About a month ago, YouTubers privately began complaining about copyright strikes from ANI (Asian News International) about clips they’ve used in their videos.

Such complaints are not new: MediaNama has reported on complaints about copyright strikes from India’s public services broadcaster Prasar Bharati (read this and this), and even a relatively unknown company sent copyright claims en-masse to multiple YouTubers.

This time, however, it is different.

ANI is demanding between Rs. 15-18 Lakh from a YouTuber, the Reporters Collective reported then, and both “copyright penalties and licence fees to withdraw the strikes”. MediaNama was also working on this story before The Reporters Collective broke it, and we heard of higher amounts (up to Rs. 40 lakh as well), and an unwillingness withdraw the strikes without payment, failing which the YouTuber would lose their account. I said to my team when I first about this, that particular approach is unusual, and to me it appears to be “weaponisation” of YouTube copyright strikes.

How exactly do copyright strikes work?

Over the past few years, many journalists have quit their jobs in large media channels and publications, and become YouTubers: there’s now enough money if they have reach on YouTube, and revenue is consistent if they are consistent with their publishing (though algorithm-slavery on YouTube is a serious concern). They also have complete editorial independence, unlike news television which is allegedly plagued by political and commercial interference. For users, who are cutting the cord at an alarming rate, YouTube has become the primary source of video news, especially given the noise and lack of nuance on TV channels.

This shift has been recognised in two ways: firstly, by political parties, which sat down with key influencers for interviews prior to the last elections, and enabled government advertising (DAVP) and awards for influencers. The emergence of YouTube as a key source of news and analysis is why IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnav identified algorithmic bias as a key issue last year, alongside “Fake news & disinformation”, “Fair compensation by platforms: and “⁠Impact of AI on Intellectual Property”. It’s also why the IT Ministry is looking to rework Safe Harbour, which will change the way the Internet works in India. “Influencers” is a legitimate category now.

Many of these YouTubers incorporate short clips from publicly available sources (and there’s a difference between public availability and public domain), including from Prasar Bharati and ANI, into their videos. The lengths vary, from 4-5 second excerpts to 10-15 seconds, sometimes longer, in videos that might otherwise be 15 minutes or more in length.

You might ask about how ANI finds out that its clips have been used, since manual scanning of millions of YouTubers is not easy. It’s likely that ANI uses Content ID, which is a YouTube system that enables copyright owners to detect the usage of their copyright material in YouTube videos.

Here’s how it works: Copyright owners add their content to the “YouTube content management system by delivering reference files (audio, visual, or audiovisual) and metadata that describes the content and which territories you own it in.” For each item, YouTube “creates an asset in the content management system, essentially creating a fingerprint of that content. Depending on the type of content and your chosen delivery method, YouTube also creates a viewable YouTube video, a reference for Content ID matching, or both.” Content ID scans both new uploads, and “also performs a “legacy scan” to identify matching videos uploaded before your asset was created. Recent uploads and popular videos are scanned first.”

YouTubers get impacted most because their videos get scanned and flagged to content owners first. As YouTube itself acknowledges, “The majority of copyright claims and removal requests on YouTube come from our automatic detection technology.”

Apart from Content ID, YouTube also has a “Copyright Match” tool that copyright owners can use, and the primary condition here is that you ought to have uploaded your content first. An explanation of how it works is here:

It’s important to note that Copyright Match only helps find “find full or nearly-full matches” of videos and doesn’t work if short clips have been used. Thus either ANI has manually scanned YouTube videos, and this is entirely possible, or these videos with short snippets were surfaced by Content ID.

Why do copyright strikes even exist? Why does Content ID exist?

YouTube has had a copyrights violation issue since its inception, with people uploading copyrighted content to it without permission. It had entire movies, several music albums, but it wasn’t the only one: other services like DailyMotion has this problem too.

In content, the music industry is a lead indicator, and music labels were the first to take content platforms to court. T-Series vs MySpace is a key case in this space (also read this), but it’s often forgotten that T-Series had sued YouTube, and it’s perhaps not a co-incidence that a year after T-Series got the Guruji founders arrested for running a music search engine, they struck a deal with YouTube, which, as far as I understand, was finally renewed last year. T-Series is now the second most subscribed YouTube channel in the world; it was once the largest.

