Solved Copyright and In-Game Music

[TechPhil Games]

Hey Freedom! Family,

I recently did a stream on my channel in which I played a game called "The Crew"
Said game had copyrighted music in the background, with no way in-game to turn it off, apart from disabling music outright. At this point my royalty free playlist had begun to run out and repeat, so I chose against disabling the music. Low and behold, I know have 12 copyright claims against a video (was 13, one was wrong so disputed and ongoing). Using r e s t r e a m . i o, I also streamed to Twitch and they haven't picked up on this.
I was wondering, do I have any rights in this situation, as the game was using the music, and I had no direct control over what it was playing.
Was I stupid for letting the music play? I don't know.
I would post a link, but as this is my first post, I don't want it to be rejected, so here's an embed.

There's also a screenshot attached showing the 12 claims.


Please help me Freedom! Family

Phil
Creator
TechPhil
TechPhil Games

 

[LW]

Now that's a ton of claims and questions. To start off and see whether you can dispute this, may I know whether you commentated next to the music playing? As if you were, there may be a chance to go for a Fair Use defense of copyright here. If you weren't all the claims are justified and probably won't be lifted.

I've done some research on Ubisoft and their content policy regarding games. The thread below is all I really found: http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/773563-Ubisoft-policy-on-YouTube-videos-updated-Jan-2016-Forums

In this they state the following clearly:
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• You are free to monetize your videos via the YouTube partner program and similar programs on other video sharing sites, unless your videos happen to include copyrighted music that is identified in YouTube’s Content ID system or similar technology on any other site. If you upload a video, you may receive notification stating that the video has been claimed, and therefore monetized, by a music company and additionally, advertisements may appear within or around your video. In most cases, your video will not be blocked and these notifications are only meant to inform you that another entity has wholly monetized this content within the system. Please do not dispute these claims unless you have a direct license from the claim owner. Any other use of our content in videos must be non-commercial.

• If your YouTube channel is under an agreement with a Multi-Channel Network (MCN) where the MCN is monetizing on your behalf, please contact the MCN or the music claim owner to ensure that your MCN has an agreement with the music company.

[...]

• [...] If music owned by third parties (including the popular music in our games) or other non-Ubisoft content is included in your video, you will need to secure the content owner's permission independently.

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So they clearly are stating that you need to get the explicit permission by the music's copyright holder to use the music. As those are a lot of claims you could dispute them though it wouldn't change anything. If you didn't use a specific song that was claimed you can dispute it though you'd not make a difference as there are a ton of claims which would hurt a Fair Use defense and if you do win a few you'd still not have monetisation as there's the sheer amount of claims. For future videos I'd recommend turning off the music (Google is your friend, https://support.ubi.com/en-US/Faqs/000021991/How-do-I-disable-in-game-music ) in general to avoid claims. And as far as I know twitch has a worse copyright detection system than CID so really not surprised they didn't pick up on that.

TL;DR: Turn off the music in games, check the game developer's content policy and if there's a small amount of claims you can try Fair Use, though in your case that's not happening to be honest.

I hope I could help by explaining this, if you have further questions, leave a reply and I'll be happy to clarify things!

 

[TechPhil Games]

Hey,
Great! A big help. I was surprised when YT flagged it, as I remembered talking over most of it, but I made a mistake in that my Mic was set to no audio tracks in OBS, and was not broadcasted and recorded! I think what I will have to do is download the stream replay, and edit out all the bits that YT detected. I'll try my luck with the one I've already disputed, and I may have to dispute it again on the re-upload.
Thank you anyway.

Phil
Creator
TechPhil
TechPhil Games

 

[zeke morgan]

Thanks for the amazing answer to @TechPhil Games query, LW001. Couldn't have said it better myself.