I did say that I would make an attempt at doing more of these blog entries, so this will be the second (!) in the month of July – not bad. I have a lot that I can say here normally, but really find it difficult to take the time away from other things to do it. During the summer, I’m busy trying to get as much of the exterior work done on my house and really don’t feel like doing much of anything after a full day of that kind of work. Not now, anyway.

It used to be different when I was younger, I could work hard all day and still be able to do whatever I wanted in the evening. Now all I want to do is plant myself in my reclining chair and watch movies or older TV shows until it’s time for bed. Indeed, that’s really my only method of relaxation now, since I’m “working” nearly all of the remaining time. Either doing the renos on my house, working on projects for this website and for videos, editing videos (takes up a lot of my time) and reading comments and emails from a bunch of different directions. I can’t leave out time spent watching videos from fellow woodworkers, although that is normally part of my time relaxing: watch one or two while I’m eating lunch, or just to take a break from the work I’m doing.

As I’m trying to get as much done on the house while the weather is good, I’ve cut back on doing my usual projects and videos. I make a point of getting one or possibly two videos done per week and these are normally not major builds, but do take time to complete. The videos, especially.

So you can probably imagine that it would be very frustrating if, after spending a full day editing a video and using up valuable internet bandwidth to upload it, you could not make it public due to a copyright claim on the music that was used. Music that was legally licensed from a reputable source, audioblocks.com.

The copyright claim is from an outfit called TuneCore, but the details of this are not really what I want to rant about here, it’s the way that YouTube handles these types of situations.

When the the automated content id finds a match to a copyright protected piece of music, it immediately sends out an email like this:

Hi John Heisz,

Due to a copyright claim, you are no longer monetizing the following YouTube video. It is still playable on YouTube, but the copyright owner could choose to show ads on it.

Video title: Planer Blade Sharpening Jig
Copyrighted song: Welcome to the Ghetto
Claimed by: TuneCore

Why this can happen

Your video might contain copyrighted content.
A copyright claim on a video can prevent you from monetizing it.

– The YouTube Team

It doesn’t matter that TuneCore doesn’t actually hold any rights to claim the music, just that they say they do.

I’ll make a “real world” comparison here to put it in perspective:

You buy new seat covers for your car to jazz up the interior and put them on. Drive home, go inside for a beer and happen to glance out your front window to admire how swell they look, when you see a guy approaching your front door. You answer the door and, incredibly, he asks for the keys to your car. After you ask if he’s lost his mind, he explains that the seat covers that you put in your car are his and that gives him the right to take your car.

“But, I use that car to drive to work, to make a living!”

“Well, you should have thought of that before you used seat covers that I think I own. You’ll have to find other transportation while I use this car to drive myself to work”

You have no other choice (other than destroying your car, along with the seat covers) than to hand over your keys. To get them back and your car, you’ll have to prove that he doesn’t own the seat covers that you bought!

If this sounds absurd, you are now seeing how copyright is handled on YouTube. I’ve gone through this several times and the result is always the same: after I bend over backwards to prove the music I used is legally licensed, the claim is released and there are absolutely no repercussions for the claimant. None.
I have to wonder how many times they get away with it and exactly how much money they are making from it.

It is now three days after uploading the video and the claim is still on it. I contacted audioblocks and they responded by saying that they will “reach out to TuneCore” on my behalf. On my behalf? Didn’t I pay them for this music to use in my videos? Shouldn’t they be settling this on their own behalf? The claimant has 30 days to answer, by the way.

Luckily, the video wasn’t public when the claim went on it, otherwise the claimant would get all of the ad revenue from the video during the period the claim is in effect. I’ve had it happen to videos that were public and rather than take the chance that the claim would run for any longer than a day, I’ve deleted the video.

That may sound extreme, but it doesn’t even come close to appeasing the rage I feel
when this happens.

I could go on and on and on and on, but that goes nowhere. The fact is, YouTube settled on this policy to satisfy the music industry and the movie industry, both of which were suing left, right and centre to try to stop the copyright infringement happening in uploaded videos. We, the “content creators”, are left with the short straw and will take our lumps quietly. After all, if you logically look at how this system works, what we produce has no real value anyway.

So why am I using music at all, you might ask. Like those seat covers, music can jazz up a video and make it a bit more pleasant to watch. Besides that, I bought a 12 month subscription to the audioblocks service and would really like to get my money’s worth.
As of this incident, it is turning into more trouble than it’s worth, and I will likely stop using music altogether.

On to a sunnier topic, it’s been hot for the past few days here in Ontario. It was unseasonably mild all of June and most of July, clear and dry and not too warm, and that really made working outdoors on my house attractive. Lately, the afternoon temperatures have climbed above 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) with fairly high humidity and that does tend to slow me down some and make working less appealing.

Yesterday, I was out putting wood siding on my house and making the cuts on my miter saw in my workshop, and noticed how much cooler it was inside the shop. Just to put a number on the difference, I measured the temperatures. First, in the shade of my front porch:

The next one is out in the sunlight. Temps are in Fahrenheit since most readers are from the US (and bigger numbers sound more impressive, anyway), but that’s roughly 31 and 38 degrees Celsius.

The next one is inside my non-air conditioned shop. All of these reading were taken at the same time, around 12:30:

That’s 20 degrees Celsius. Later in the day the temperature in the shop had climbed to 73 (23), but still a lot cooler than it was outside. To make another comparison, when it was 73 in the shop, it was 102 (39) out in my uninsulated shed.
Having the shop well insulated really makes a huge difference. Also, the concrete floor slab that is only insulated around its perimeter helps to regulate the temperature. It absorbs heat during the day and releases it at night.
In conclusion, if you were wondering if it was actually worth it to insulate your shop, this should give you some idea. It’s also a good idea to not build a floor above the concrete slab, otherwise you lose that regulation I mention above. Studies indicate that only a small percentage of the heat is lost through the floor during the heating season, so there is not much gained from insulating the floor.