Why The AGDQ2013 Highlight Reel On YouTube has gone Private

Edit: The video is back up with the audio in question stripped out, but I uploaded the clip in question separately so the entire normal video doesn't get Orchard ads. See below for the history.

Edit 2014/05/31: The original is back up! Seems that Orchard has in fact withdrawn its claim. Not sure when this happened, but I noticed the separate upload no longer had the notice, so I went and restored the original audio. No problems yet.

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If you want to watch the AGDQ2013 highlight reel, currently the best place to get it is on Archive.org:

https://archive.org/download/AwesomeGamesDoneQuick2013/AwesomeGamesDoneQuick2013_Highlights_4M.mp4

Alternately, here's a torrent:

https://archive.org/download/AwesomeGamesDoneQuick2013/AwesomeGamesDoneQuick2013.zip

(I have to zip it otherwise archive.org tries to download the contents of the torrent, which isn't what I want in this case)

For those of you wondering why the AGDQ2013 highlight reel is currently unavailable on YouTube, this is an email I received on March 11th:

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Dear UraniumAnchor,

Your video "Awesome Games Done Quick 2013 - Highlight Reel", may have content that is owned or licensed by The Orchard Music, but it’s still available on YouTube! In some cases, ads may appear next to it.

This claim is not penalizing your account status. Visit your Copyright Notice page for more details on the policy applied to your video.

Sincerely,
- The YouTube Team

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The song in question is the Portal 2 credits music.

Now, this doesn't mean the highlight reel got blocked, but it DOES mean that The Orchard Music gets to run ads on the ENTIRE LENGTH OF THE HIGHLIGHT REEL because of a TWO MINUTE SONG. That in and of itself is a massive pile of horseshit, but it's not even their song! It's Valve's song! And look at this!

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http://www.valvesoftware.com/videopolicy.html

We encourage our users to make videos using Valve game content, such as playthrough or instruction videos or SFM movies. We are fine with publishing these videos to your website or YouTube or similar video sharing services. We're not fine with taking assets from our games (e.g. voice, music, items) and distributing those separately.

Use of our content in videos must be non-commercial. By that we mean you can't charge users to view or access your videos. You also can't sell or license your videos to others for a payment of any kind.

***You are free to monetize your videos via the YouTube partner program and similar programs on other video sharing sites. Please don't ask us to write YouTube and tell them its fine with us to post a particular video using Valve content. It's not possible to respond to each such request. Point them to this page.***

Of course this policy applies only to Valve content. If you include someone else's content in your video, such as music, you will have to get permission from the owner.

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(emphasis mine)

Now, I've already filed a dispute with the relevant legal information, but The Orchard Music has THIRTY DAYS before they have to respond. In the meantime their ads are running on the video and essentially stealing money for something they had nearly no involvement with whatsoever other than registering "Want You Gone" via the Content ID system, which seems incredibly suspicious to begin with since it's Valve's song, but I've also found horror stories of this company laying claim to music that's completely original! Just do a Google search and you can run across all kinds of stories, though to be fair I have no idea how accurate they are.

Now, basically I have three options here:

1) I leave the video up, a video which receives hundreds if not thousands of views a day, and just letting The Orchard Music have all the ad revenue for something they had no hand in creating.
2) I take the video down until the dispute goes through, and at that point depending on whether or not the content match is upheld, I can either:
 a) If the match is not upheld, everything returns to how it was, the ad revenue goes towards the *GDQ fund to help buy equipment for future marathons. I've already purchased hard drives and recording devices to be used at the marathons with the money the ads on the highlight reels have raised. Video processing and raw footage is not cheap to deal with.
 b) If the match IS upheld, I can either do the same thing as 1), which leaves a horrible taste in my mouth, or I can blank out the audio on that section of the video and upload it separately (because, let's face it, Znernicus' singing is pretty awesome and I'd hate for people to not be able to hear it).

The problem is that I didn't know blanking out the audio was an option until AFTER I filed the dispute, and while a dispute is in progress you cannot make serious edits to the video the dispute is about. So I have to sit on my hands and wait and see what happens with the dispute before I can blank the audio out.

I apologize to everybody involved, but until YouTube gets its head out of its ass about flagging a video because of <2% of the running time includes something that you might possibly not have the rights for, it's out of my hands.

----- UPDATED APRIL 1ST -----

Hi UraniumAnchor,

After reviewing your dispute, The Orchard Music has decided that their copyright claim is still valid.

Video title: Awesome Games Done Quick 2013 - Highlight Reel
Copyrighted song: Want You Gone
 View claim details
Why this can happen

The copyright owner might disagree with your dispute.
The reason you gave for disputing the claim may have been insufficient or invalid.
- The YouTube Team

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So apparently 2B is what's happening here. I submitted an edit to blank out the audio fragment in question, but the edit is taking forever to go through. The video will be available again as soon as the edit is live.

In the meantime, I've emailed Jonathan Coulton directly though I don't know how much good it will do. We'll see.

--- Update Again ---

Hi Benjamin,

Jonathan's disfigured henchman, Scarface here.  Thanks for your email and sorry to hear about the trouble you're having.

Our understanding is that the decision is up to Valve, as the owner of the song. If you need our permission, in general it is fine with us under creative commons for you to use Jonathan's music (as long as your video is not monetized in any way), but technically this is one of the two songs that are not officially covered under this license (because it is owned by Valve).

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

Jason Holtman at Valve (jasonh@valvesoftware.com) might be able to help you more with this one.  I suggest writing him your issue.

A lot of people have posted their works including this song on Youtube and up until now it doesn't usually seem to be a problem (but I'm not a lawyer).  I'm not sure who "Orchard Music" is or how to contact them.  I suppose it could be that they are somehow associated with Valve, so I suggest that the best thing to do is to contact  Valve with your question.

Sorry about that, and please let us know if you have further questions or have trouble getting an answer from Valve.

Best wishes,

Scarface

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So the song IS owned by Valve... and even Joco's own people don't know who the fuck Orchard Music is.

I've uploaded the clip separately, with audio intact: http://youtu.be/8IXlPIMxwdg

In the meantime, I've emailed Valve, as suggested, so we'll see where that goes.

--- Update Again ---

2014/05/31: At some point I noticed the "third party content" notification had disappeared from the separate upload, so I've restored the original back to how it was. No problems yet. Valve must have yelled at Orchard to knock that shit off.

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