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- [00:00]
Sean Cannell
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- [01:30]
Tyler Chow
I had a client got three strikes and he lost his chann. He doesn't even really want his channel back. He just wants his videos back because his best friend was in his videos and his best friend died. You can use 2 seconds of someone's video and they will just put a strike on you. Fair use is not a real thing. It is an absolute rule that if you own the ip, you can put a strike on anyone. You might delete that violating video, but the strike doesn't go away.
- [02:00]
Sean Cannell
So it's true, a lot of creators have been getting copyright strikes on YouTube lately. So what's going on? Well, today we're going to be talking with Tyler Chow, the creator's attorney, a former Hollywood insider who spent 15 years at Disney and major law firms before walking away to exclusively represent creators. And she has some inside information as it pertains to this issue. You know, one wrong move and your entire channel could be demonetized, deleted, or you could even get sued. So Tyler's here to break down why copyright and community strikes are actually exploding right now. And what you must know, to stay safe. Tyler, first of all, could you define what is a copyright strike versus a community strike?
- [02:46]
Tyler Chow
Hi, Sean, thanks for having me. So, yes, I have, you know, in my everyday work just seen an explosion of creators coming to me, panicked and frantic because they have these strikes and they're worried about losing their channels. So a copyright strike is someone is saying that your video contains some IP that belongs to them. Or so that could be a B roll. Right. You clip someone's video and Even if it's 2 seconds or 1 second, that IP holder can put a strike on you. It could be music. Right. This is why I always tell creators you have to use licensed music. You know, I really like Epidemic Sound. Use. License content. Use content that you have permission for or that you've paid for. Right. Both on video and music. That's a copyright strike, a community strike. This is the part that's a lot more ambiguous and harder to determine because sometimes YouTube will say, you have violated our community guidelines, but they won't actually tell you what they are, they just say community guidelines. So it could be, you know, you're giving, you know, false information like, like, like fake medical advice or any type of fake advice, or they think it's some type of scam or you're talking about things. Sometimes it's political. They don't, you know, YouTube typically doesn't like a lot of political, you know, commentary, but it, you know, they change their policies here and there. But it could be so many different things. And YouTube doesn't tell you what it is.
- [04:16]
Sean Cannell
Yeah. And on a copyright strike, if you get three copyright strikes, you get permanent channel termination. And it is a legal matter, meaning lawsuits or damages are possible. And in a community strike, three. Three community strikes in 90 days channel termination. And this is about platform safety rules, not copyright lied law. Do I understand that correctly?
- [04:38]
Tyler Chow
That's correct.
- [04:38]
Sean Cannell
Okay, so. And before you get into kind of what you're seeing, maybe your prediction of why this is happening and then even thoughts about what creators could do about it. The reason creators are fearing these is because they're getting video takedowns. There's a risk of lawsuits and legal fees, loss of monetization rights or limited channel features, temporary upload bans, loss of streaming rights or monetization even after one strike, even reputational damage with audience or sponsors. So these are a big deal. So you can see why creators are definitely nervous about this. So what is it that you're seeing happening and why do you think there's been a rise?