Rajjat Barjatya, the late founder of Rajshri Media, once told me that while production is key, a significant part of any music and movie labels business is enforcing their copyright: these businesses are about hits and misses game, and a business can only remain sustainable if it enforces its copyright, and for the hits to keep generating money so they risk a few flops. This is why music labels and movie producers focus so much on John Doe orders, and work with the police to raid small shops and restaurants for pirating music. You might even recall that during COVID, there was a move from the music industry to even license live social media performances of their own compositions by singers, which they stopped after a backlash that followed MediaNama’s reporting of it.

For YouTube, tools like Content ID and Copyright Match are critical to ensuring that content owners have a means of making money on their platform, and don’t have to resort to litigation anymore to prevent piracy. They need to empower copyright owners to protect their intellectual property.

Content owners have an option when it comes YouTube strikes: they can either issue a copyright strike against a video, or choose to monetize the ads running against it. Most music labels actually profit from their content (even cover versions) being run by third party channels, and claim ad revenue for those videos… but this is expensive to do: Someone once told me that T-Series has a 100 people team in Noida just for dealing with Content ID strikes/claims. This is unverified.

Can copyright claims be made for tiny snippets as well?

YouTube indicates that copyright claims can be made even if you use a snippet, and you can get multiple claims depending on jurisdictions as well.

• You can get claims from different copyright owners for different segments of your video.
• If the content has different copyright owners in different countries or regions, you can get multiple claims on the same video or segment.

It doesn’t really matter how long the snippet is for YouTube. Here’s an old example of a claim being made:

But isn’t using a snippet fair usage or fair dealing?

It’s important to keep in mind that facts cannot be copyrighted, and despite attempts in the past to create a “hot news doctrine” by Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and STAR TV, nothing prevents live reporting of facts by anyone else. Anyone can report the facts. The footage of an event, however, is more than just facts: it is a composition by a cameraperson, captured frame by frame, along with audio, and perhaps even commentary. Courts tend to be stricter about o

India’s Copyright Act states that:

39. Acts not infringing broadcast reproduction right or performer’s right.— No broadcast
    reproduction right or performer’s right shall be deemed to be infringed by—
    (a) the making of any sound recording or visual recording for the private use of the person
    making such recording, or solely for purposes of bona fide teaching or research; or
    (b) the use, consistent with fair dealing, of excerpts of a performance or of a broadcast in the
    reporting of current events or for bona fide review, teaching or research; or
    (c) such other acts, with any necessary adaptations and modifications, which do not constitute
    infringement of copyright under section 52.]

52. Certain acts not to be infringement of copyright.— (1) The following acts shall not constitute an
    infringement of copyright, namely,—
    4[(a) a fair dealing with any work, not being a computer programme, for the purposes of—
    (i) private or personal use, including research;
    (ii) criticism or review, whether of that work or of any other work;
    (iii) the reporting of current events and current affairs, including the reporting of a lecture
    delivered in public.

SpicyIP has this guide to fair usage cases in India that probably needs to be updated: in the list, there’s no clear case where copyright has been claimed over reporting of current events.

As Rahul Ajatshatru told MediaNama, there isn’t sufficient clarity on what is fair dealing here: there is no formula, in terms of how long a snippet should be. He does say, however, that assessment will also be based on whether the usage is qualitative, indicating that if it is used for commentary and critique, it might be construed as fair dealing/fair usage.

One important criteria that needs to be taken into account here is whether ANI’s original footage is being substituted by a Youtubers video, and in all probability, if enough original material, whether commentary, critique or other original content and perspective is being added by the YouTuber, then it should be fair dealing / fair use. It has to be derivative work, and not a substitute for ANI’s original content.

The other legal framework to consider, which YouTube abides by, is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA is interesting because it provides for both copyright claims and counter-claims.

For example: If someone issues a copyright violation claim against me if I’ve used their footage, the platform has to inform me. Unless I contest this claim, they have to take it down, and if I contest the claim, then the platform has to put the content back up, and it is no longer their responsibility. The copyright owner will have to take me to court to resolve the dispute, and the platform is safe.

