How to Protect Your Video from Stealing: 3 Best Ways and 3 Tips

Do you upload your videos on YouTube or on your personal blog? Get ready for it to be stolen. Video blogging has become a profitable business, and scammers do not miss the opportunity to earn money on someone else’s popularity. In this article, we will explain how to protect the video from downloading and what to do if it was stolen.

How Content Theft Can Do Harm

The main damage from the theft of commercials is financial and reputational. Having moved you from the first places in the search engine results, scammers steal your traffic and undermine the credibility of the content. We tell why you need to be afraid of theft in details.

Content Theft

Traffic Fall

As a rule, users go to sites that are in the first positions in the Google search results. The search engine does not always correctly determine the source and may decide that plagiarism is specifically in your resource. In this case, Google will reduce the ranking of the site or even make sanctions, removing it from the search results. As a result, you will lose traffic, which means potential readers and advertising revenue.

Financial Loss

Instead of stolen video, you will have to spend money on creating a new one. And if you sell training content (webinars, workshops, lectures), then you will lose sales revenue.

Loss of Reputation

Having met the same content on the Internet, users will not understand where the source is. Cloned information undermines the credibility of both authors, and this leads to negative reviews, a drop in your credibility as an expert and a decrease in popularity.

How to Protect a Video from Copying

Most of the videos stolen are those, in which the author is behind the scenes and only reads the text. Therefore, the universal advice to confirm authorship is to be filmed in the video. We recommend combining this method with three other content protection methods.

Content ID

Content ID is suitable for YouTube bloggers. This video protection against theft is one of the most reliable since the hosting itself monitors the maintaining the copyright.

YouTube Content ID

To register in the system, you need to confirm your rights to the content. This means that your videos should not contain fragments of other videos, trailers, unlicensed music and videos, or recordings of other people’s performances.

By making an agreement with YouTube, you upload your products to the Content ID. The system automatically compares all new videos with existing ones and, in case of violation, claims fraudsters your right to the content.

Watermarks and Logos

Watermark

Protecting your video from copying with a logo or watermark is one of the easiest and most universal ways. It is suitable for both YouTube and sites. Even if the video is stolen, removing the logo from it will be a difficult task. We recommend you to follow these rules:

  • place the logo in a place where it cannot be cut;
  • make the image translucent so that it does not irritate or distract users.

What if you don’t have a logo yet? Create it in a few clicks on the Logaster service. Enter the brand name and field of business – and get a ready-made image, which you can edit if you wish.

Link to a Site or a Page on Social Networks

There are three ways to protect content using links, and at the same time redirect traffic from video to your website or page on social networks:

  1. Place the resource address at the bottom of the video in a place that is overlapped with the scroll bar.
  2. Order a branded background and place it in the frame.
  3. Use animated buttons with a link to a site or pages on social networks.

What to Do, if the Video is Stolen

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Google and YouTube are actively fighting for the protection of intellectual property. We recommend regularly checking if your content is stolen. You can do this by making a search on Google, entering the keywords in the “Video” section. If you see your product on other people’s sites, be sure to leave a complaint. It is very easy to make.

Google Complaint

How to protect the video on the site? Make a DMCA (digital millennium copyright act) complaint on Google. Go to the “Legal Support” section, select the services from the list (for example, Blogger / Blogspot or Google Drive) where the copyright infringement has been found, and submit a separate request for each. You will need to fill in a special form, indicating the links and explaining the essence of the complaint.

YouTube Complaint

If you see your video on someone else’s channel, click the “Complain” button – it is under each video. Then select the item “Violation of my rights” and fill in the application form, outlining the essence of the problem and attaching a link to the original.

Conclusion

When uploading video content to the Internet, you risk. The better your video is, the bigger chance is for the fraudsters to steal it. To protect yourself, use several protection methods at once, for example, be filmed in your videos, overlay a logo and leave links to your resources. And if your content is stolen, feel free to contact Google or YouTube support.