My entire Facebook page was permanently banned after uploading three cover songs. Even after Facebook signed licensing deals permitting them.
The following comes from Sarah Fischer, a German singer-songwriter based in Stuttgart. She sings with her sister Julia in a group called Sajul.
“After three unintended copyright infringements (C.I.s) on Facebook against Universal Music, I’m never again allowed to have a Facebook account (that’s what Facebook told me).
Here’s a short summary of my ‘Facebook story’.
You can click any of the links to see the detailed email correspondences that I’ve posted on my site (some are in German, so use Google Translate).
Violation #1. Copyright infringement: 02/15/17 Adele – ‘Set Fire to the Rain’
They didn’t tell me which video they deleted.
After writing to Facebook, they just told me that it was a copyright infringement against Universal Music and that I should write to them. I couldn’t really find out what the problem was, or which video was an issue, so I deleted all videos involving Universal artists on Facebook as a precaution.
As a punishment, I couldn’t write messages or comment/post for 3 days.
Violation #2. Copyright infringement: 03/30/17 Adele – ‘When We Were Young’
I didn’t delete that song because at that time, Google told me that Adele was not an artist from Universal. I checked all our videos (again) and found no (more) Universal artists. Also, I didn’t find additional information online that could help me.
As a punishment I couldn’t write messages or comment/post for 3 days.
Violation #3. Copyright infringement: 11/06/17 P!nk – ‘What About Us’
P!nk is not an artist at Universal. But what I didn’t know back then is that it’s about where the writers are from — not the artists. So, to avoid more trouble, I instantly deleted all cover videos on all of my Facebook pages.
When I wanted to log in, there was a pop-up telling me that as a punishment, I couldn’t write messages or comment/post for 3 days.
One day later, I wanted to log in and there was a new pop-up saying that my account had been deactivated.
Sarah Fischer
I tried to contact Facebook about a “million” times and didn’t get any answers.
Because the copyright infringements were against Universal Music, I also tried to contact them.
After some unsuccessful tries, I actually got an e-mail from a Senior Director of Music Licensing and had a telephone conversation the next day. The result was: Universal couldn’t help me. I’d have to try again to contact Facebook.
So that’s what I did, but I didn’t really get any answers. So I created a new account, but they also deactivated that one. After some more e-mails, they told me that I’ll be never again allowed to have an account.
A few weeks after getting this e-mail, I decided to try having a fake account.
Here’s my complete correspondence with Universal Music Germany.
These are the biggest problems that have resulted from having a banned account:
As a result of being permanently locked out of the world’s largest social network:
- I have no contact details from friends all over the world
- I’ve lost my own fansite because I was the only admin
- My band’s fansite has no admin now, only one editor (didn’t find a solution to get the editor admin rights))
- I can’t find a lift (blablacar etc. doesn’t work for the stretch I have to drive home)
- I’m not getting the news of all of the sites I’ve subscribed to
Now (some months after the deactivation of my account), it’s completely legal to upload cover videos on Facebook and Instagram. That’s because of deals involving Universal Music, Warner Music, ICE, and others rights owners. So, time to reinstate my Page, right?
+ Facebook Will Stop Ripping Down Music Videos — Effective Immediately
Nope. Unfortunately, I still can’t get it reinstated. It looks like my Facebook Page is banned forever.
But here’s a funny fact. Instagram is actually still connected to my deactivated Facebook account. It keeps telling me to go into my Facebook profile and to add/invite all my friends to Instagram. So at least I know that years of my personal data, connections, messages and updates are sitting on Facebook’s servers somewhere — what could possibly go wrong?
Owned.
Boo hoo, you broke the law and they punished you. My heart bleeds.
To give you further insight, it is not as clear-cut as it might seem to you at a first glance – there is a strong case for arguing that artists posting covers do *not* break the law as there was and is no way for them to actually compensate the songwriters and lyricists and license the music from the publishers directly.
UMPG in particular – pretty much the only entity proactively scouring facebook for covers and ripping them down – were putting the onus on facebook, claiming it is the platform that allows Users to upload Content that needs to guarantee that appropriate licenses are signed and royalties are paid for. Sarah, or any other Artist for that matter, are not able to reach out to the royalty collection society, publishing agency or anyone else and agree an individual distribution.
While it is understandable that rightsholders want to ensure that appropriate remuneration for their own work is transferred to them (or their representatives), facebook is enforcing far-reaching and quite debilitating consequences for posting Covers. They maintain the “Three Strikes” policy, but, as a matter of fact, there is not a single place where this would be laid out clearly and entirely – you only find out how many Strikes there are once your account has been blocked permanently and you’re being sent canned replies by the IP Operations Team informing you that “You are not allowed to use facebook”.
The whole system is full of holes and has not been patched or even streamlined properly. Even now, despite allegedly licensing deals having been signed with Universal, the coverage is quite limited – I have information from quite a senior person at UMPG who informed me that the licenses only cover North America for now, which means that they are still in their full right to take down any covers posted as Public Posts (those would essentially require a Global License, as Public Posts are accessible from all territories where facebook is not blocked in its entirety, thus it is tantamount to Global Broadcasting of a Music Work).
Dynamitri
Music Consultant (Digital, Content, Social Media, PR) ???
HELPING ARTISTS & BUSINESSES TO THRIVE ???
Hi Sarah,
Hope this message finds you well. I am a Music and Digital Consultant from London, UK – I might be able to offer some assistance with your problem. Cannot promise that I will be able to reinstate your account as I am not affiliated directly with facebook, but I have gone through the exact same situation as you very recently for very similar reasons and managed to get my account back eventually.
Can you please let me know what is the best way to contact you?
Many thanks,
Dynamitri
Music Consultant (Digital, Content, Social Media, PR) ???
HELPING ARTISTS & BUSINESSES TO THRIVE ???
Hello Dynamitri can you help me i went through the same thing! please help!
Hi Dynamitri. My fb account was permanently banned for posting cover songs just like Sarah’s. Do you have any tips on how to get my account back? My email is [email protected]. My cell is 215 804 5265. Please help if you can! Thanks
One of the reasons I really wanted to post this is to show how confusing the law is for anyone outside of the music industry. Sarah is an intelligent person, but had little idea what the infractions involved were, and at first, what the violation was even for. All she knew is ‘Universal Music’ = problem, and tried to work from there. You can argue she should have done her diligent research, but, what about after covers were ‘made legal’. Then what?
Unfortunately by the looks of it the infringements happened while facebook hasn’t had the licensing deals in place (Feb/March/June 2017 with the first deal between facebook and UMG having been inked in Dec 2017).
The permissions do not apply retroactively, as – to play devil’s advocate – it can be argued that there is still some loss of royalties revenue between the dates of the cover video having been posted and the date a licensing deal having been inked, that the licensing deal does not cover (lex retro non agit, in other words: ex post-facto law does not apply here).
This notwithstanding, facebook *does* behave quite ruthlessly in terms of Copyright Infringements with regards to their own Users – and the actual procedure is not made explicitly clear anywhere, as nowhere does it state that there is a “Three-Strikes Policy”.
It is a complicated issue from both the technological and legal points of view. The responsibility for paying royalties lies ultimately on facebook as the Platform that allows Users to publish Content, and they do have mechanisms in place to protect the IP (Intellectual Property) from being violated. Problem here is, there is really no way to construct an algorithm that would detect a cover song being an actual violation, it can only compare actual recordings with whatever database of song prints it uses – so you won’t be able to upload Rihanna’s song or her original video most likely, but if you play a cover of Rihanna’s song on an acoustic guitar it will pass through, as the arrangement, tempo, timbre etc. are all entirely different and for all intents and purposes, as the algorithms see it, it is a wholly different composition. It is only when facebook get a DMCA Takedown Notice from a record label/publishing company executive demanding deletion of a particular video with a particular URL, that the cover song gets located and removed from the servers.
Ultimately, facebook do this because they knew they were wrong and exposing themselves to massive lawsuits from a company that controls about 1/3rd of music market alone, if my memory serves me correctly (either way, it is something equally enormous like that). They could have a more lenient policy towards their own Users, but then most likely the pressure from the music industry would be even stronger and they would be deemed negligent by some.
