typing out your justification. Is that how it works?
- [05:54]
B
Yeah. So there's an entire backend system within YouTube. And again, I don't know how much they verify. Is this the actual owner of the material? I don't know how any of that stuff works from the other end. I do know that, yes, you're replying, you're. You're selecting fair use, laying out your case, so on and so forth. And then, so they file a copyright strike. You can counter claim, they can hold up the claim, and then you have to counter one more time. And then after that, they have 10 business days to provide proof that they're taking you to federal court. Now, at this point, I have to go get a lawyer. I'm making sure that, like, this is fair use right there. There isn't anything to this. Like, you can't have links in your description to your Patreon nonsense. So I had to get a lawyer because is Joe Rogan really going to sue me and take me to federal court over reacting to different videos of him? This is craziness. If that's where this is going. This is really wild. And I got on the phone with a lawyer. I freshened myself up on copyright law on fair use doctrine, because fair use is a. Is a. Is a doctrine that gets to be fought in court. The issue is, whenever it's been escalated to a federal court level by someone like H3, H3, there was Brendan Schwab that tried to sue. Somebody lost. Whenever you escalate to a federal court, there's enough fair use precedent that you're not going to win. That very unlikely. You're going to win a copyright case in a fair use situation. But I still needed to talk to a lawyer and figure out what was going on and all that sort of stuff. And so, yeah, I had to get a lawyer and kind of like tighten up and basically was waiting to see. So then your channel is not scheduled to get deleted. You're just waiting if they're going to provide proof in 10 business days that they're going to take you to federal court.
- [07:35]
A
So then what happened? You got four strikes, seven days. How did you avoid your channel being deleted? What happened next?
- [07:43]
B
So I counter notified all those that escalated it to the highest possible place you can go. And then it was. I was just kind of waiting. In that process, we ended up getting a lawyer, getting his advice, knowing that we were solid in that regard, circling back around to the person who filed the claims, which was, it wasn't from like an official Joe Rogan email. And again, I'm still spooked out on if this person's even legit or not. Circling back, Being polite, being very nice, making our case, and even saying, hey, you know, we know you're uncomfortable with these links. How about this? We'll remove some of the links and we'll minimize it. It's okay. You know, kind of needed to clean that up anyway in terms of our description. You know, YouTube does a default description. We. We was like, we need to clean this up anyway. So we'll minimize the links and it'll only be free stuff in the links so that, you know, you guys don't feel away about it. Just trying to be as accommodating as possible because I don't want to go to federal court like, this is. This is craziness, right? And in that process, a couple of things happened. A mutual friend of mine was able to work this all the way up to Joe Rogan himself. And Joe Rogan had no idea this was happening, didn't know what was going on, said he would personally look into it. And so at the same time as, as I get a screenshot back from Joe saying, hey, I don't, I don't know anything about this. I'll look into it. I email the guy. The guy all of a sudden de escalates and drops two of the copyright strikes. Now we still got two more copyright strikes. I then get a response back from my friend from Joe Rogan and says, hey, we're, we're going to. This should be resolved. So I see Joe say that, and then the other two got Dropped immediately. And so when you're in a situation like that, first of all, most people don't have access to someone that has access to Joe Rogan. Second of all, you don't really know what the law is and you don't know if you have a case to stand on. So thankfully I was able to get a hold of a lawyer because I, you know, made YouTube videos and live streams about all this and someone was like, hey, I got a lawyer for you. He'll hop on the call, blah, blah, blah. So there was someone that gave me the, no, no, you're in the right, you're good, you, even if they take you to court, you're going to win there. That was reassuring. And the reality is that most people don't want to sue someone and take them to court unless they're being extremely petty. And I had a feeling that, like, Joe wasn't mad about the videos. It was more so. Hey, this is so cool. Joe Rogan's talking about God. Oh, this is so cool. Joe Rogan is talking about faith. Oh, this so cool. Joe Rogan's reading Revelation. They weren't disparaging videos. It wasn't takedown videos, wasn't me coming after him or saying anything nasty or negative. They were generally positive videos of how cool is it that the biggest podcaster in the world was talking about stuff I care about. This is awesome. That that was the tone of the video. So I knew that we were in the right and that they unlikely going to take us to court, but it was like playing a game of chicken. We're waiting, right? But thankfully we worked it out. And yeah, they got, they got, they got dropped immediately. Our channel was right back in good standing. YouTube was completely useless in this entire process. I reached out to every partner, manager I had, I reached out to@team YouTube. They are not going to do much. They're just, they're, they're like, hey, you escalate this to the top and you gotta go to court. They, they, they were very hands off. And other times they've stepped in. Like I've had other friends that have gone through this. They've stepped in and they've really fought for the creator. In my case, they, they did not care. They were not in the least bit helpful.
