YouTube Content ID scammers allegedly stole a whopping $20 million from royalty fees from the video-sharing giant by claiming rights to the songs of other artists.
This picture taken in Moscow on October 12, 2021 shows the logo of Youtube social media on a smartphone screen. (Photo by Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP)
YouTube Content ID Scam
According to the news story by TorrentFreak, the video-sharing platform of Google, YouTube, subscribes to a system that recognizes any piracy in its platform, which then flags any video or songs that its users use without permission.
The said piracy recognition system is dubbed as the "Content ID," which funnels all of the ad revenue of the content to the holders of the copyright of either a video or music.
That said, copyright owners are earning massively from those who are using their content without any permission.
In fact, YouTube previously admitted, last May 16, that it has already paid a whopping $5.5 billion of ad revenue to the copyright holders after claiming their music or video on the platform.
But still, TorrentFreak noted in the same report that some content creators have already raised issues with the Content ID system of YouTube.
BERLIN, GERMANY - SEPTEMBER 27: A young woman with a smartphone walks past a billboard advertisement for YouTube on September 27, 2019 in Berlin, Germany. YouTube has evolved as the world's largest platform for sharing video clips.
Some of them have previously claimed that there are entities that have been monetizing from the content that is not actually theirs.
However, these folks said that they did not push through with their complaints due to the fear that they would just lose the battle anyway.
Men Allegedly Stole $20M in Royalty Fees on YouTube
This time around, some folks are allegedly pretending to be the rightful owners of over 50,000 songs on the video-sharing platform. Thus, getting compensation from YouTube.
The United States Attorney's Office of Arizona announced that they are charging a pair of men for allegedly pretending to be a music company to claim the royalty payments for the songs on YouTube.
As per The Register, two men, namely Webster Batista from Doral, Florida, and Jose Teran from Scottsdale, Arizona, are facing 30 counts of an indictment from the US Court.
To be more precise, the multiple indictments against the two men include transactional money laundering and conspiracy.
Not to mention that it also involved both fraud and identity theft as they allegedly pretended to be the music artists or the companies behind the songs on the platform.
The government further claims in court that the Content ID scheme of the two men has been ongoing since April 2017.
One of the songs mentioned in the indictment further revealed that the company of the two men, MediaMuv, LLC, has pocketed $24,000 royalty fees for a single song uploaded on YouTube.
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Written by Teejay Boris
