My lad has posted a few of films up on Youtube and has stuck some music on to make it a bit more interesting rather than listening to wind noise. So far two of his films have had the music taken off by Youtube with the comment ‘This video contains an audio track that has not been authorised by WMG. The audio has been disabled.’
Now I know he hasn’t applied to use the music but it’s not like he can do realistically is it? Also it’s not like somebody is going to ‘steal’ it off the video for their own use. Or they will be constantly listening to the music off the vid rather than buying the music.
Anyway, apart from the wrongs and rights of it I was wondering how they discover that there is ‘illegal’ music on a video? Do they have someone report it or what? Do they have some sort of ‘sniffer’?

Fairly easy to run random tests on the vids and “listen” for music. TBH your son has “stolen” the music for use on his vid (much like you’d be cheesed off if your own music/video were used without your permission) but it does seem harsh. A mate of mine had teh same with a facebook vid – loads of photos of us as kids put into a 3 min video, gone with no warning. Can see their point, annoying as it is.

google run an “audio search” on all you tube vids, if they pick up a recognised song they mute it and if they pick up key words they sell space next to it for more to squirt “more relevant” adverts at you.

how do folk get away with showing themselves playing guitar hero or similar then?

The music is presumably licensed to Guitar Hero, and once it’s been through that hellish mangle it is devoid of valuable intellectual property rights, i.e. , no-one would pay to download your Playstation air-guitar videos if they couldn’t get them for nothing, so no-one loses anything.

😉

If my playing is anything to go by it will not resemble the original anyway, even google with all it’s power wont be able to decipher it.

*Google