Understand and resolve asset ownership conflicts
The “Ownership conflicts” section of your Content ID To Dos provides you with a running list of assets you own that have encountered conflicting assertions of ownership on the YouTube platform. Asset ownership conflicts arise when multiple content owners claim asset ownership percentages that add up to over 100% in a specific territory.
The manner in which 100% ownership is exceeded can depend on the type of asset involved. For example, if more than one content owner claims the same territorial rights to an asset that requires exclusive territorial ownership, there will be an ownership conflict needing resolution. On the other hand, for assets like musical compositions where territorial rights are often split among several parties, conflicts can arise when those parties designate ownership percentages that collectively add up to over 100%.
What happens when an asset has ownership conflicts?
- The asset will appear in the “Ownership conflicts” section of all the relevant content owners’ Content ID accounts for review.
- In most cases, active monetization claims that have been made based on the asset’s reference material will be postponed until the conflict is resolved.
- If different content owners have specified different match policies (track, monetize, block, takedown) for the same asset’s claims, the most restrictive policy will be applied.
Monetized Views Lost
If you are monetizing claims based on an asset that is in ownership conflict, you may lose revenue until the conflict is resolved. By default, your ownership conflict list is ordered by “monetized views lost” on each particular asset, helping to you identify and resolve ownership conflicts with the highest revenue priority first.
How to resolve asset ownership conflicts
Here’s how to ensure the appropriate ownership information is designated for your asset:
- Click on the asset name to pull up its asset detail page.
- Click the Ownership & Policy tab to view the details of the ownership conflict.
- If you have incorrectly or mistakenly asserted territorial ownership for an asset, click Remove my ownership to edit your ownership information.
- If you have confirmed the accuracy of your designated ownership, or have a question for the other content owner(s) with whom you are in conflict, click Contact owners. This will pull up a pre-populated, editable contact form addressed to them, allowing you to easily and quickly communicate to resolve the conflict.
Resolve potential claims, disputes, and appeals
Some claims require action from a partner before the policy can be applied. These are pending claims and can be in this state for a number of different reasons, including short or low confidence matches, partner policies, or user disputes.
Pending claims appear under the To Dos section of the menu on the left hand side, or can be isolated by going to theClaims section and applying the appropriate filters.Clicking a pending claim will take you to the claim detail page, which will include some additional information about why the claim is in a pending state and when that claim review will expire (be automatically released). When you review a pending claim, you are asked to determine if it is a valid claim, or whether it should be released. Note that, if unreviewed, pending claims will expire (become inactive) in 30 days.
The following sections describe each type of pending claim in greater detail.
Potential claims
The Potential claims queue contains possible claims, short matches, and claims routed for review because of a partner-provided policy. These claims are routed to this queue for review before being made. Please review and determine which should be active (Confirm) and which should be made inactive (Release). Release and Exclude and Takedown are also options under the drop-downs for the Release and Confirm btns, respectively.
Disputes and appeals
Disputes and appeals are from users contesting the claims on their videos. On the claim detail page, you can see the selected reason for their dispute, along with any additional text they have provided. Once you have determined whether the claim should be made inactive or made active again, you can select Release or Reinstate. Again, options for Release and Exclude and Takedown are nested into their respective drop-downs.
Bulk actions
It is also possible to bulk release claims in any of these queues, should you wish to do so. Select the check box next to any claims you would like to release and select Release or Close Claims from the Actions drop-down.
Diagnose composition relationships and embedded compositions
Understanding the relationship between composition assets and sound recording assets is important to proper use of Content ID and music rights clearance.
For those needing a refresher, a composition is the underlying musical score the artist wrote and fixed. A sound recording is a specific recorded performance of that piece of music, be it studio or live. In order to ensure that the proper rights are assigned to a Content ID claim made based on a sound recording asset’s reference material, it should almost always be related to its parent composition asset in Content ID.
If you have asset relationship information that we identify may be inaccurate (for example, the titles of the sound recording and composition are detected to be different), you will see “Embedded compositions” to review and validate under your Content ID “To Dos” section.
Review and validate composition relationships:
- From the Content ID menu, click Embedded compositions.
- Determine whether the two assets in each list line item are in fact related (see screenshot above).
- Select the asset relationship(s) you wish to update.
- To update a single asset relationship, click the link in the list.
- To update multiple asset relationships in bulk, check the box next to each relationship you want to update.
- Verify the relationship.
- If you’re updating a single asset relationship, select Yes or No under the prompt “Is the sound recording a performance of the following composition?”
- If you’re updating multiple asset relationships in bulk, click the Actions dropdown above your embedded composition list and select Related or Unrelated.
If you don’t validate relationships between sound recording and composition assets, you may not be able to monetize your content or UGC in certain territories. Invalid asset relationships may also lead to asset ownership conflicts in scenarios where we merge assets based on common asset details provided.
Fix Content ID reference overlaps
Reference overlaps (previously called conflicting reference files) occur when two reference files uploaded to the Content ID system contain identical audio, video, or audiovisual content.
In order for Content ID to correctly execute claims based on an overlapping reference file, partners need to specify which party owns exclusive rights to any of its overlapping section(s).
Fixing reference overlaps
Your reference files that have overlapping ownership are listed under To Dos on the Content ID menu.
Each of the reference files listed here will have information about the reference file(s) that overlap it. At a glance, this includes the amount of overlap, the percent of the reference that overlaps and general information about the owner(s) of the overlapping reference file(s). Clicking on an item in this list will provide even more information about the overlap and allows you to playback and compare the overlapping portions of the two references.
From here, you can determine whether to exclude the overlapping section from your ownership of the reference, allowing the other party to assert ownership to that portion. Or, conversely, you can declare exclusive rights over that overlapping segment.
If you’re not sure what to do, there is a btn you can use to contact the other owner(s) for more information, or to help resolve the issue.
It is also now possible exclude or assert exclusive ownership in bulk. You can do this by selecting the check box for any reference overlaps you wish to do in bulk and selecting the appropriate action from the Actions dropdown.
Validate potentially invalid reference content
When a reference includes content that YouTube identifies as potentially invalid, the reference is sent to the YouTube content owner for review. Any claims made based on the potentially invalid portion of the reference are also sent for review. The content owner needs to verify that he or she owns the content exclusively with sufficient rights or exclude that portion of the reference from consideration when making matches.
To review potentially invalid reference content:
- From the To Dos section of the Content ID menu, select Invalid references.The Invalid references option appears only when you have references to review.
- Review the flagged portion of the reference.The bar above the video player shows information about the reference and the potentially invalid portion, including what percentage of the reference has been flagged. To view the flagged portion, click the Play segment btn.
- Verify that you own the content in the flagged portion, or exclude the flagged portion from the reference.
- If you own the flagged content exclusively, click Segment is valid.
- If the flagged portion features third-party material, such as public domain footage, short clips used under fair use principles, commercial breaks, or non-exclusive audio loops, click Exclude segment.
Once the segment is confirmed as valid, pending claims based on the segment become valid. If you exclude the segment, any claims based on the segment are released.
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