- [05:13]
Tyler Chow
I haven't Gotten confirmation. But I, you know, I do have some, some feelers out, But I think YouTube has just changed their policy. The sheer volume of complaints that YouTube gets realized that we have billions of users on YouTube every month, right? And so a lot of people are putting complaints of copyright infringement. And what happened in the past was YouTube would personally handle every single one of those complaints. And now they simply can't. Right? There's just too many of them. So what they're doing is they've created this new system where the IP holder can just go put a strike and then it's automatic. And then the IP violator will have to basically, you know, figure it out with IP holder. So YouTube has said, there you go. I'm going to put you guys in this corner and you go figure out what's, what you want to do. I have had clients come to me and say, so I use V roll from this biology channel. Everybody does it. You know, we take clips of their, like animal in, in the wild. And this person put three strikes on me. What do I do? I'm so, I'm so scared I'm gonna lose my channel. Because three strikes is not automatic. Sometimes, like they're, they're, they sit there and then YouTube, like, determines what they want to do. Sometimes it's automatic, sometimes it's not. So I, I told this client, I said, well, let's go to the other side, this biology channel, and ask them what, what can we do to make this right? Right? Because a lot of my work, and I say this to my junior attorneys, like, it's not about the law. It is about the law, but sometimes it's about human behavior. And how do you make something right? How do you say to the person, I'm sorry, I did this wrong thing to you. How do I make it right? So we went to them and said, we're very sorry. We understand, you know, that we used your IP without your permission. What can we do? And they said, pay me and give me credit. And so we did. And we paid him, I think $500 for those three clips. And he took the strikes off. Now I've had clients who have come to me having used music from the game developers or music publishers, and the game developers are just fed up. I mean, it's just been years and years of violations like Square Enix or Nintendo, they just don't play like you. They will put a strike and it will stay there. I had a client who got three strikes, and we actually have been trying to get them Square Enix to engage with us and they just won't. And he lost his channel. It's actually a really sad story because he doesn't even really want his channel back. He just wants his videos back because apparently his best friend was in his videos with him and his best friend died and he didn't have a second copy of these videos which like that's a big, you know, that's a big problem. All, you know, all creators should have their, their raw footage saved somewhere else. And that's what we're trying to get back from him. And these game developers are just done. They're like, we're not going to remove these strikes if you're going to steal our content. Basically we're just going to put strikes automatically.
- [08:22]
Sean Cannell
And that's very nerve wracking because a lot of game developers are fine with people streaming using the footage and the music because it's perpetuating the message of the game. But that's each interesting to hear. I know Nintendo has notoriously been like just not pumped about that and I didn't know about Square Enix. So okay, so what can people do? I know on a broad level if you upload like talking head videos by yourself in your room, no music, nothing else, just your own likeness and your own ip, then you're not going to run into really copyright strikes because that's, it's all your own stuff. And then if you're family friendly essentially you're not going to run into community strikes. But YouTube is not that simple. For a lot of creators there's so much diversity. In some cases their contents may be more mature, in some cases they might be, I know firearms content, which is controversial or divisive in a lot of ways and even on YouTube the way it's treated. But it's also a very practical here in America, second amendment type of community that people want to talk about. And then if you get into cannabis or to these other things, there's a lot of things with community strikes. So moving forward, what would be the next steps for creators listening to this to be thoughtful and practical tips in light of this kind of like rise in these strikes happening?
- [09:42]
Tyler Chow
Well, I think, I think creators are not going on hear this but I think you should review the terms of service, you should review the community guidelines that YouTube puts out and just kind of broadly understand what is it that YouTube does not like you to talk about. Right. I know that there are channels who sometimes say, oh I, I can get you access to, you know, these jobs. You don't need you don't need any experience, you don't need education. You can just make money at home, you know, like in, in like data entry almost, right? Those types of jobs. I've heard of these channels getting strikes and saying that these are scams, right? They're not like real jobs. So anything that invites people to potentially pay well, don't do that, right? Like, don't, don't make people pay you to give that information because that, that exchange of money will definitely flag something for YouTube. But I've also heard of channels that are just doing that freely because they want to help people, you know, have work, work from home jobs. I've heard of strikes, community strikes happening there.
- [10:46]
Sean Cannell
Can you double down on that? Because it's interesting what you're saying, but some people might be, wait a minute, I can't sell my product or service on YouTube because it'll be an exchange of money versus what you're just describing in terms of like being paid directly. What would be the difference if a freelancer just wants to be hired themselves or if they're, they're saying it's maybe a make money opportunity and it could be viewed as a scam. Can you clarify?
