My First Experience With Copyright Infringment

Last year, at the end of units in U.S. History class, we had to do Student Initiated Assignments. We could choose any topic related to the unit we had just covered. Then we could put together any kind of presentation we wanted. At the end of the Gilded Age unit, I decided to make a short documentary video on Andrew Carnegie. It only included pictures, text slides, music, and voice overs, but doing research on Carnegie, capturing audio, and editing took around three hours as I recall. After I finished, I uploaded it to Youtube, sent the link to my teacher, and never returned to the video again...

That is, until Thanksgiving weekend, when I got a message from a stranger. The person wrote: "Hi There. Can you tell me what software you used to build your video? I am impressed and would like to use it too." At first I was very confused, because I didn't even realize I had allowed the public to view my video. Then it dawned on me that I had actually made an informative and reasonably catchy video that could benefit students trying to learn more about Carnegie, and others who are curious to see what people on Youtube have to say about him. For the first time in just over a year, I decided to check out my video. I watched it and realized that I had made it for entertainment purposes, so I created a couple of unnecessary text slides. While I was mocking my rather stupid intro, I looked down at my view count. I over nearly 450 views! While this is a tiny number relative to the millions some videos get, I haven't uploaded a video with nearly this many hits. 

Then I thought, This silly first ten seconds takes away from this otherwise interesting documentary. I remembered we were taught about a Youtube video editor in this class. I figured out this basic software in a couple minutes and removed a little from the beginning and end. The new edits are finalized and the old version can no longer be seen by anyone but me, I assumed. Here it is (by the way, hitting the "Like" button wouldn't hurt):



I wanted to see if my video would be high on the list of search results. First I searched "Andrew Carnegie" and I was able to find my video on the third page of results. Not bad, I'd say, considering that Andrew Carnegie is one of the most prominent figures in American history. Next I tried "Vertical Integration," where my video was fifth on the first page. Finally, I typed in "Andrew Carnegie Vertical Integration," and my video appeared first on the list. Right under it, however, was a video with a cover picture of stacks of money, a picture which looked awfully similar to the one I used in my video. I clicked on it, and sure enough, somebody reuploaded my video. This one came before the edits so if you want to see the outtakes, you may:


I messaged the user and requested that they take down the video, and I filed a copyright claim to Youtube. It did anger me that somebody would plagiarize my video and take credit for it, but at the same time, I do see it as a compliment because somebody thought it was good enough to want to take credit for. They seem to have been doing an Andrew Carnegie series based on their channel's videos. I filed this claim on Saturday, Novermber 24, so I expect Youtube to take action soon.

Update: So, as you probably saw, the video had been removed by Youtube! Too bad you won't get to see the intro now.