- [10:42]
A
Do you ever wish that YouTube came with a cheat code? Well, it kind of does. It's called Vidiq and it's packed with AI tools to help you grow your channel faster. Think of it like having a YouTube expert in your corner giving you personalized tips and tricks to improve your videos so that ultimately you can get more views and subscribers. And the best part is you can try it out for 30 days for just $1. If you want to grab this offer, just go to vidiq.com think or click the link in the show notes. All right, let's get back into the episode. So what advice would you give to other creators with all the lessons that you've learned from this? There's a lot of power in reacting to other content trending issues, cultural issues, influence surfing. But I think some creators have fear regarding this stuff. What's like the mindset needed and maybe some of the practical takeaways for creators.
- [11:38]
B
Outside of the legal ramifications, which I do believe there's not a ton of legal ramifications if you're actually creating commentary critique in the Fair Use doctrine. Outside of that aspect, I think it's generally good practice to infuse as much of your commentary as possible when you're using reaction stock content, meaning just as a creator, you can easily get roasted and taken down by other creators who feel like you're just viewing your farm. You know, farm, what is it? What is it? Content farms. Like if you're just playing a video and just. Oh, wow, right, yeah, like you just as a creator, it's a bad look. So I'll say foundationally, make sure you actually have commentary to add and value to add and something insightful to say to whatever you're reacting to because you don't want to be viewed as just a guy. That's content farming. It's, it's, it's, that's not a good look. And then two, I would say make sure you're transforming it in some way, shape or form. Make sure that outside of adding commentary that there is something new being said to the video that you're not just taking views from another creator and bringing them over to your, your channel. That's messed up from, from, from a, just a, a regular standpoint. So I'll say make sure they're coming to you. And, and we get, we were getting a lot of these comments like just let the video play through, stop interrupting. And it's like, no, no, no, no. That's my job. If I'm a commentator, I'm here to interrupt, infuse my opinion, add my ideas to the video. That's actually how fair use is supposed to work. I'm not just a clips channel for you to find the latest celebrity that says something about God and Ruson will Have a clip for it? No, no, no. I'm here to infuse my opinion, my personality, my value into the video. So I would say if they are doing that, that's going to be in their best interest. And then I would say finally, use as, as, as little of the content as you possibly can. Try to use as little as the content so that you're not just letting a four minute video play through of your favorite creator ranting about something. If you can use minimal, make the point and then move on, I think that's, that's going to be generally a better way to safeguard yourself.
- [13:41]
A
I've noticed sometimes you might react to something that's 30 minutes long, or maybe it's a pastor preaching for 55 minutes and you react to six minutes. Is that kind of what you mean? So you're not just, I'm gonna, I'm gonna play the whole thing. Although somebody like a Mike Winger might react to a 55 minute sermon, but it's a four hour video and he breaks down every single piece.
