Is There a Way to Avoid Getting a Copyright Strike for Your YouTube Videos?

 

Credit to YouTube’s New Copyright Transparency Report Leaves a Lot Out | Electronic Frontier Foundation

I have uploaded quite a few times this week on YouTube, and I have gotten about two copyright strikes so far. My video wasn’t threatened with getting taken down, but if I had already been monetized, there could have been a chance that those two copyright strikes could have affected me somehow. 

I want to find a way how to avoid getting a copyright strike for my channel. 

The reason that I got two copyright strikes for two of my YouTube videos, was because I used footage from two horror movies. 

Screenshot of my videos that got copyright strikes.

From the video based on the Thing, I got a copyright strike for using actual footage from the movie, because I had purchased the film through YouTube. I had recorded several scenes from the film to use as a sort of analysis format, since I was talking about my personal theories as to what happened to one of the main characters toward the end of the film. 

The other video that was about 4 minutes was based on my reaction to a new horror movie coming out, which is the remake to The Mummy. 

I’ve done a little bit of research on the main reason why I got copyright strikes for both videos, and I think I know the answer. 

Apparently, we are allowed to use movie footage, but there should be a limit on how much we can actually use for our videos. There is I believe a 30 second limit, but this still doesn’t make any sense to me, because I’ve seen plenty of YouTubers who use much more than 30 seconds of movie footage. 

From what I have read from people who have posted their own YouTube videos, if you want to use your own movie footage, the video really has to come off like commentary for your purpose with using movie footage of your choice. 

This does make a lot of sense, because I didn’t really use the footage for commentary purposes. For The Thing, there was one piece of footage that wasn’t used for commentary, and it was in the very beginning of the film. I legit recorded a whole scene of the main character speaking with the entire crew in the movie, and it wasn’t for the analysis purpose I was going for. 

For the reaction of The Mummy video, that was 100% not commentary related. I was reacting to a movie trailer, that was it. 

I’m determined to find a way to avoid getting any more copyright strikes. I’ve mostly been sticking to using only pictures for the horror topics I talk about, but I feel that I should use footage for the videos. I feel that it’s ten times more entertaining to include actual footage as to what I’m referring to for the purpose of my video. 

I’m planning to work on a big video very soon, which is my own theories as to what happened to Josh from The Blair Witch Project. This movie is very special to me, and I want to somehow include footage for this video. I’m going to use less than 30 seconds of footage for the video, but I don’t think this is going to be possible for me. For some scenes, footage won’t be necessary for the video, but there are two specific scenes that I really want to focus on so badly for the video. 

Maybe I just need to really edit the videos a whole lot more and avoid using any sound for the videos too. Or I need to use a different software to record the footage. 

I’ll be sure to write another article if I don’t get another copyright strike, to let you guys know if my new recording direction either worked for did not work out for me!