YouTube Relaxes Content ID Scanning In Response To Content Creators’ Frustration

March 19 10:21 2014 by Alexei Rivera Print This Article

Since our website have been posting a lot of videos on our YouTube channel, we’ve been closely keeping up with the whole Content ID hulaboo that started near the end of 2013. We’d forgive you if you didn’t hear about this – it mostly affects people who make YouTube videos and make money off them – and it hits video game journalism the hardest. Fortunately we, as a technology & gadgets channel should be a little safer from this problem, the strictness and almost futile appeal process had us worried about losing our YouTube accounts if we so much as sneeze weirdly on our videos. So thankfully YouTube has sent a new update about their process and it looks like they’re slowing down these draconian Content ID sweeps. Hurrah!

In an e-mail sent today to (what we assume is) all YouTube accounts, Google details a more relaxed system in scanning for Content ID matches. Claiming that their new system’s “introduction didn’t go as we hoped,” and that they have “slowed the introduction to address some of these concerns,” among other things. There’s some good info in the entire missive, so we’d suggest reading up on the pictures below. And if you want to skim, we’ve highlighted some parts so you can at least get a gist.

Well that’s great, isn’t it? Hopefully this whole thing goes smoother than it has been for the past few months. We actually do like Content ID and how it keeps YouTube clean from piracy – and it has actually helped us ban an account that was stealing our YouTube videos some time ago. Time will tell if it works for the better. We’ll see.