Can you claim copyright over the audio of a cat purring?

EMI Music Publishing Ltd. and music rights management company PRS for Music Ltd. seem to think so, with both claiming via YouTube’s Content-ID system that they own the rights for a one hour long video that features nothing more than a 12 second repeating audio clip of a cat purring.

The video was uploaded by YouTube user Digihaven in March 2014 and hadn’t attracted much of an audience, until of course now.

Under YouTube’s copyright enforcement policies infringing clips aren’t taken down (unless specifically demanded) versus any revenue made from them going entirely to the copyright holder who claims ownership. The purring cat clip remains up at the time of writing, but any revenue from pre-rolls or overlay ads is now going to EMI and PRS.

Digihaven has contested the copyright claim by the two music bodies and has lodged an objection with YouTube, and is urging people to subscribe to his or her channel to “save the cats of YouTube.”

“I’m sure EMI/PRS made Phantom a sad kitty” Digihaven told TorrentFreak. “It seems like companies such as EMI are pirating ads on people’s legit videos, so I’m wondering if they apologize to, or reimburse people for those false claims.”

An orgy of false claims

The absurdity of claiming copyright on a recording of a cat purring is nothing new for YouTube’s music industry first/ screw the user always Content-ID system. There are so many examples of false claims made by the system that they are impossible to keep track of.

If the police practiced a shoot first, ask questions later policy there would be outrage, but the Google owned video giant simply acts with impunity due to its dominant market share (73.4 percent of all videos viewed online in 2014,) and some would argue a near monopolistic position when it comes to a destination for the average member of the public to upload and share a video from.

The history is understandable: YouTube has been sued by both the music and video industries previously, and it was clear that its earlier laissez faire polices towards what users uploaded was never going to be sustainable; it had to do something to appease copyright holders, but did it have to go as far as it has?

YouTube’s copyright system bypasses the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) where by copyright holders making claims to ownership are required to swear under oath that they owned the copyright to content, to one now where they can make unlimited false claims and trample on the rights of the others with impunity, and with little to no recourse for the victims: those wrongly and unfairly targeted.

This latest case if just yet another example of how YouTube’s Content-ID system is completely broken.

Image credit: Digihaven.