- [14:03]
B
Yes, yes. And even Mike Winger got in trouble a couple different times with a couple different situations when he did that. One of those was obviously, oddly enough, Joe Joel Houston, and, and his whole church came after him and he didn't want to fight it even though he knew he had a case. So he reshot it with a stick figure and reading the sermon transcript and then cutting away to him reacting to the sermon transcript. But then the second time when Benny Hin tried to come after him, he YouTube took his side in the situation and YouTube was like, no, he's in the right. You guys gotta back down or you can catch a copyright strike. So this is not a system that's to be played with because in the rarest of times, YouTube will step up. The other person who's filing these false copyright strikes can get in trouble. And so in Mike Winger's case, it was, oddly enough, the time that YouTube defended him. That didn't happen for me, unfortunately, probably because Rogan was a way bigger creator than I was. But there are times where they might step up and be like, no, this is fair. This is clearly fair use. And so that second time around, he, it actually was mitigated by YouTube telling Benny Hinn's people to step down.
- [15:04]
A
When this entire process happened, what was the entire timeline like? Couple weeks, A matter of, I would.
- [15:10]
B
Say within a week and a half. So no longer than a week, week and a half. This whole thing, from start to finish, resolved. And it was, it was a scary Nerve wracking week and a half. But it was resolved fairly quickly.
- [15:25]
A
Are you more confident now or less confident now that you've been through it?
- [15:28]
B
Oh, I'm much more confident now. Don't come for me because now I, now I got the lawyers, now I understand how the process works now. It's like, even if you sue me, I know, I know how to finesse this in, in a way where you're not, you're not going to do anything. Now I will also say that we are in the process of getting media insurance just to make sure that we're covered in case of something like this happening. And it's, it's a little pricey, a couple hundred bucks a month. But I think that will also give us another layer of, of protection to make sure that if, if and when something like this ever to happen again, we would be good. But we don't, we, we try to stay away from making like takedown videos and stuff that's disparaging or disrespectful to other people. So I don't really foresee us, you know, like, like a coffee. Zilla is like, he's doing investigative journalism, going after people. That opens him up to more risk. And yeah, I think he's in the middle of a lawsuit with Logan Paul. Not over copyright, strike over whatever. Saying things that were malicious. We don't really do that, but we, it is wise to have some, some degree of protection.
- [16:24]
A
And in your library especially too, you're very familiar as a musician yourself with the music side of YouTube, the content ID side of YouTube, the copyright side of YouTube. How many of your videos would you say have gotten content ID claims? And what lessons have you learned from these different things that happen? Is a very small percentage of your library.
- [16:48]
B
Yeah, very small.
- [16:49]
A
Reacting to music videos is something sometimes people wonder and like maybe it's worth doing because you just give the monetization away, but you could still get the views. How do you navigate some of those territories?
- [16:59]
B
Music I stay away from in general unless I know someone over there that'll get it cleared, right? Because for whatever reason that music system is way, way harsher to deal with than like a creator. When you got big major labels involved, it's, it's just a pain to deal with. So I generally stay away from reacting to any sort of music stuff. Even playing a clip of a music video, someone can auto claim it. So I just reacted to my, my buddies. I went to my buddy Raphael. He has a band called Prayers. He's married to K Von D. I went and checked him out and I just cut away to a picture, I think not a picture, like B roll of his music video. This is what his stuff looks like. And that got auto flagged. This is like my friend, like he came over for dinner, we hang out and that got auto flagged, you know. And so I'm kind of like, oh God. So I just kind of filed, explained what it was, said, hey, I'll let Raphael know about this. And it's an escrow. So I got to wait. Music is, for whatever reason, way more strict and I just generally stay away from music because they. It's just a flawed system on YouTube, man. It's, it's not, it's. It's literally innocent until you're proven guilty. And those major labels tend to be the worst to deal with. And like major broadcasting like NBC, the View, stuff like that, Breakfast Club, they tend to be very, very harsh. So if you're going to use a reaction of like a view, we have to go in, do some sort of layer over it, put a big fair use thing across it, change the audio, adjust it to just make sure that they leave us alone.
- [18:21]
A
So out of your library, are you getting content IDs? Very often. I mean, if I look, you're reacting to all kinds of stuff from politics to celebrities to news to the chosen to all kinds of that be TV media. But are you. Are. Are most of your stuff just no content IDs able to monetize? Fine. No big deal.
