Need an easy way to make a lot of money? Is it possible to claim other people's uploaded music as your own and collect royalties?
That's all the two Phoenix men did to cheat Latin music artists out of millions of dollars in royalties, as detailed in a new piece from billboard.
A media company called MediaMuv was set up by Jose "Chenel" Medina Teran and other people who claimed to own the rights to Latin music. MediaMuv claimed to own more than 50,000 copyrighted works.
AdRev is a third-party company that has access to YouTube's Content ID tools and helps artists manage their digital copyrights in order for MediaMuv to claim these copyrighted works. AdRev was given fake documents by MediaMuv in order to prove that it owned the music. AdRev helped MediaMuv collect royalties for those copyrighted works, as well as giving Terana and Batista direct access to YouTube'sCMS so they could claim their own copyrighted works.
The four-year-long royalty theft by Teran and Batista came to an end late last year. The two were indicted on 30 counts of conspiracy and wire fraud. Teran denied the charges. He is going to be tried in November. One count of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy was taken by the man. Batista gave a lot of information about how the two pulled off their plan.
The case of Teran and Batista was particularly scandalous. It's thought to be one of the largest music royalty scam in history.
It's a situation that many YouTube content creators have faced before and it's very unique. Bad faith actors have taken advantage of the Content ID system to make money off content that isn't theirs. The MediaMuv case is an example of how fraudsters are taking advantage of digital copyrighted works.
Because of how powerful these systems are, YouTube tries to be careful with who it gives access to. Independent creators and artists can't check for false copyright claims because they don't have the power to do so. They need to use a company that has access. Third parties that are "trusted" with the tools by YouTube are being used by thieves to gain access to the tools.
With so many writers and such, a small percentage of ownership in the music may go by unnoticed, which is why the Content ID scam is so popular. MediaMuv was able to claim copyright over their entire work. It's amazing that these two con artists were able to pull this off for so long, but think about how many more scam artists are out there.
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