Tech

Soros-Funded Nonprofit’s YouTube Channel Gets A Pass On Copyright Infringement Allegations

Olivier Hoslet/AFP/Getty Images, Shutterstock.com, and YouTube Screenshots

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Kyle Perisic Contributor
Font Size:

Right Wing Watch, a left-wing nonprofit aimed at exposing the “extreme agenda” of conservatives, owns a YouTube channel that consists entirely of other people’s videos, yet after several copyright disputes, YouTube has yet to delete the channel.

The nonprofit is owned by People For the American Way, which is funded by George Soros’ Open Society Initiative. The Daily Caller News Foundation review of the Right Watch’s channel found that of the almost 450 videos, not one of them appears to be its own original video.

This by itself would not be a problem if Right Wing Watch provided commentary to the clips they upload, but the channel is completely void of it. The videos are simply clips of other, many times copyrighted, videos.

Videos Right Wing Watch often re-uploads include from channels like Fox News, InfoWars, small Catholic television networks, and various popular conservative personalities on YouTube.

Right Wing Watch leverages its power to influence people in positions of power. It successfully drew enough negative attention in 2014 to the conservative views of two Home and Garden Television (HGTV) network hosts, David and Jason Benham — specifically their views on abortion and gay marriage.

The Benham brothers were set to host a new HGTV show in 2014 called, “Flip It Forward.” But that all changed when Right Wing Watch launch a campaign against the brothers with a May 2014 article titled, “HGTV Picks Anti-Gay, Anti-Choice Extremist For New Reality TV Show.”

In the end, HGTV decided not to move forward with the show, The Daily Caller reported.

Some people have given Right Wing Watch permission to use those videos, including Sean Campbell, a conservative videographer.

Campbell shot a video of Sheriff Joe Arpaio in March talking about the conspiracy theory that says former President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. At first, Right Wing Watch downloaded and re-uploaded a portion of his video with the Right Wing Watch watermark.

“Right Wing Watch used my video and got credit as high as CNN,” Campbell told TheDCNF. Right Wing Watch used a clip of Campbell’s video, embedded it in one of its article, and took away views from Campbell. Right Wing Watch’s clip of Campbell’s video got thousands of views, while Campbell’s original has only a few hundred at the time of publication.

“Had they contacted me I would have given it to them,” Campbell said. Eventually the two worked it out and Right Wing Watch removed the clip from its YouTube channel and replaced the video in the article with Campbell’s full version.

The videos on Right Wing Watch’s channel appear to be used mostly for RightWingWatch.org articles, which provide context and commentary to those videos. But according to YouTube’s policies, the existence of them on the video-sharing platform appears to still be a violation of its copyright policies if the original video uploaders claimed ownership.

A video can still be claimed by a copyright owner even if Right Wing Watch gave credit to the copyright owner or refrained from monetizing the infringing video, a YouTube guideline states. Right Wing Watch doesn’t appear to monetize the videos it uploads.

Searching through the comments section of some of the videos on Right Wing Watch’s channel, it’s clear that some of the video owners are not happy with Right Wing Watch downloading and re-uploading their videos with the Right Wing Watch watermark in the upper right hand corner.

There are 300 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute on average. Given YouTube’s limited staff, disputing each copyright violation personally would take an extremely long time. Instead, the company lets the copyright owner and the alleged copyright violator dispute the claim between themselves or in the court of law.

“YouTube follows the notice and takedown processes required by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). We do not determine who owns the rights to what content. That is determined by the courts,” A YouTube spokesperson said in a statement to TheDCNF in an email Wednesday.

Given Right Wing Watch’s nonprofit status, enough users assume this by itself gives them the right to upload copyrights video. However, YouTube had to address this myth. (RELATED: YouTube Will Deem ‘Quality News’ Sources To Fight Fake News)

“Myth #3: ‘Entertainment’ or ‘non-profit’ uses are automatically fair use,” a copyright guide states. “Courts will look carefully at the purpose of your use in evaluating whether it is fair.”

Additionally, declaring videos to be “for entertainment purposes only,” the copyright guide adds, “is unlikely to tip the scales in the fair use balancing test. Similarly, ‘non-profit’ uses are favored in the fair use analysis, but it’s not an automatic defense by itself.”

A spokesperson for People For the American Way told TheDCNF Wednesday that it doesn’t “have a count of how many copyright complaints have been filed against our channel over the years.”

“In each case we’ve filed a counter claim and in every instance the claim has been resolved in our favor,” the organization spokesperson added. “The video clips that Right Wing Watch posts are covered by fair use.”

YouTube’s full statement is below:

YouTube follows the notice and takedown processes required by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). We do not determine who owns the rights to what content. That is determined by the courts. If we receive a valid copyright claim on a piece of content, we act quickly to take down that content. If and when we receive a valid counter notification in response to that takedown request, and the initial claimant does not provide evidence of a lawsuit to restrain the publication of the content, then we reinstate the video in question, again in keeping with the DMCA. We also provide tools and resources to rightsholders and uploaders to help them understand and mediate copyright claims. When we see that there is a potential case for fair use, we ask the claimant to make sure they’ve conducted that analysis, which we did in this case.

This post has been updated to include comment from People For the American Way.

Follow Kyle on Twitter @KylePerisic

Send tips to kyle@dailycallernewsfoundation.org

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel