Victory! Video Essays Back on YouTube

After a ridiculous month-long fair use battle with Warner/Chappell over a few seconds of music in two short movie clips, both of my video essays are finally back on YouTube. Thanks to the non-profit organization New Media Rights for all their amazing legal help! 

Increasingly big media corporations have been claiming revenue from small creators over clips that are very clearly fair use. They do this because YouTube's system allows big companies to demand YouTubers "share revenue," and they know most of us can't afford to risk loosing our videos (or our channels) in order to fight bogus copyright claims and assert our fair use rights. It's a classic mob-style shakedown. "That's a nice video you got there. It'd be a real shame if something were to happen to it. If you were to say, let us monetize your work, we'd make sure nothing *unfortunate* happens to your channel." It's tantamount to extortion, and I said no. 

Personally, I don't run ads on any of my video essays because my channel is 100% funded by viewers like you via Patreon. So bogus takedowns mean I just lose viewers and subscriptions but for media critics who make their living from ad revenue, a takedown could be devastating to their income. Even though fair use is explicitly designed to protect media critics and scholars, big media corporations are betting small creators can't risk a legal battle.

Fair use allows for limited transformative reuse of copyrighted material for the purposes of criticism, commentary, and scholarship (even if creators make money off their work). My video essays, along with most media criticism on YouTube, is protected under Section 107 of US Copyright law. You can learn more about fair use you here.

In case this nonsense happens again, whenever I upload a video to YouTube, I'll also be uploading a backup copy to the Internet Archive with a public download link. I'll add that link to each future video post here as well.

Thanks so much for your continued support of my work!

-Jonathan