A long while ago, there was a campaign to find examples of our content being mis-used or outright stolen. Is this still something that’s ongoing?

Main reason is that I found a YouTube channel with what seems to be ccmixter tracks, but all renamed and re-credited. One of mine is definitely there (original ccm upload here). I recognise some of the other tracks but don’t remember the original names or artists. They’ve been registered in TrackID by the new “owner”, via their account on Indiefy (who seem pretty impossible to deal with).

Besides this current issue, I think it would be good to collect some resources here so that artists can help protect themselves and their work (not to mention CCPlus income). An ounce of prevention - and all that. So what do other folks do to protect their cc musical work?

Firstly, I am so sorry this has happened to you.
It’s terrible to find out that someone has stolen your work and that you can’t reclaim it.
Second, thank you for informing us, so that we can do something about it.
I’m on the team that helps track down what was stolen and identify the original work.
We will work to investigate this issue and take care of it asap!

I want to assure you that Snowflake and all the admins are currently developing an extra layer of protection for ccMixter’s artists.
If you have any suggestions or feedback, we are open to hearing from you.
If you would prefer to respond privately, you can always send an email to the Site Administrator, which is visible by all the admins.

Thanks again for pointing this out!

Kind regards,
Apoxode

Quote: Beluga TenA long while ago, there was a campaign to find examples of our content being mis-used or outright stolen. Is this still something that’s ongoing?

Main reason is that I found a YouTube channel with what seems to be ccmixter tracks, but all renamed and re-credited. One of mine is definitely there (original ccm upload here). I recognise some of the other tracks but don’t remember the original names or artists. They’ve been registered in TrackID by the new “owner”, via their account on Indiefy (who seem pretty impossible to deal with).

Besides this current issue, I think it would be good to collect some resources here so that artists can help protect themselves and their work (not to mention CCPlus income). An ounce of prevention - and all that. So what do other folks do to protect their cc musical work?

You would have to submit a copyright removal request, if there is no correct attribution given and show the date of publication here on this site. Which would be earlier than their digital content id.

I actually wonder if you tube will take it down.

submit copyright removal request

Does the works in question have an ISRC code?

As an update for anyone following this, or in a similar situation, based on my experience so far:

YouTube are pretty good at handling takedowns. You’ve got a variety of options, not just removing the content but also the option to open discussions with the channel owner. YouTube will accept ccmixter URLs as evidence of publishing date. You need an account, then head to YouTube Studio, then Copyright Center.

SoundCloud are a good early warning system. If you upload there, they compare the track against the music industry database (like Shazam) and show you if there’s a match. If so, they will stop you uploading but won’t count it as a copyright strike (at least they didn’t in my case).

Both YouTube and Soundcloud respect Creative Commons licences, making them good secondary publishing sites (after here!).

Indiefy are a self-publishing platform based in Mexico. I found a general email address for them, through which they raised a ticket about the music pirate. They asked me for further information, which I sent. I didn’t hear anything more for a couple of months, then they closed the ticket without warning. They do seem to have removed the content from Spotify, but not from Amazon Music or the ISRC database.

In general, self-publishing platforms seem to sub-contract and sub-licence a lot. For example, they may have a partner that registers ISRCs for them, and others that manage content on different streaming platforms. So tracing the source of piracy and fixing the damage isn’t always straightforward.

ISRC codes seem very easy to obtain, but very difficult to delete if they’re obtained fraudulently. I’ve looked in the ISRC’s own policies and also local PRO’s, but can’t see anything. I’m sure there must be something, otherwise people would be registering Out Of Copyright works like crazy. My next step is to approach my local PRO as a member and see if they can assist.

The best solution to all of this in future seems to be mixter.plus, which is a brilliant idea and hopefully continues to evolve. In the meantime, I know the admin team are working to keep on top of this and are still keen to get reports of piracy - this was more of a side-project for me, to see how deep the rabbit hole was.