Then there is the whole factor of facebook having 2.2Bn monthly users, and having virtually no control over what’s happening whatsoever (as evidenced by the completely arbitrary and selective enforcement of their ToS with regards to graphic violence, nudity, harassment or racism posted on their own platform). As much as it is a personal tragedy for someone in the Media/Music Industry to lose access to facebook as it is an essential communications tool in this day and age, 1, 10 or even 1000 Users lost with their trust put in the facebook brand completely eradicated, it does not matter to them in the slightest as they deal with absolute numbers of much higher magnitude.
I am still waiting for Sarah to get in touch with me, but basically the only way to solve this deadlock is for the Takedown Notices to be withdrawn. The e-mails she should have received each and every time a video has been taken down should have contained a link she should be able to click in order to dispute the Takedown Notice and reinstate the video which could be then reinstated and deleted manually, therefore removing a Copyright Strike on her Personal Account. This could be arranged directly with Universal Music Group, it needs to go through the Content Protection Team who deal with those issues directly.
With this in mind, they do not have to assist as, from their point of view, there has been a copyright violation and grounds for requesting the removal of an infringing video. As this is happening in an automated manner, they are not really reaching out to Content Creators directly – they do send automated Takedown Notices to fb who then apply their own set of rules and hold their Users to account as they see fit.
There might also be some legal recourse, as facebook effectively hold the User’s Activity ransom in this situation – there is no way to even download your Facebook Data in this situation, any request basically ends up in their Intellectual Operations Team giving you the same spiel verbatim about how “you have been warned, you did not listen, we have terminated your account” etc. – which does not sit alright with jurisdictions of many countries, and I know full well that Germany is actually very protective of personal information and they have caused a lot of headache to Google and Facebook in the past. This, coupled with the fact that no facebook account in this case equals an inability to continue with the musical career might be enough for an Intellectual Property/Media lawyer to fire off some letters that would hopefully cause fb to reinstate the account.
Dynamitri
Music Consultant (Digital, Content, Social Media, PR) ???
HELPING ARTISTS & BUSINESSES TO THRIVE ???
Unfortunately by the looks of it the infringements happened while facebook hasn’t had the licensing deals in place (Feb/March/June 2017 with the first deal between facebook and UMG having been inked in Dec 2017).
The permissions do not apply retroactively, as – to play devil’s advocate – it can be argued that there is still some loss of royalties revenue between the dates of the cover video having been posted and the date a licensing deal having been inked, that the licensing deal does not cover (lex retro non agit, in other words: ex post-facto law does not apply here).
This notwithstanding, facebook *does* behave quite ruthlessly in terms of Copyright Infringements with regards to their own Users – and the actual procedure is not made explicitly clear anywhere, as nowhere does it state that there is a “Three-Strikes Policy”.
It is a complicated issue from both the technological and legal points of view. The responsibility for paying royalties lies ultimately on facebook as the Platform that allows Users to publish Content, and they do have mechanisms in place to protect the IP (Intellectual Property) from being violated. Problem here is, there is really no way to construct an algorithm that would detect a cover song being an actual violation, it can only compare actual recordings with whatever database of song prints it uses – so you won’t be able to upload Rihanna’s song or her original video most likely, but if you play a cover of Rihanna’s song on an acoustic guitar it will pass through, as the arrangement, tempo, timbre etc. are all entirely different and for all intents and purposes, as the algorithms see it, it is a wholly different composition. It is only when facebook get a DMCA Takedown Notice from a record label/publishing company executive demanding deletion of a particular video with a particular URL, that the cover song gets located and removed from the servers.
Ultimately, facebook do this because they knew they were wrong and exposing themselves to massive lawsuits from a company that controls about 1/3rd of music market alone, if my memory serves me correctly (either way, it is something equally enormous like that). They could have a more lenient policy towards their own Users, but then most likely the pressure from the music industry would be even stronger and they would be deemed negligent by some.
Then there is the whole factor of facebook having 2.2Bn monthly users, and having virtually no control over what’s happening whatsoever (as evidenced by the completely arbitrary and selective enforcement of their ToS with regards to graphic violence, nudity, harassment or racism posted on their own platform). As much as it is a personal tragedy for someone in the Media/Music Industry to lose access to facebook as it is an essential communications tool in this day and age, 1, 10 or even 1000 Users lost with their trust put in the facebook brand completely eradicated, it does not matter to them in the slightest as they deal with absolute numbers of much higher magnitude.