- [11:08]
Tyler Chow
I think if there's language in there that just sounds too good to be true, like, oh yeah, you can make $50 an hour at home. You know, you don't need any experience, you don't need any education. Like YouTube has, you know, their content ID system and they, they will put in certain code or certain keywords that they will flag that. They will deem that to be a scam even if it's not. Right. I think it's very different when you're selling a product. Like if you're a creator and you're selling, I don't know, a template or a community, that that's not a scam, right? But you have to just be careful with your language that you're not like overselling it or, or making it too. The too good to be true, I think is a good threshold. Like if it sounds too good to be true, like, oh, like I will give you this free template and you'll make $10,000 this month. What's the catch? Right? Like, like if somebody's thinking, what's the catch? Then that will most likely flag it in the YouTube, you know, content ID or their, their codes that they put in.
- [12:15]
Sean Cannell
That makes sense. And if it's a guarantee of income, like you can make $50 an hour from home with no experience. I hope this video doesn't get flagged. We're just using that as an example. And so, yeah, okay, that. That makes sense.
- [12:28]
Tyler Chow
So.
- [12:28]
Sean Cannell
So you're breaking down tips. Read the terms of service. And here's an interesting thought as well. You could use any AI, but Gemini is owned by Google and Google owns YouTube and is a good place to prompt. Hey, could you explain the. The terms of service and YouTube's community guidelines appoint me to them. But even more so, you can say, this is my channel. This is the content I use. This is. And you could, you know, I love verbally prompting AI and talk to AI about it. It could be an interesting way. I do a lot of summary of sometimes huge pages of information. And I'm like, my question is, like, what are the red flags? Or what are the red flags for me that would be applicable to my channel, my niche, and things like you consider. And so consider using AI to review the terms of service. YouTube's community guidelines. Like you said, most creators don't want to do it, but if you're going to treat this as a professional creator, that's why videos like this, video podcasts like this are critical. So that's a great tip. Be careful with your language. Any other tips to stay safe?
- [13:28]
Tyler Chow
I mean, Sean, I actually love that. I'll just take it a little further, right? You know, what you could do is ask Gemini. You know, I don't know if you have to feed it in there, but say, here are YouTube's community guidelines. Here you, like, learn this. And then here's my script for this video, right? Is there anything here that you think might flag YouTube's, you know, now, it's not a guarantee, right? But it's better than not doing it. And it could say, well, you know, you might want to consider rewarding this, or this might be a potential issue for you. So I really like that suggestion. I think that's really smart. I think creators can do that instead of manually reading, you know, 10, 20 pages of this and then trying to figure out if they're going to get in trouble. So I really like that. What are other things that you can do? I mean, if you're giving advice, right? If you're giving medical advice or legal advice or financial advice, making sure to say, this is for. This is my own opinion. This is for educational purposes only. This is not formal advice, but please talk to your own doctor. You know, for personalized care, like, things like that. I do a lot of that for a lot of doctors or lawyers who want to start their channels. They, they, they ask Me to write a disclaimer for them to, you know, potential releases for guests that they have come on. Because you just want to have that language in there that protects you, that makes YouTube realize that you're thinking about this and that you're not being thoughtless or careless, you know, in how you approach your videos. I think that' important. But we could also do everything perfectly, and you might still get a strike. And so I think what to do is the moment you get a strike, you have to try to act on it immediately, because what you don't want is for that second strike to happen. And then, you know, like, the worst would be for the third strike to happen, because each strike stays on your channel for 90 days. And what people don't realize that creators don't know is you might delete that violating video. But the strike doesn't go away. I think maybe a long time ago it did. And so people have this fallacy, oh, well, I'll just delete the video and then it'll be fine. No, the strike actually doesn't go away until, if it's a copyright strike, then the copyright holder has to remove it. Or if it's a community strike, then YouTube has to remove it.
- [15:53]
Sean Cannell
But one of the things you're also saying is that these are appealable. You can appeal these.