- [18:45]
B
Yep. Most of it is just, just flies right through. Again, we play at 1.25 speed. I don't know if that actually does anything. I think when you're reacting to creators on YouTube, even someone like a Jordan Peterson, for example, right.
- [18:56]
A
Who.
- [18:57]
B
He's a, he's a, he's a YouTuber. But he may not understand YouTube conduct and culture. Meaning as a YouTuber, you, this is like a cardinal rule. You never do something like what Joe Rogan's people did. Right. This is like abs and Joe Rogan would never do something like this. So it's kind of a, it's kind of understood within YouTube culture that if someone's reacting to your video, you let that, you let that go and you don't, you don't file copyright strikes. Right. So even a Jordan Peterson, something like that, it's never, never, ever, ever, ever, ever came after us. I think that the Joe Rogan thing was just a random situation at a time where they brought in this firm. The firm was extra aggressive because of the, the clickbait with the MSNBC thing. He didn't like that. They probably just went nuclear. That would be my assumption. Now how often do we get a claim? I'd say maybe twice a month, maybe, you know, and then you. Once, twice a month. I just dispute them and generally they go away. People don't really care to fight them. They'll go into escrow for 30 days and then they'll be dropped from escrow and you know, you'll get, you'll get the monetization on them.
- [19:55]
A
So twice a month your videos get a content ID claim simply saying that individual would be getting the monetization from it. You. Do you personally dispute it?
- [20:07]
B
Me or someone on my team will dispute it.
- [20:08]
A
How long does it take to dispute one?
- [20:11]
B
Usually what happens is like to write out.
- [20:13]
A
How long does it take to type it out? Like yeah, just sitting down, just knowing how much energy, mental power it would take if somebody does similar content, react, content trend surfing. If like that just comes with the territory. It's like I probably got to spend 1, 2, 3, 4 hours a month replying to the claims.
- [20:30]
B
No, because now what we did is we got the language that the attorney recommended in the description of every video. So when and if it comes up, it's actually easily available to everybody on my team. Go to the video copy and paste it open with a very polite hey, I'm sorry for this mix up. This was probably auto flagged, falls within fair use. And then there's a paragraph that's just pasted that we've already what all the codes and the legal statues and blah blah, blah, blah. And we just paste that. And so no. 5 maybe.
- [20:57]
A
Yeah, I'm looking at it now. So if anybody watching this, we'll link this up in the show notes. It says fair use disclaimer and then it says this video may contain copyrighted material, but it's got references to cases and stuff too, right?
- [21:12]
B
Yep, exactly.
- [21:13]
A
And so you could grab that, you've got that. So not only is that in the description of your YouTube videos, but when disputing the claim, you probably have similar text. This is what the video is. And you copy paste that in there. Which is some real legal reinforcement to refuting the claim.
- [21:30]
B
Yeah, like we know what we're talking about. You're not going to get one over on us. We know what the statutes are, we know what the precedents are. We know this has been taken to court multiple times. Most people win this in court. All people win this. I've never heard of Anyone losing this in court and yeah, so that kind of hopefully to de, escalate it.
- [21:44]
A
Gotcha. So we will link to that stuff in the show notes if you want to take advantage of that legal language that you could use yourself if you're listening or watching this. And would you still say, final question, that for somebody wanting to get into the game, sometimes smaller channels struggle, maybe you're established, you have more authority that your model of creating content is still an opportunity in today's YouTube landscape of reacting. Trend surfing, influence surfing. Do you think that's still a good play?