However it’s important to note here that the DMCA does not provide for a three strike policy, which YouTube has implemented without a legal requirement to do so. YouTube’s copyright policy strikes page states:

If you get 3 copyright strikes:

• Your account, along with any associated channels, is subject to termination.
• If your channel is terminated, all the videos uploaded to your account will be made inaccessible.
• You may not create new channels.

Additionally, YouTube’s articulation of what is Fair Usage, however, is based entirely on US Law, and not India’s fair dealing provision.

Why is ANI doing what it is doing?

ANI has been particularly litigious of late: they’ve sued Wikipedia and Wikipedia editors for defamation, and the Supreme Court of India had actually cited my video about its implications while overturning a Delhi High Court order. They’re also suing OpenAI about Copyright, and that’s a case I hope they win, because no media publication or news wire will survive if their copyrighted material is used for training data and especially by RAG models like Perplexity and Google AI Summaries. Last year they sued Netflix for their usage of IC814 footage without license.

I would not grudge any company trying to enforce its copyright, because as I explained with the example I used for music, it’s the only way copyright owners can ensure that they get paid for their work, and thus have the incentive to invest in doing the same work.

ANI’s business, as a wire agency is to distribute its news reporting and video footage to other news publications. News businesses are currently on shaky ground, with growth fairly limited, and in some cases, losses being made (NDTV, HT Media, Network18, TV18 are all loss making, even though Dainik Jagran and Dainik Bhaskar are doing all right). This might have had an impact on their ability to source content from wire agencies, or even their ability to pay for it.

There is of course the added threat of Google’s AI Mode (read this), AI Summaries (read this) and the impact that has on online traffic and revenue. The threat of substitution by AI RAG models is an existential threat for media, and it is important for any content business to increase reach and monetization as quickly possible, and as much as possible in order to ensure that they have enough cash for the potential impact of AI on traffic and monetization.

Governments are of no help here: they don’t want to bite this bullet because AI models need training data, and they don’t want India to lose out in the AI race. Most AI models have already stolen data from publicly available (but not public domain) data. Copyright as a concept, is under the extreme threat, and this will become an existential crisis for media.

Even if this isn’t a consideration – and I can’t speculate as to why ANI has become so litigious of late – but it is the right of a business like ANI to try and increase their subscriber base: YouTubers are essentially a new market opportunity for them. If YouTubers decline the opportunity to take a subscription, then ANI has every right to enforce their copyright. Press Trust of India, another wire service, may have offered a carrot to YouTubers with an “affordable” deal, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that isn’t followed with a stick eventually.

Many YouTubers reporting news online are first time entrepreneurs, are probably not used to dealing with legal notices and copyright strikes. They thus panic when they receive a notice or a strike, or even a threat. I did, when I got legal threats the day MediaNama went live with this story.

Most YouTubers are also not aware of how copyright strikes and Content ID work, and given all that we’ve reported about copyright strikes on YouTube, the platform has clearly failed to do enough to educate them. It’s not like I haven’t told them to do this either.

So who is in the wrong here?

In my opinion, and this is not a legal opinion, each stakeholder is doing what is in their rational self interest, but there are some things that are problematic.

First, I don’t think what many YouTubers are doing is copyright violation: they’re using news clippings for derivative work, for critique and commentary, and not only is that in public interest and adds to the public discourse, it doesn’t substitute anyones work. This is something that should be protected by courts when they consider the implementation of the Copyright Act and fair dealing in terms of news content.

Where News YouTubers are probably wrong is that they’re not disputing the copyright claims. If they contest it, it is no longer a strike. YouTube’s transparency report states that

“In 2024, uploaders submitted counter notifications in response to over 8% of removal requests submitted via the webform, whereas it’s fewer than 3% for both the Enterprise Webform and for the Copyright Match Tool. Fewer than 1% of all Content ID claims made in 2024 have been disputed. Over 70% of those disputes succeeded because claimants either voluntarily released the claim or did not respond to the dispute in time.

There is thus a clear case for YouTubers to dispute copyright strikes.

YouTubers should also probably be ready to go to court regarding such complaints in order to set a precedence in such matters. It would make sense for an organisation like Digipub to create a Creators Legal Defence Fund, where creators can perhaps pay an annual fee that can be used to provide legal support to YouTubers that are Digipub members. It would work in a manner similar to insurance.