- [15:58]
Tyler Chow
Yes, but can I. Can I share a story with you? It's going to blow your mind. So I had a client come to me with a community strike. She had two on her channel. And, you know, we did all of our research. We actually drafted the appeals language for her. And I, you know, I care very deep about my. My clients. So I said, I said to her, I said, I want to do this with you. So we're going to. We're going to zoom live. You're going to share your screen, and I want to see you do it. Because she said the first time she did it, like, the system glitched on her and she couldn't put the language. And so I was like, okay, this one. I'm going to do it with you. So she pulls up the appeals, you know, page, and there's like a little empty box, right? You're supposed to write in there. So we go click on, like, start the appeal. And. And she said, you know, I'm just going to type it in. I don't even want to cut and paste because I'm worried it'll do something weird. So she clicks the button, and then it went away. Sean, it said, thank you so much for submitting your appeal. We'll be in touch soon. We didn't even get a chance to put in anything. And then. Do you want to hear what happened an hour later, please. YouTube says your strike has been removed. And we're like, what are you talking about? And so now we just don't know, right? It's so arbitrary. The first one, this happened to her. It didn't get removed. So now I'm writing an official letter to YouTube to try to get that first strike removed. But I'm actually going to talk to some of the executives at YouTube and ask them. I mean, I have the video, right? I recorded the whole thing. Like, why is this happening? Like, you won't even allow a person to put the appeal in. There's a problem here. There's a glitch here. But this is also sort of terrifying right now. It's terrifying. It may be good, right, because the strike got removed, but you have no rhyme or reason, right? What terrifies humans the most is not knowing, right? We don't know what caused a strike and we don't know how to appeal the strike or how to remove it. Why did that happen with the second strike but not with the first? Right? Because if both of them got removed, that would be great. But it's the second one that got removed. So it's very weird. I mean, this client, and there was something weird too. They do lives every day, but the lives, what they say in the lives actually don't get any strikes put on them. But it's when they upload the video. And I think it's because, you know, when we upload our videos, YouTube has more time to actually read it, right? They read and they check the content. You know, that's why I say it takes. They're checking, right? Remember, they always like checks for a while. I think they're checking for keywords and potential violations in that upload. But for the lives, I'm not. This is not official advice, but like, from what I'm seeing, it seems like the lives are a little less stringent. The content ID there. I don't know. That's what it seems like.
- [18:50]
Sean Cannell
It does make sense because whenever you upload, there's multiple pages now where you're also self scoring your content, basically yourself saying it does not include these things or leaving a human element there. And you don't do any of that for live. You just go live. So that is a hot take. So there's been some great tips and I want to recommend that there might be some additional Questions you have. There is a series now that we've been doing with Tyler and we'll link to the playlist in the description in the show notes of the video podcast because you might want to go deeper on some of these things. But there's also just a few tips that I wrote down here to consider. And Tyler, you might give us a final note on some of these of how to stay safe on YouTube with copyright and community protection, Community strike protection. So use your own content when possible or license the content. That'll keep you safe. Or check for commercial rights and attribution rules. Of course, you can create such channels. I watch show recaps ending explained of movies and TV shows. And in this case, people are using photos and video clips of these shows. And a lot of times they are okay because they understand fair use, but they don't rely on it blindly. Fair use is legally defensible, but it's not a shield, right?
- [20:07]
Tyler Chow
So, oh, I want to talk about fair use, John, if we can. I think it's the biggest misconception that creators have. Okay, so fair use is not a real thing.