- [22:17]
B
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's, I think it's in my opinion, unless you've already went and built a business or done something incredible, I think it is the play. Right. I think trying to go the route of a podcast is great, but unless you've already accomplished something interesting, you're going to have to figure out a way to cut through and so by something interesting, like here's an example, I'll give you two examples of someone that's done something interesting. One example is you have Alex Hermosi. Alex Hermosi has built a hundred million dollar business businesses and therefore he is an authority on business and leadership. So we take him seriously. That, that like if you haven't done something of that magnitude, it's going to be unlikely that people are going to want to listen to you. So if you, if you have credibility then people will listen to you and take you seriously. But it has to be of that magnitude. Here's another example. In MySpace there is a, a former celebrity pastor named Carl L. He ran Hillsong New York. He had a pretty massive scandal fall, but now he's back, he's restored, he's gone through therapy and he has a podcast. People, he doesn't have to do reaction videos because people remember him when he was mega famous. He was Justin Bieber's pastor. And so in my space he could just have a podcast. Now, you know, it's not doing as well as my videos and that's no shade to Carl. I hope, I hope, I think me and him are going to do something at some point. But that's the kind of degree like if you have a, an authority space, you're, you're, you're already leading in some capacity, you already have accomplished a couple things, you're a best selling authority, then you could maybe have a podcast and it would generally be well received. But if you don't have either of those things, you don't have expertise, you don't have Authority, you don't have credibility. It's going to be very difficult for you to build a podcast or build a YouTube channel around something. It's going to take longer. But if you're willing to take the expertise you have and connect it to things people care about, events, topics, news, celebrities, influencers, podcasters, and you can take your expertise and connect it to something, it just becomes easier because people are like, oh, he cares about the same things I cares about. He, he's talking about the same things I talk about. And it becomes a, a better on ramp to connect with people and grow your audience.
- [24:14]
A
That's really powerful. I've heard it called like kind of the reporter, the knowledge broker and then the, eventually the results expert. And it's kind of the thinking grow rich model that Napoleon Hill, maybe the bestselling self development book, Think and Grow Rich was based on other people's wisdom. Andrew Carnegie, the business magnets of the day. And he interviewed them, grabbed their information and packaged that into a book. Not because he had built a business himself, but then eventually he became a best selling author and really became big at selling info and newsletters and things like that. So Alex Tremosi is the results expert, but the reporter is the individual in a YouTube world that can report on, using fair use, law other people's content and chop that up, position it different ways. One of my friends, Evan Carmichael, has built a huge channel by combining the rules. He's essentially Napoleon Hill. What he did in book form, he did in YouTube form. He'll do Gary Vee's Top 10 Rules of Success, Oprah's Top 10 Rules of Success. He'll host it. And he is now a reporter of other people's stuff. And he has grown to start selling his own books. And it's actually kind of a nice way to get in the game because it means you could get in the game right now, be successful at this level. But then when you're in the process, you learn your own business acumen, you absorb all that wisdom and perhaps you actually become the results expert on that journey.
- [25:43]
B
Absolutely. I love that. Yeah. And, and, and by the grace of God, like that's, that's what I'm doing. I have my own products. We have a leadership planner, we have a prayer journal. I just finished my first 60 day devotional that, that just came out going, taking people through the entire narrative of scripture in 60 days. I signed a deal, a book deal with a major publisher, um, for a book that's coming out next year. And that, that, that's exactly. It is like once you, once you develop an audience and people don't just care about the same. They, they start caring because you guys care about the same things, but then eventually they start caring about your thoughts. And then you can introduce products and services that can help them change and transform their lives. And that's been the process of what I've been doing for the past several years to now going into 2025. We have products we're super proud of. We have a product suite, not just merch and T shirts. I mean, we have that too. But then I have a book coming out with a major publisher. Right. And I'm super excited about that as well. And so I think that's the potential trajectory for someone that's getting into, into this sort of stuff.
- [26:37]
A
For more on this, listen to part two of my conversation with Ruslan and we'll link those up in the show notes. Ruslan, shout out your stuff. People want to connect with you, follow you. Where can they connect?
- [26:48]
B
Yeah, Ruslan, KD is my main channel. If you go to just search my name, I'm usually the first thing that comes up. And then Bless God Studios is a second channel. We also have BlessGod Shop if you guys want, check out some of those products we mentioned and then blessgods summit.com for our live in person three day event. Putting together my best, my, my, my favorite podcasters, preachers and practitioners to create an immersive experience between, you know, performances and live panels and speakers here in Carlsbad, California. 3-27-2829. Blessgodsummit.com for that.