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YouTube Shorts and YouTube’s policies seem to be at odds with each other

Earlier this year YouTube launched Shorts, a way for creators to share short-form video on the platform that reminded us an awful lot of TikTok.

Unlike YouTube’s main platform, Shorts feel very unruly and almost as if “anything goes” despite there being a few rules which govern what folks can and can’t post.

For now, creators of Shorts are paid out from a separate fund called the YouTube Shorts Fund. This fund totals $100 million, but we’ll explore that a bit more in a bit.

What we want to get into is whether the rules YouTube has set out are being followed because from the outside looking in, it really seems as if YouTube Shorts are pushing the envelope.

Wild Wild West

This morning YouTube sent out a press release containing the top 10 most viewed YouTube Shorts as viewed by South Africans. The list with links to the videos in no particular order follows on below:

Whether or not the creators of these videos are eligible for a payout from the YouTube Shorts Fund is unclear.

Some of the videos above are original content that you might encounter within a vlog or something similar. In the case of “Who did it better Simon or Ronaldo”, however, the video is a repost from TikTok where it amassed 3.3 million views. and has now garnered over 12 million views on YouTube. The person who posted this clip didn’t even remove the TikTok watermarks.

The video “Hilarious – Mo Salah Rugby Lookalike”, which is a short clip featuring a rugby player (there is no commentary, emojis or even a voiceover) who kind of looks like Mohamed Salah has amassed 59 million views.

Both of the videos above feature content from other sources and while YouTube is celebrating these creators now, we have to wonder how long it will do so?

For now, YouTube Shorts is paying creators from the $100 million YouTube Shorts Fund. The only stipulation to get paid is to amass as many views as possible in a month and creators can earn up to $10 000 based on their viewership and engagement.

By contrast, YouTube creators must be a part of the YouTube Partner Program in order to see a cent from AdSense which stipulates that creators must:

YouTube Shorts then are a wild jungle compared to the main platform and this could present a problem in future not necessarily for YouTube, but creators.

A tale of two copyright systems

The “Hilarious – Mo Salah Rugby Lookalike” clip uses 20 seconds of content that the creator does not own and is not transformative in any way which flies in the face of YouTube’s rules regarding copyright and fair use.

“Creators should only upload videos that they have made or that they’re authorized to use. That means they should not upload videos they didn’t make, or use content in their videos that someone else owns the copyright to, such as music tracks, snippets of copyrighted programs, or videos made by other users, without necessary authorizations,” reads a note on the YouTube Copyright & Fair Use page.

While YouTube says these rules apply to Shorts, we’re doubtful that the creators of some of these clips have acquired the licensing required to distribute these clips.

Now, we’re not saying that the way copyright and fair use works right now is good, it’s really not and has created strict parameters for content creators to adhere to. So much so that some of the biggest YouTube creators can’t even use TikTok videos on YouTube as they fear backlash from copyright owners for featuring more than three seconds of a popular song.

Have those rules now dissolved so long as you’re on Shorts? To an extent yes as YouTube Shorts does have a library of popular music creators can use that isn’t the stock music you’ve likely heard a million times on YouTube.

But what about other content that isn’t music?

“If you upload a short video you’ve created elsewhere, make sure that any copyright-protected material you’ve used is approved for your use on YouTube. Using copyright-protected material without getting appropriate rights could lead to you getting a Content ID claim. Also if a copyright owner sends us a valid and complete copyright takedown notice against your short video, it may be removed, and you could get a copyright strike,” YouTube explains in a support article.

Despite this, the Short “Snoop Dogg and Kevin Hart creating new Olympic Games????” which features a Peacock logo prominently as well as language that would get many creators demonetised, is in the top 10 most viewed Shorts for South Africa.

The point we hope to make is that YouTube needs to establish clear rules for content on Shorts before users become comfortable with ripping clips from copyright protected material and using it to earn up to $10 000. If rules exist for YouTube’s main platform, why don’t those same rules apply to Shorts?

The short answer is YouTube is still figuring out how to monetise Shorts and pay creators.

“I think sometimes people lose sight of the fact that YouTube has been in the creator economy business for over a decade. [It’s been] 14 years since we launched the YouTube Partner Program. In the last three years, we’ve paid out over $30 billion to our creators, and the Shorts fund, this $100 million fund, is really just another step in that journey, and is really the first step in terms of figuring out what the long-term monetization program could look like for Shorts creators,” YouTube’s chief product officer, Neal Mohan said during an interview with The Verge.

Maybe YouTube will apply the Partner Program methodology to Shorts in future, we’d argue that would prevent a lot of folks trying their luck by using copyright protected content, especially if payment is based on following the platform’s rules.

For now though, it seems just about anything can earn you money through Shorts, even if that content would get other creators on the main platform flagged, demonetised or worse.

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