- [20:20]
Sean Cannell
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- [21:25]
Tyler Chow
I mean, it is a real thing, but it's a real thing in court, right? So if you get sued for infringing on someone's copyright and you go to court, you say judge or jury. You know, my usage of this content falls under fair use because of these four prong tests, right? One is, is it transformed? The second is, you know, is the, is there a market Value meaning, like, are you making money from it? Right? And then you've heard if it's, you know, if it's a commentary, if it's a critique, you know, these different things. And a lot of times, I mean, it's. You don't have, like, you don't have to hit all four or like, it's not like if you fail one, it's a balance test, right? They will say, well, if it's completely transformed, then maybe it's fine. But what creators misunderstand is they think, well, I can just go use this clip and then just put fair use on, on screen. And then I'm protected. Like, like a bullet, Bulletproof vest, right? And that's not true at all. And especially based on what we were saying, YouTube now allows the copyright holder to just put a strike. You can use 2 seconds of someone's video and they will just put a strike on you. And you can't say to that person, but it's fair use. Like, that's not a real thing, right? It's. It is an absolute rule that if you own the ip, you can put a strike on anyone. And this is what people don't understand because they see the show recaps or the movie critiques. And let me explain to you sort of what is happening there. I worked at Disney for several years, and this was the policy at Disney at least 10 years ago. I don't know what the policy is now, but Disney does not actively go after violators who use their content in a neutral or positive way. Now, if you use somebody's content in a negative way, then they will come after you. But for the film studios and the TV networks, showing a small clip of their film or TV is actually like good marketing for them because they will remind someone, oh, no, I want to go watch that movie. Now. It's when you show the whole movie or the majority of the show, they don't like that because then you're taking away their, their, their market share, right? Or someone signing up to watch their show on their streaming platform. So. But that's not every studio, right? Like, some studios are not okay with it. Like, I did a deep fake video last year and I put a bunch of clips of movies, you know, do you know that Tom Cruise guy? That guy that looks like Tom Cruise. He does like all those deepfakes. I actually use some of his videos and when I was uploading it, YouTube flagged it and said, you can't use this content. And because it was like slightly over five seconds and, you know, like, I think creators know how to play the system a little bit. If it's like two to three seconds, it tends to be okay, but when it goes to five, five or more seconds, it flags it for them. So you just have to be careful. If you're not using licensed content, you don't have permission. You can get that strike and you can't fight it by saying, but this is fair use, because that's not a real thing. A fair use is a defense in litigation. And I think most creators don't understand that. They think, well, I, I used, you know, I was, it was a parody. Right, but you're still making money from it. Most YouTubers, you know, like, are, their, their channels are monetized, so your videos are monetized. And so that's a hard argument to say. Well, I'm just using this for commentary. And so I think it's, it's a, it's a fallacy that most creators have to just realize it's, you can't use fair use as a, as a shield.
- [25:13]
Sean Cannell
Basically, and such an important distinction. And again, some creators might be listening to this, like, am I vulnerable when I just, you know, use all my own footage? Well, no, you wouldn't be. But there is a huge industry with the opportunity to do commentary, criticism and parody. And so you do want to know this information. And there's going to be a level of risk to your point, Tyler, as soon as you use somebody else's content. But these recap tips, and you may have a few other thoughts here. One, only use content you own or license. Two, understand fair use, but don't rely on it blindly. Three, use YouTube's copyright tools or make sure you're using royalty free music. So YouTube does have a free audio library for free music and sounds. We love Epidemic sound. I'll link to that in the show notes. If you want better music, that's going to keep your channel safe for sound effects and music. It's what we use here at Think Media for great music. And you also can use YouTube's Content ID match to monitor if your videos are flagged. The thing about uploading a video in advance is before you make it public, there might be an issue that you can then correct before you make it public. Of course it's frustrating that sometimes it doesn't see it, the video goes live, and then maybe it happens later. You're like, oh, the video has been out and now it's been flagged. Or to your point, if it's somebody else that's flagging it. But definitely use YouTube's copyright tools. Stay updated on community guidelines number four. We talked about that. Avoid sensitive topics or handle them carefully. And we do have a future couple episodes coming up, so subscribe to the Think Media podcast for more on some of this stuff. Don't spam with misleading titles, thumbnails or tags. 7. Appeal smartly, not emotionally. Appeal to your. If you get flagged. You know, one of the things that we had, my friend Ruslan on the podcast, he did a lot of commentary on the Joe Rogan show and he did it very transformative. He was just doing clips, he was commentating, and he got multiple strikes all at once. And he did appeal them. And the whole thing turned around and actually it turned out that it was like a third party, not even Joe Rogan himself. And Joe Rogan didn't care. He even knew somebody over there. And there were some other times where he will react to a lot of public media and he just does his appeal very professionally. And I do think AI can help you with that. And then of course, if people want to go to a deeper level, they can hire somebody like you to think about structuring the appeal using Gemini, using ChatGPT, using facts and not frustration. Typing in emotional stuff to the appeal is not really going to help you, but solid evidence that it's your stuff or fair use arguments. And I think sometimes too, they probably, I think, you know, YouTube is not doing all human monitoring. There's no way the scale of YouTube is so crazy. So I would imagine if you submitted an appeal that had strong legal language because you beefed it up with AI with fair use arguments.
