$23 Million Youtube Music Royalties Heist Hints That Online Copyright System Is flawed

Basically, two Phoenix men swindled Latin music artists like Daddy Yankee and Julio Iglesias out of $23 million in royalties. Billboard shared the details last week regarding the heist.

Kristin Robinson of Billboard told that Medina Teran and Webster Batista set up a media company called MediaMuv. It was actually a fraudulent company that claimed to own the rights to various Latin music songs and compositions. The astonishing part of the news is that MediaMuv claimed to own more than 50,000 copyrights since 2017 when Teran and Batista began their scheme. In order to claim these copyrights and collect royalties through YouTube’s Content ID system, MediaMUV, the fraudulent company partnered with AdRev.

Adrev is a third-party company that has access to YouTube’s CMS and Content ID tools. Moreover, it helps artists to manage their digital copyrights. The fraudulent company created a few fake documents and provided AdRev with this paperwork in order to prove ownership over the claimed music. The bad part of the news is that AdRev not only helped MediaMuv collect royalties for those copyrights but also provided them with direct access to YouTube’s CMS so they could claim copyrights on its own.

Last year, an investigation by IRS revealed the truth as a result of which Teran and Batista’s four-year-long royalties heist came to an end. According to the latest reports by Billboard, the two were indicted on “30 counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering, and aggravated identity theft.” Teran pleaded not guilty and his trial is in November. However, Batista took a plea deal on one count of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy as a result of which much of the information about how the two pulled off their scheme came out.

YouTube needs to be cautious with who it provides CMS and Content ID tool access because of how powerful these systems are.  Just think about how many more scammers are still skimming royalties off of an untold number of artists. The online copyright system is deeply flawed and it needs to be more safe and sound.

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