I am still waiting for Sarah to get in touch with me, but basically the only way to solve this deadlock is for the Takedown Notices to be withdrawn. The e-mails she should have received each and every time a video has been taken down should have contained a link she should be able to click in order to dispute the Takedown Notice and reinstate the video which could be then reinstated and deleted manually, therefore removing a Copyright Strike on her Personal Account. This could be arranged directly with Universal Music Group, it needs to go through the Content Protection Team who deal with those issues directly.
With this in mind, they do not have to assist as, from their point of view, there has been a copyright violation and grounds for requesting the removal of an infringing video. As this is happening in an automated manner, they are not really reaching out to Content Creators directly – they do send automated Takedown Notices to fb who then apply their own set of rules and hold their Users to account as they see fit.
There might also be some legal recourse, as facebook effectively hold the User’s Activity ransom in this situation – there is no way to even download your Facebook Data in this situation, any request basically ends up in their Intellectual Operations Team giving you the same spiel verbatim about how “you have been warned, you did not listen, we have terminated your account” etc. – which does not sit alright with jurisdictions of many countries, and I know full well that Germany is actually very protective of personal information and they have caused a lot of headache to Google and Facebook in the past. This, coupled with the fact that no facebook account in this case equals an inability to continue with the musical career might be enough for an Intellectual Property/Media lawyer to fire off some letters that would hopefully cause fb to reinstate the account.
Dynamitri
I think I see the problem. There are really two Universal’s. Universal Music Group the record label (who controls sound recordings), and Universal Music Publishing Group the music publisher (who controls the underlying compositions, i.e. the music and lyrics). While Adele the artist is not represented by Universal Music Group the label, Adele the songwriter is represented by Universal Music Publishing Group the publisher. UMPG also administers on behalf of one of the songwriters who wrote Pink’s song (but not Pink herself, as far as I can tell).
It would be unreasonable to expect Sarah, or any cover artist, to know all this. I only know because I license publishing rights as part of my job. And it would be nearly impossible for Sarah to know if the licenses Facebook has in place cover all the publishing rights to the songs in question. Even if FB has a UMPG deal, there could be some publisher out there who has 5% of some song she covers who comes out the woodwork, claims they don’t have a license with FB, and Sarah still ends up with a copyright violation on her account.
Unless Facebook is able to provide clarity on which specific songs are 100% licensed to be posted to Facebook as user-generated content (or they change their policy about banning accounts under these circumstances), I would suggest that all artists post their covers to YouTube instead, and then share the YouTube video on Facebook, rather than posting to Facebook directly.
The problem with this is that facebook essentially penalises YouTube links as they do not want people to go outside of their own ecosystem.
Posting covers on YouTube allows people to circumvent the issue of facebook licensing as YouTube have gone through a similar situation years ago which has largely been cleared out now, but the YouTube links will not be served to the Facebook Audience (i.e. will not be pushed to people’s News Feeds, where majority of people get their Content from – people going directly to a Facebook Page and clicking through tabs is a negligible percentage of Users overall). Unless you splash out on a YouTube link being promoted on facebook, it does not really serve its purpose and the video will not be seen.
You’re right: I’m an engineering student and I’m just doing music in my freetime. I can’t know everything about music right.
The 3 deleted videos on Facebook had at most 1000 views (but I think less). Famous artists like Boyce Avenue uploaded cover videos on Facebook for years and never semmed to get in trouble. If Facebook just would’ve told me “It is not allowed to have any cover videos in Facebook”, I would have deleted all videos immediately and never uploaded one again. But Facebook is not capable to write such an email or at least have a rubric about that in their help section…
Also nobody seems to really know if cover videos are now, after dozens of deals, allowed.
Even with those dozens of deals, Facebook will never have licenses for all the music out there. There are tens of thousands of publishers. This type of use doesn’t fall under any statutory licenses (it’s a synch use), so publishers will have to sign or opt-in to the licenses. Some publishers will probably turn down FB’s license offer. Some Facebook won’t be able to locate. Many simply won’t respond at all.