- [28:11]
Tyler Chow
Right.
- [28:11]
Sean Cannell
That that might let the AI, you know, review process, I'm assuming they have, trigger it without a human revealing it. Any thoughts on some of these points, Tyler?
- [28:20]
Tyler Chow
I think yes, I've certainly sent emails that, or my clients have that said, you know, under the advice of my attorney, you know, this is, this is, this is where we believe we stand with our appeal. I have seen those be a little more effective than when people do it themselves. I think you, you're totally right. Like, don't be emotional. Don't be like angry. Say, oh my God, you're ruining my life. How could you do this? Like, none of that is helpful. Just, just present the facts. Right? I, you know, these are the same videos I've been making for years. I'm not doing anything differently. Um, you know, can you please let me know what it is that is violating the community guidelines? I have Reviewed the community guidelines. I believe it could be these two points, but I'm not sure. Could you guide me more? I think those are good tips if we could. Sean, we haven't talked about copyright claims. I think it's important to break that down for people because that's something different that sometimes happens to people. And creators freak out. They're like, oh my God, I have a copyright claim. I'm going to lose my channel. Okay, so copyright claim is something very different. A copyright claim is an IP holder saying, okay, I know you're using my content, I'm going to let you, but I'm going to share in the AdSense of that video. I have a client, Andy Morris, who is a huge pianist on, on, on YouTube. You know, he's like the guy in the college cafeteria. Cafeteria who would play in these like songs, like really famous songs would start playing and then the whole cafeteria would stop. Because, you know, when you hear like a Coldplay song or like, you know, a Imagine Dragon song, like, everyone pays attention. But what happens with these music publishers is they will automatically put a claim on the videos. And my client knows this and is totally fine with it. He's fine giving up 30 or 50% of the AdSense because he knows that he's covering someone else's music. He knows he doesn't own it, but he knows by covering these very famous songs, he's going to get millions of views versus an original song where he might get 10,000 views. Right. So a copyright claim is simply an IP holder saying, this is my IP and I'm going to share in your AdSense and I'm going to let you use it. And that's something I think a lot of creators don't understand because they just hear claim and they think it's the same thing as a strike and it actually isn't. It's just a mechanism for the IP holder to share in basically in your success. Right, because it's your ip, it's their IP that's, you know, adding to your successful views or millions of views. And they just, they, they, they need to share in that.
- [31:00]
Sean Cannell
And I love the strategy that he is thinking there because yes, we talked about in this episode copyright strikes, community guidelines strikes and copyright claims where, especially for music channels. Well, what if I get a, a claim and I do lose out on monetization? Okay, you lose out on monetization or you split it. But what about the influence? What about the reach? And we've had a lot of people that are part of our community Our video ranking academy course with music channels, they think about, you know, multiple different ways to make a living as a creator and monetize, and they just don't rely on ad revenue. But if they are covering, oftentimes covering pop culture, popular songs, even reacting to popular songs, it's kind of a fine line. Just like. Well, that might get claimed, but it's not a strike is what it's. That is not a strike. It's not harming your channel at that moment. It's just affecting the monetization. Well, what is the influence worth? The subscribers, the growth, the views. So the sophisticated creators think it a lot bigger than adsense. Do I have that right?
