Spatula Madness Copyright Dispute (Patreon)

You may or may not have noticed, but as of today "Spatula Madness: Dividends" has been forcibly removed from YouTube due to a bogus copyright claim. I am currently in the process of trying to get it restored.

When I uploaded the video in November I got a copyright claim from a group called The Orchard Music, for a song I used at the end. This is not unusual - I have to appeal claims for just about every royalty-free or licensed music track I use these days. I appealed the claim, and thought nothing more of it.

The track in question was one I had licensed specifically for the video from Pond5, a stock media marketplace that has been in operation since 2006. It's a great song, and you can listen to it here:

https://www.pond5.com/royalty-free-music/item/73058243-magooga-cool-artsy-swing-jazz-big-band-retro-oldies

The song is from 1962, by a group called The Bobby Christian Band. It is being sold on Pond5 by David Steele of Pendulum Arts Music Publishing. David is the grandson of Bobby Christian, and son of the track’s recording engineer. He is the current rights-holder of the song and has the original master recordings.

On December 4th I got a notification that The Orchard Music had denied my copyright appeal. I got in contact with Pond5, with David Steele, and with my Multi-Channel Network representative, and after confirming that I did in fact have the right to use the song I appealed the denial on December 7th.

On December 14th The Orchard Music initially denied this second appeal, giving me 7 days to either:

Remove the video, thus avoiding a copyright strike

Do nothing, and after seven days the video is removed anyway and I get a copyright strike

Revoke my appeal, keeping the video up but losing any ad revenue

Given that I had the legal right to use the song, none of these were good options. Pond5, David Steele, and my MCN rep all got in touch with The Orchard Music about the dispute. I, personally, did not hear from The Orchard Music once. I sent messages through both their official copyright-dispute form, as well as directly to their dispute department via e-mail, but heard nothing back. My MCN and Pond5 managed to get some sort of response, but (to my knowledge) never one explaining what the actual dispute was.

On December 15th The Orchard Music released their claim on my video, thanks in large part to my MCN representative (thank you Andrea at Frederator!) I had hoped that would be the end of it. Then, earlier today, I received an e-mail from YouTube informing me that The Orchard Music had sent a full-on take-down request, which immediately removed the video from YouTube and gave my channel a copyright strike.

At this point my only option to get the video restored is to send a legal request to YouTube demanding they restore it. If YouTube decided to comply, then the next step by The Orchard Music would be to take legal action against me.

I still have no idea why they are making this claim, as they have refused to speak to me directly about it. I've done my own research trying to make sense of it all, and as far as I can tell the source of the dispute is a media holding company called 43 North Broadway, LLC, who are a client of The Orchard Music.

43 North Broadway, LLC exists specifically to acquire media assets on-mass, that they then exploit in various way. Ten years ago they acquired Ovation Records, a company whose vice president was David Steele's father, Ronald Steele. Ovation once released a vinyl record with the disputed track in question, although the actual copyright ownership of the track and the literal physical master tapes stayed with the Steele family. It is possible that 43 North Broadway, LLC is either unaware of this fact, or does not care.

Lacking any other information, this is my best guess for the source of the dispute. I have still not heard directly from anyone involved, so this is entirely guesswork.

I am going to send the legal request to YouTube asking them to restore the video and hope for the best. This is all pretty stressful, and it was particularly vile of The Orchard Music to initially release the claim only to then send a take-down request the Friday before Christmas, a time in which both my MCN reps and their YouTube contacts would be away on holiday break.

I will post an update once anything changes. In the meantime, the video is still viewable via the FilmCow High Quality Downloads folder. Thank you all again for your support!