You are browsing YouTube and suddenly come across a video that looks worryingly familiar. In fact, someone simply uploaded your content and claimed it as their own. And it can be a painstakingly time-consuming task to manually search for all those re-uploads and deal with them. Of course, there are a number of ways to protect your content but sometimes, they just don’t cut it.

Luckily, there will be an end to this! YouTube has announced earlier this week that they are releasing a new Copyright Match tool! The new feature is designed to find re-uploads of your content on other channels.

After uploading a video, YouTube will now scan other videos uploaded to see if any of them are the same or very similar. If there is a match, these will appear in the ‘Matches’ tab in the tool, giving you the option to manage these more effectively and quickly.

• The tool will start rolling out to creators with more than 100k subscribers starting next week.
• It is very important that you were the first person to upload your video. The time of upload is how YouTube determines who will be shown matches and can therefore act.
• If a match is found, you have a few choices. You can either do nothing, request that the videos is removed or get in touch with the creator. Should you want the video to be removed, you can request it with or without a 7-day delay, which allows the uploader to resolve the issue. Any takedown requests will be reviewed by YouTube as usual.
• Evaluate each match carefully before deciding on your actions. Ensure that you 100% own the rights and that it infringes on your copyright. If the content is not yours exclusively, you shouldn’t file a takedown. Also, consider if the content match falls under ‘fair use’ or if it could be subject to other copyright exceptions.
• This tool is intended to find full re-uploads. If you find a clip of your content that you’d like removed, you can always report it via the copyright webform.

YouTube will monitor usage closely and will continue to expand over the coming months with the long-term goal of making it available to every creator in the YouTube Partner program.

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