- [31:58]
Tyler Chow
Yes. And you know, you know, for me, I'm fractional CEO to some of the biggest YouTubers in the world. I want creators to think way beyond AdSense and brand deals, right? I want them think about newsletters and communities and launching a physical product beyond merch, right? I want them think about equity and affiliates. Like, I want them to grow out so that they have 10 or 12 revenue streams. Because I believe that YouTube creators are the next studio heads. I mean, you look at Jimmy, you look Mr. Beast, you look at Dhar Mann, you look at good mythical morning. I mean, these are all channels that are studios. We're going to have like 50 small studios going forward versus like the. The traditional media of six studios. But you need to grow your IP portfolio and be smart about it. Because if you want to sell your channel one day, you better make sure your IP is cleared. You're using clean, licensed music, because if half of your library is not clean, the chain of title is not clean. No one's going to buy your channel. So you have to actually think 10 steps ahead, where you want to be in five years or 10 years. Because I believe most creators, that's their life cycle. You hit about 10 years. I mean, you look at Matpat and Veritasium, they were like 10 to 15 years, right? But then at some point you're not a kid anymore, right? And you're like, oh, I want to go have a family. I want to have kids. I don't want to do vlogs every day. I mean, it changes, right? So you have to always be thinking ahead.
- [33:23]
Sean Cannell
This is why people should subscribe to the fake media podcast, Big thinking different thinking bigger. And this is why you're one of our favorite guests from our community. I got three more of these points as we land the plane on this episode. And if you've been getting value, though, like rate share, review the podcast, it means the world. I know we have a lot of audio listeners. You could just go to Spotify and click the star rating on Apple Podcasts leaving a review. I know it takes time, but if you did that today, it would mean the world to me and the Think Media team. And thank you so much for being part of our community. And so number seven was appeal smartly, not emotionally. Number eight, document everything. If you have records of any licenses, permissions, fair use analyses or editorial notes that can help. Number nine, consider content insurance. Now I know you might want to talk about that, but that is in another episode that'll be linked in the show notes. Especially for bigger channels, you can buy media liability insurance to cover legal costs if you get sued for copyright, defamation or a takedown dispute. And some of this stuff stresses. So like everyone just got stressed. Like their cortisol went up. They're like wait a minute. But again, that's especially for bigger channels. Also depends on what kind of content you're doing. If you're just vlogging around your garden or your farm of all your own stuff, you know, media liability assurance might not be a big as big a deal. But if you are doing gaming and other people's IP, basically just other people's content. OPC, not opp naughty by nature. OPC, other people's content. Maybe media insurance. And then number 10, when in doubt, leave it out. If you're slightly unsure if something's risky, cut it. Because one video isn't worth losing your entire channel. Any final thoughts? And also give a shout out to where people can connect with you as we land the plane with one final question in just a second.
- [35:14]
Tyler Chow
Well, I'm just going to close out the media insurance part. I think people who have channels that do commentaries on people, like remember Coffee Zella? Like when you're talking about people and you have a journalistic channel, remember he's getting sued by Logan Paul right now and he does not have defamation coverage. So all of his legal costs are coming out of pocket for him. If you do a lot of product reviews, like if you're talking about someone's product that could potentially tank their product and, and you didn't do your research and you just said this is a terrible product and it kills the whole line. I mean if someone, you know, if that brand is going to come after you, you, you better have media insurance that covers you for that. So I think again, I totally agree with you. My job is to protect and grow creators. So when I am Making content. I want people to think about. I feel safer now and I'm gonna go make content.
- [36:11]
Sean Cannell
I.
- [36:11]
Tyler Chow
Our point, Sean, and my point is not to give you this information and freak you out and say, well, I'm just not going to go make any content now. That is not the point. We're trying to give you all the information so that you can be amazing creators who enjoy this American dream and not have to stress about, well, am I going to get a copyright strike if you have all this information in mind already before you make the content? We're just trying to give you, we're trying to empower you basically and give you the information so that you can keep making content and maybe quit your full time job and do this full time. Right, Right.
- [36:43]
Sean Cannell
I've got one more question for you, but give a shout out. People want to connect with you, follow you. Where can they reach you?
