YouTube muting videos with unathorised audio

Pardon?

15 January 2009 9:35 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

YouTube has begun muting the audio of videos that contain music that has not been officially authorised by the copyright holders.

Such a video will get a note on the screen which states: "This video contains an audio track that has not been authorised by all copyright holders. The audio has been disabled".

In a company blog post YouTube explained the move, saying it gives posers of such videos a choice, rather than to take the whole video down.

"Previously, when a music label or other rights owner issued a copyright claim to block audio, the video was automatically taken down", said YouTube.

"Uploaders had two choices: dispute the claim or use our AudioSwap tool to replace the track with one from our library of pre-cleared music. Now we've added an additional choice".

Full tags

Software, Websites, YouTube, Google, Audio