Claim Info

Your video has been claimed by us? Then you should read this information

We are a distribution company that manages the rights of audiovisual content in the Internet, mostly films, tv shows and music recordings. Usually we're not the producer of the content to which we hold rights, but the streaming rights distributor. This means that you might not find our name in the credits of the content. Nevertheless we have license agreement, either directly with the producer or the artist or with another party (distributor, rights agency) that represents the producer or the artist. You can see a list of the companies that grant us their rights here. Sometimes, longer chains of rights exist between the producer and us: a producer licenses to a distributor and that other distributor sublicenses to us. This is common practice in the content business.

If we claim a video on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Dailymotion or another streaming platform, we can do this in different ways:

  • We leave the video online, but monetize or track it
  • We block the video
  • We issue a takedown against the video, which leads to a strike against the uploader’s channel

  • The latter happens in particular when we see that an uploader has published the entire content without permission, or without even giving credits, just to make its channel bigger or to earn money with stolen content. In fact, we have to fight unauthorized uploads to YouTube and other platforms hundreds of times a day. This costs us a lot of time and causes a lot of work. But even more important is that our licensors - the musicians, the film producers, the production studios etc. - are seriously damaged by the illegal publishing of their work!

    An uploader should, therefore, carefully consider whether an appeal is justified before objecting to one of our claims. We reject appeals which invoke "fair use" for false reasons. In the same regard, unjustified appeals against a takedown can further escalate the situation and, for example, result in further claims for damages if a video that was taken down is restored due to submission of a false counterstatement! By the way: The common rhetoric that nobody is profiting from the channel and should, therefore, be seen as accetable usage does not bode well either. Being able to find a video elsewhere on the internet does not make it public domain content!

    In any case, we recommend that you take a close look at the claim details displayed in your channel or page account. Here you can see why the video was claimed. We often get appeals from users who haven't even bothered to read through the details of the copyright notice, overlooking, for example, that their video was claimed because of the visual portion and not because of the music.

    Of course, in rare cases it can happen that an uploader was granted a license to publish the content that we were not aware of. Should you have the reasonable doubt that one of our claims is not justified, you can dispute our claim by using our dispute form.