- [36:48]
Tyler Chow
Thank you. So my channel is called Tyler Sh. The Creator's Attorney. I actually write almost every day on LinkedIn. And Sean, I wanted to share the news with you. I'm actually starting my community finally. I'm doing, I like, I'm doing it on Kajabi. They're great for creators and I'll, I'm going to, this is going to be really funny, but I do this for creators, right? I start, I help them launch their communities or their newsletters and I'll, I'll, I'll share this in real time with you. I have been having the hardest time naming my community. Like I'm literally like down to three names. So I'll share it with you and maybe you can give me some insight and maybe the audience can tell me what sounds better, right? So at first I said I thought I was going to do the Creator's Attorney Collective or maybe it's like the Creators Law Collective or the, or Creators Law House, you know, like the German spelling. I'm very torn right now and I thought maybe the Creator's Court, you know, like, like, but then, but then some people are like, well, does that denote like going to court?
- [37:49]
Sean Cannell
I know that you'd be in court and you're going to be judged as opposed to.
- [37:53]
Tyler Chow
Yeah, I know. So, but the point is I am, I am starting a community and it's a way for creators to come together. I'll do lives twice a month and people can come bring their questions and I'll do case studies with creators solving their problems in real time. And I have a wait list of a thousand people and I'll drop the waitlist Here for you, you know, if you can share it with your audience. And I would love to see them.
- [38:16]
Sean Cannell
There a hundred percent. And if you are on the YouTube version or want to head over to the YouTube version of the episode, give Tyler some feedback. Which of those names for her community did you like best or do you have any others other names? The Creators Court, the creators Community, different community names would love your feedback. Okay, final question. Tyler, you just have a unique perspective of seeing the growth, the opportunity, an inside look at what's happening in the crater economy in 2025. How do you feel about the future of the creator economy and the opportunity for those that are even just starting or early on in their journey?
- [38:50]
Tyler Chow
Oh, my God, we have arrived. Sean, I mean, you are a pioneer because you've been doing this for so much longer, but I was at NAB two weeks ago and I was invited to this private dinner and it was the most insane dinner. So it was the head of Lionsgate, Amazon, Warner Brother, Discovery, Fremantle, BBC, Bloomberg, and then the other half of the room were like, it was like me and Jim Louderback and like all the creator. And then Epidemic sound was there, 11 labs was there. So all the people in the creator space and all the legacy companies were just trying, like we were the shiny pets, basically. They wanted to learn from us. They want to know how to get into the space. They want to know how do we, what do we do with our billion minutes of content, our library. And I said, put it on YouTube. That's literally free assets that you're going to make, right? But they're not even thinking that. But what I'm seeing is, I mean, look, NAB had one, one stage last year for Creator Lab. This year it tripled to three. Next year we're going to be on the main stage. I mean, this is the progression we're seeing. The focus on the digital creator space and how much money is pouring into the space. I mean, Unilever just said that they're going to spend 50, 50% more this year on influencer marketing than they did last year, and we're talking about probably hundreds of millions of dollars, right? Because we know Unilever and everyone's focus is on creators. Now you look at Mr. Beast's show on Amazon, I mean, that will become normal. You will get big creators doing shows on Netflix or Amazon or Hulu. The future is very, very bright for creators. So if you're thinking about starting your YouTube channel, there's no, no better time than now. I put YouTube channels into trust for my clients kids. It's more valuable than real estate these days. I have clients who have a hundred thousand subs who are going to hit seven figures this year. It's not about how big your subscriber count is, it's about how deep your knowledge is and how dedicated your audience is to you. You can grow a six or seven figure business based on your YouTube channel and it's just so amazing and I'm just so happy.
- [41:07]
Sean Cannell
For creators, the future is bright and YouTube is an investment in the future. I want to thank you for listening to the Think Media podcast today. Write, like, rate, review, share, wherever you watch or listen. My name is Sean Cannell, your guide to building a profitable YouTube channel and we will connect with you in a future episode.