Maybe what Facebook needs is a public, searchable database of all songs that are 100% licensed (or public domain) and safe to be posted as cover versions. It would just need to include song title, composer(s), and the artist(s) who made it famous. Artists would then know that if they post a cover of a song within that database, their account won’t be banned. Even if Facebook is wrong about it being 100%, the worst that happens is the video simply comes down upon receipt of an infringement notice from a copyright owner.
If nothing else, there needs to be clear communication from Facebook to artists on what they need to do to ensure their accounts don’t get banned.
Unfortunately the bottom line is that facebook is too big for their boots and they have no control over what’s happening on their platform. Decisions are made arbitrarily and quite selectively (as evidenced e.g. by certain viral video medleys occasionally posted – e.g. there was a video last summer making rounds for several months that literally consisted of ~15-20s excerpts of dozens of summer hits from the past 50 years, videos and music together; got to well over 100,000,000 Views the last time I saw it, and nobody batted an eyelid). They DO NOT enforce their own Terms & Conditions until either a) A user draws their attention to this by reporting a certain post – which still leaves the final decision to an anonymous mod who might or might not delete it and caution the user, or b) they get an official DMCA Takedown Notice, which results in immediate removal of a post and assigning a Copyright Strike against the account – because they do not want to even step into the territory of arguing their case or free speech or anything on the legal matter, they’d rather just remove the problematic piece of Content and nip the issue in the bud before it starts snowballing and causing headaches to everyone. Users can argue their rights and take it to court of course, but good luck fighting facebook or a major record label as an individual, you have my blessing.
Now – facebook have 2.2Bn users who generate terabytes of data every 24 hours in videos, images and text. They can use algorithms to help out with filtering some content, but as mentioned elsewhere, there is really no way to automatically detect a cover as what it is, as no matter how many songs you feed into the database, a cover due to its intrinsic nature will appear as an entirely different work of art to anything that’s not a sentient human being with a capability of comparison and a knowledge of the original work that the cover references.
The problem is very complex, because on top of the legal and technological issues, there is also the fact that there is no way for people to have a Facebook Page without having a Personal Profile where people keep their photos, Contacts, personal conversations across the years (my own account is 11 years old for example), etc. With YouTube, even with their quite clearly outlined “Three-Strike Policy”, the worst that can happen is an account termination, which is not really a massive loss to most – you just register a new account with a new e-mail address, reupload your videos and off you go. With facebook, everything’s tied up to the core that is the Personal Profile, so when you lose your Personal Profile you lose EVERYTHING – Photos, Contacts, Conversations on Messenger, Pages you are Administrating, the whole lot, and you’re not even able to download all your data from facebook anymore as any requests are rejected by the IP Operations gatekeepers.
One solution would be to have an entirely separate process for administrating facebook Pages, that would not necessitate usage of Personal Accounts, thus not exposing the Personal side of people’s facebook activity to the risk of disablement/deletion (oddly enough, used to be the case several years ago but like many other parts of the functionality, seems to have been withdrawn entirely).
It took me about 3 weeks and some emails to get the backup of my personal account (not my fanpage) from Facebook, so it’s possible to get your data even if your account is banned.
Facebook doesn’t necessarily need to scan the sound of videos to know if it’s a cover: In my case the headlines of the videos clearly showed that they were cover videos e.g. “Adele – When we were young (Cover by Sajul)” -> They could at least scan the text of the headlines/description and if there’s the word “cover” for example, show a popup that asks if you want to upload a cover video, if you have the copyright and indicate a help page which explains what is allowed.
These easy steps would’ve prevented all of my copyright infringements.
Keyword scanning is pointless, it would generate too many false positives – “cover” does not only relate to a “cover version”, but also – and primarily – to a verb or a noun relating to the, well, a covering that serves to conceal or shelter something: book cover, bed cover etc.
Quite a lot of videos coming flagged up would relate to things that are not music related – discussion of a cover-art of a book, or a textile material. Causes even more issues and becomes cumbersome to the majority of people who are not interested in anything music-related.
FWIW, you have just discovered why your videos were shot down most likely – one of the ways to avoid detection is to NOT use metadata with keywords that can be picked up by an algorithm, overlay the information on top of the video itself.
