YouTube Operations Guide

How policies are applied

These features are only available to partners who use YouTube Studio Content Manager.

YouTube associates a policy with a video when a video gets claimed. Which policy YouTube applies to the video depends on:

How the claim is made (by you or by Content ID)
Whether any other partner has claimed the same video

Claims made by you

When you claim a video you’ve uploaded to a channel you own, the policy that’s set as your default upload policy is applied. Learn more about default policies.

When you claim a video using descriptive search, you manually choose which policy to associate with the claim.

Claims made by Content ID

When Content ID claims a user-uploaded video, it automatically uses the reference match policy for the asset making the claim.

If the asset doesn’t have an associated match policy, the policy that’s set as your default match policy is applied.

You can change the policy associated with a claimed video from the Claimed Videos page of Studio Content Manager. It can also be changed from the Issues page when you’re reviewing claim issues.

Claims made by multiple partners

On the same video

More than one partner can have a valid claim on the same video in the same territory. For example, one partner may claim the visual portion and another partner the audio portion.

When multiple partners have valid claims on a video, and therefore multiple valid policies, whichever policy results in the most restrictive action will be applied.

Least restrictive				Most restrictive
No policy	Monetize	Track	Block	Takedown

For example, if one policy says to monetize the video and another says to block it, the video is blocked.

Note: If one of the assets claiming a video has missing ownership information, the default policy action is Track (owner missing).

Example: If the asset has no ownership data for Canada, YouTube applies a Track (owner missing) policy in Canada to videos claimed against the asset.
Since the most restrictive policy gets applied, this Track policy takes precedence over any Monetize policy from other claims on the videos.

On the same asset

If different partners own rights to the same asset in different territories, the policy of the partner who owns the asset in that country is applied.

If different partners own rights to the same asset in the same territories, the partner’s policy that results in the most restrictive action is applied. If both partners have the same policy, then the one that's applied depends on whether it's a music or a non music asset:

For music assets: Revenue is held separately and, once the dispute is resolved, revenue is paid out to the appropriate party.
For non-music assets: Track policy is applied for both partners. Monetize policy can't be applied until ownership conflict is resolved.

Examples

The tables below show example scenarios of how policies are applied to user-uploaded videos that match an asset with shared ownership.

Ownership in different territories + different policies:

	Partner A	Partner B
Has ownership in:	United States, Canada, Mexico	United Kingdom
Match policy set as:	Block the content	Monetize the content
What policy is applied:	Per partner A’s policy, user-uploaded videos that match this asset are blocked in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Per Partner B's policy, user-uploaded videos that match the asset are shown with ads in the United Kingdom (UK). Partner B gets the revenue from views in the UK. No policy applies in the rest of the world.

Ownership in different territories + same policy:

	Partner A	Partner B
Has ownership in:	United States, Canada, Mexico	United Kingdom
Match policy set as:	Block the content in the United States; Monetize the content in Canada and Mexico	Monetize the content
What policy is applied:	Per partner A’s policy, user-uploaded videos that match this asset are blocked in the United States and shown with ads in Canada and Mexico. Partner A gets the revenue from views in Canada and Mexico. Per partner B’s policy, user-uploaded videos that match this asset are shown with ads in the United Kingdom (UK). Partner B gets the revenue from views in the UK. No policy applies in the rest of the world.

Ownership in the same territory + different policies:

	Partner A	Partner B
Has ownership in:	United States, Canada, Mexico	United States
Match policy set as:	Block the content in the United States; Monetize the content in Canada and Mexico	Track the content
What policy is applied:	Partner A’s policy is applied since it results in the more restrictive action (Block). User-uploaded videos that match this asset are blocked in the United States. No policy applies in the rest of the world.

Ownership in the same territory + same policy:

	Partner A	Partner B
Has ownership in:	United States	United States
Match policy set as:	Monetize the content	Monetize the content
What policy is applied:	For music assets: Revenue is held separately and, once the dispute is resolved, revenue is paid out to the appropriate party. For non-music assets: Track policy is applied for both partners. Monetize policy can't be applied until ownership conflict is resolved. No policy applies in the rest of the world.

Was this helpful?

How can we improve it?