YouTube’s broken copyright system was one of the main pain points for YouTube creators in 2019 with many high profile creators finding themselves demonetized, having videos removed, or receiving strikes on their channel as a result of bogus copyright claims.
And now in its first-ever transparency report, social media app TikTok has revealed that it removed thousands of pieces of content in the first half of 2019 in response to copyright takedown notices.
TikTok also reported that it removes content 85% of the time when receiving these notices and that it received a total of 3,345 copyright takedown notices between January and June of 2019.
It’s unclear how these stats compare to YouTube which doesn’t publish how many copyright takedown notices it receives, how many of these it responds to, or how many are successfully appealed. However, the stats show that in the majority of cases, TikTok creators who are hit with a copyright takedown notice will have their content removed.
The stats also give little insight into the proportion of these genuine copyright claims but YouTube’s copyright claims system has shown that questionable or bogus copyright claims often lead to content being taken down or demonetized. Some of the many examples of this include false copyright claims being filed on public domain footage and large corporate brands such as The Ellen Show using copyright claims to silence criticism.
