Copyright claims on Youtube, how to not get copyrighted explained, and how not to fall foul of the YouTube Community Guidelines. Plus best practices every Youtube creator needs to know to keep your channel claim free, avoid demonetization, or worse still, channel termination without warning!
In this video, I’m going to explain what copyright and community guidelines are and how to avoid incurring warnings and takedowns on YouTube by following some simple but crucial best practices and rules, so that you never run the risk of copyright strikes or having a video removed or demonetized.
So let’s start with some of the terminology. Community Guidelines and Copyright. Everyone who uploads videos to YouTube must adhere to these. The Community Guidelines cover everything you do on YouTube, not just video uploads. This includes shorts, comments you post, and even your thumbnail images. If you do violate any of these rules the response can range from suspending a creator’s privileges all the way to account termination.
Taking it a step further, if you want to monetize (make money from) your channel, there are a few more things to understand, like the YouTube Partner Program policies and the Advertiser-friendly guidelines.
There are two different kinds of strikes you can get, a Community Strike and a Copyright Strike. If you make a community guideline infringement, you will receive a warning before any action is taken. There are NO such warnings issued however for Copyright strikes and if you get three, your account will be terminated and your videos removed from YouTube. There are also Content ID claims, which can result in the copyright holder tracking and monetizing your video for themselves.
So what should you avoid doing?
Number one. Don’t upload videos or post comments about sensitive, violent or dangerous content. I’ve put a link to the Community Guidelines for you below.
Number two. Avoid Tag Stuffing or Keyword Stuffing in the description. Basically, this means don’t just copy and paste a list of your keywords and tags in the description box. Instead, you should write a readable, helpful, and informative narrative about the content of your video.
Number three. Don’t put another content creators channel name in your tags, description, or any of your other metadata. Doing this is not going to boost your video or channel, it will just get you a warning or community strike.
Number four. Don’t use a picture of a celebrity or sports personality in the thumbnail that has nothing to do with the actual content of the video. This is misleading and often referred to as ‘clickbait’.
Number five. Self Promotion and Spamming – don’t go to other channels and spam the video comments with ‘sub for sub’ or ‘hug for hug’, or by adding links and saying check out my channel or video. Your comment will be held for review by the channel owner and will never be approved anyway. Most experienced creators add these kinds of phrases to the blocked words so comments like this never see the light of day.
Number six. Copyright – NEVER use movie clips, short music clips, or basically anyone else’s videos, music or other creative assets in your own content, unless you have explicit permission (or rights) to do so. Not even 1 or 3-second clips. Some creators do do this and suggest that if it’s just a second or two, it’s ok, but legally it is not and could get your video deleted. Maybe not immediately, but in the future.
If you want to add music to your videos that you know will be copyright free and safe to use then I recommend using one of the many music sites available. One I recommend to get started which has a ton of free, royalty free music is Uppbeat
Number seven. Do not copy, or download and re-upload other creators’ videos. You can certainly look at other creators’ videos for inspiration and ideas of what is trending and popular, BUT you must always create your own unique content based around your own opinions and experiences. This even applies to content uploaded under the creative commons license.
The best way to avoid getting warnings or strikes, is to make sure you always follow the community guidelines and when you upload your videos to YouTube, make them unlisted or private. This way you can take advantage of the copyright and ad suitability checks carried out for you by Youtube during the upload process. Having your video set to either of these, means that you can address any issues before your video actually goes public.
Knowing how to avoid community and copyright strikes by implementing everything we’ve covered here will definitely help keep your channel and videos safe. I would strongly recommend you also check out the short playlist from the YouTube Creator channel which covers everything we’ve mentioned here, and more, in detail.
Safe creating everyone!
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Watch the YouTube Creators 3 video playlist which goes into more details HERE
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