YouTube Dismissed 60% Of Copyright Claims Disputed In The First Half Of 2021

Sixty percent of copyright claims disputed by content creators were dismissed in their favor.

According to YouTube’s first ever Copyright Transparency Report, which comprises data from January through July 2021, there were a total of 722,649,569 copyright claims made through its Content ID system during that time period.

Ninety-nine-point-five percent of those claims (718,951,550) went undisputed. In the remaining 0.05% (3,698,019) of cases, video uploaders disputed the claims, presumably arguing that their videos either didn’t contain copyrighted content, or that they did use copyrighted content, but in a way that’s covered under fair use.

Out of those 3,698,019 disputes, 2,219,794 (60%) were decided in favor of video uploaders, meaning the claims were released, creators’ content was left uploaded as is, and no copyright strikes were left on their channels.

YouTube’s Content ID algorithm (responsible for more than 99% of copyright claims filed in the first half of 2021, per YouTube’s report) is a frequent target of creators’ ire. Creators have long criticized the automatic system for flagging content by mistake–something that can lead to creators’ videos being taken down for hours or days–as well as flagging content they say should be covered by fair use.

It’s more than likely that at least some of the ~2.2 million dismissed claims were dismissed because Content ID made a mistake, or because content was covered under fair use. However, that being said, it’s worth noting that if a creator files a dispute and the original claimant does not respond to that dispute within 30 days, YouTube will automatically dismiss the claim in the creator’s favor.

So, since YouTube didn’t release data about exactly how many claims were dismissed because of mistakes versus how many were dismissed because they expired, we can’t say that Content ID made 2.2 million mistakes. All we know is that 2.2 million claims were dismissed.

Also worth noting: Creators actually disputed more manually filed content claims in Jan.-July than automatic Content ID claims. Disputes were filed on 0.6% of automatic claims, and more than 1% of manual claims.

YouTube says it intends to publish copyright transparency reports twice a year moving forward.

“We are committed to making sure that YouTube remains a vibrant community with strong systems in place to enable rightsholders to manage their content on YouTube, and we look forward to the next update of the Copyright Transparency Report,” the platform said.