Some YouTubers were also considering reuploading videos without the clips, because the videos would stand even without them. However, this doesn’t necessarily absolve them of a potential copyright violation that may have already occurred. They might want to consider not using publicly available clips, and restrict themselves to public domain clips.

Second, where is ANI wrong? Like I said before, ANI has every right to claim its copyright, to issue copyright strikes via YouTube, and to also claim compensation. However, what YouTubers are saying is important here: they claim that three strikes are being issued simultaneously in some cases, after allowing these alleged violations to accumulate, and thus there is a threat of getting banned from YouTube forever. There is also a claim that there is a penalty being charged of them for these alleged infringements, over and above the annual subscription fee.

If this is indeed true, then I would say that this may be considered a misuse of YouTube’s copyright protection system’s three strike policy, which doesn’t envision commercial consideration or three strikes in a go with the alleged threat of leveraging that for account cancellation.

Third, where is YouTube wrong? I would argue that YouTube is most at fault here. As I mentioned earlier, it hasn’t done enough to educate YouTubers about copyright strikes.

Importantly, YouTube’s copyright strikes system is broken: the three strike policy goes beyond the ambit of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and has been used to create a fear of a complete ban for many YouTubers for whom this is now their primary source of livelihood. Effectively, they’re enabling an alleged misuse of their system. It’s not like YouTube is not aware of abuse of its copyright claims system. According to its transparency report for 2024:

Over 6% of videos requested for removal through the public webform in 2024 were the subject of abusive copyright removal requests, meaning these requests were assessed and rejected by our review team as a likely false assertion of copyright ownership.

The question here really is whether YouTube would want to treat this alleged demand for money on the basis of an alleged misuse of three-strike-policy an abuse of its copyright management tools. This is tightrope for them to walk, because it could result in a lawsuit from a copyright owner.

Fourth, and this is an often repeated complaint, but YouTube has failed to account for the complexities of Fair Use, and given a blunt instrument like three strikes to copyright owners.

Fifth, channel deletion with the removal of the ability to create another channel, is an extreme action, and illustrates a lack of proportionality here, where even an inadvertent mistake has terminal consequences.

They’ve also perpetuated an already significant power imbalance between large copyright owners and individual creators, who may feel compelled to comply with demands, even in case of fair use, and this in turn has a negative impact on free speech on the platform, especially, in this case, the suppression of critical voices.

Of course, the lack of intention to intervene here is understandable: YouTube profits from both the ad revenue from creators’ videos, and that of IP holders like ANI. This dual dependence leads to a systemic incentive to avoid siding with either party, especially where legal ambiguity exists. They also don’t want to get involved in adjudicating copyright issues lest either party hold them to account for it. At the same time, it may be argued that YouTube’s Content ID is effectively performing legal interpretation: it assesses ownership, determines potential violations, and enables consequences without judicial oversight. It is, in effect, a law unto itself with no real due process or accountability for this decision making.

What should YouTube do here?

First, it should consider suspending this three strike policy (for account suspension) for content where there is a minimal percentage usage (for example, less than 10 seconds of a 10+ minute video). In case of repeat instances of multiple strikes, they should perhaps have an automated review of the strikes from the copyright owner. It’s not like Google doesn’t have tools for pattern recognition.

Second, it should consider a product design change, in case this isn’t already done: YouTube is aware of what segments of someones copyrighted material has been used in a video, and they’re aware of the length of the video. For Content ID requests, a nudge in their product design warn to copyright owners about issuing strikes would help.

For example, it could point out that “your copyrighted material is 5 seconds of a 15 minute video. Are you sure this isn’t fair use? Are you sure you want to issue a copyright strike? Repeated abuse of copyright strikes may lead to your Content ID account being suspended.

Third, it should create a separate team to deal with YouTubers, and run programs to help them understand copyright issues better.

Fourth, it should remove automated channel deletion as a consequence of copyright strikes.

Fifth, YouTube needs to change its policies to interpret fair dealing from an Indian copyright law perspective, where fair dealing for the purpose of the reporting of current events and current affairs is permitted.

There are only three outcomes possible here: either YouTube stands up for its community and enabling fair usage, this goes to court, or YouTubers accept the new reality that even apparent minor usage of copyrighted material lead to demands for compensation.