Frankly speaking, I am not going to say anything else ’cause tbh I’ve spent 2 hours typing down quite a lengthy e-mail to you with quite a detailed advice on what you might do to get the account back the other day, which normally comes at quite a premium charge from me – but have not heard back even a simple “Thank you” back, which was quite disappointing to say the very least and it’s going to be 2 days now. Oh well… Good luck with everything.
Dynamitri
Hi Sarah — Did you ever get your Facebook account re-enabled? Your story is almost exactly like mine except mine involved posting 3 Flickr photos.
This appears to be a real problem then. Any time an artist posts a cover to FB, they’re essentially walking into a minefield with their FB account. If Facebook wants people to post covers on their service, they need to clear the mines, or at the very least let us know where it’s safe to step. What’s described in this article shouldn’t be happening to artists.
Facebook doesn’t really “want” people to post Covers on facebook – but people posting Covers is a natural progression of stepping into the video ecosystem which is what they’ve been actively pursuing since about mid-2016, trying to rival YouTube.
I don’t think that licensing (or not licensing) “all music that’s out there” is the issue – it will not be a problem, and as a music industry/social media professional with links to thousands artists worldwide, reading a lot of news from all over the world, I have not heard of a SINGLE case of someone having their video retroactively removed by anyone else than UMPG. Only UMPG were going to the extent of actually crawling facebook and asking them to take down videos by unsigned artists.
You will never be able to fully license all of the music, but at the same time you will never have takedown requests issued for each and every cover song – more so, some artists/lyricists/songwriters don’t even mind being covered and not being paid, especially if we’re talking about videos with 1,000 – 10,000 Views (which would not generate much in royalty payments anyway).
This all notwithstanding, somehow YT managed to sort out the situation and has been a safe harbour for covers for several years now. How come, and why? And why is facebook not able to follow the same steps and reach the point where the status quo is not walking on thin ice anymore?
I know I’m apparently the expert here, but — anyone?
You answered this question above. YouTube isn’t tied to your personal FB account. Your FB artist profile page is.
YouTube may have more licenses than FB, simply because they’ve been licensing music for longer than FB has. But not everything is licensed. They rely on the same DMCA that FB relies on, and artists can get copyright violations for covers posted there as well. You just don’t lose your personal FB account when you get those violations.
I think FB does want people to post covers. They didn’t used to, but they do now. Otherwise, why would they bother getting music licenses for user-generated content at all?
They are not getting music licenses for user-generated content per se, they are getting music licenses for the platform as it is. This might include allowing people to use licensed music as music beds, releasing visual filters/masks relating to celebrities to use in videos (Snapchat has had this functionality for a limited period each time several times), allowing people to record lip-sync videos like musical.ly or letting them insert themselves into a music video, or a plethora of others – which are much more straightforward from the legal and licensing point of view than a cover video is.
Covers are just a tiny slice of the overall pie or the functionality that comes in with music licensing.
Just use youtube.
😀
Again – not the point because the Communication and Consumption models are entirely different between facebook and YouTube.
It is essentially same as telling someone “Just rollerskate to work if someone broke your leg and you can’t drive the car”
Adele is technically a Universal songwriter; she’s a Sony recording artist in North and South America. 😉
Hi! I have a similar problem and now my personal account is disabled. I suppose that it is not possible to use the account anymore. Please could you tell me at least how did you recover all your data (backup)?
Thank you in advance.
Regards,
Manuel
Hi Manuel, you can write an email to [email protected] and tell them your name and country.
It took about 2 weeks for me to get my data
UPDATE
I reached a German Facebook staff member by finding one on LinkedIn and sending a letter. She called me and told me I could not get my old account back but I’m allowed to start a new one. That’s not a real solution but better than not having a Facebook account at all.
Still I wasn’t able to get the admin rights for my Fb fansite back.
Hello, I’ve got the same problem. Could you please help me and give a contact to German facebook staff member? My email: [email protected]
Hello, I’ve got the same problem. Could you please help me and give a contact to German facebook staff member? My email: [email protected]
I have the same problem to due to intellectual property rights. Can you please help me too?