Combating Unauthorized YouTube Videos of Children’s Books

By Janet Ruth Heller

In late March 2022, I was googling my fiction picture book about bullying How the Moon Regained Her Shape to get the ISBN to fill out an important form. I expected the first Google listing to be my publisher Arbordale’s webpage. However, I was startled to discover that the first site listed was a YouTube video of a woman reading aloud my award-winning book for children and showing all of the book’s illustrations.

Continuing my search, I found three more different YouTube videos of unauthorized people reading my book aloud and showing all of the artwork. While I liked knowing that these people enjoyed my book, I strongly disapproved of their plagiarism.

Copyright law in the United States allows “fair use” of a published book. For example, when I taught college courses about literature for children, I would bring various kids’ books to class to show my students. But posting a video online requires permission from the author, artist, or publisher. The YouTube plagiarists violated my book’s copyright. I was shocked that people would post such a video without permission.

I immediately e-mailed Arbordale Publishing, and editor Donna German asked YouTube to take all four videos down. YouTube quickly complied.

I also posted about this plagiarism on the Michigan SCBWI’s listserv to let my brother and sister writers and artists know that this is happening so that they could check YouTube and other social media, protect their copyrights, and not allow this infringement to continue.

Terry Hojnacki, who also writes for children, is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Sterling Heights Public Library, and is a member of SCBWI-Michigan, saw my post and e-mailed me the following questions: “Do you know anything about librarians reading books and posting online? Would this also be considered a copyright violation?”

The next three paragraphs are my answers to Terry’s questions. 

I have no objection to librarians or teachers reading my seven books aloud to children and adults at a library or school and showing the audience the illustrations. However, I do not think that librarians or teachers or anyone else has the right to post a video or podcast or any other online message copying words or illustrations in my books. The only exception would be if the author, artist, and publisher all approve such a video or other posting of such material. Any legal posting should have a line reading “recorded with permission from Arbordale Publishing” or a similar acknowledgment.

Some of my books exist in many forms, including hardback, paperback, online, English, Spanish, and audio versions. When people post my books online on YouTube and other media, people can access free copies. That cuts into the royalties that I earn from sales of my books in all of their formats. Plagiarism also makes people less likely to ask me to come to a school or library to read my books and discuss them, which is another way that writers and artists earn money.

As you know, we writers and illustrators benefit from sales of our books. Illegal posts and videos of our works hurt our income and our right to decide who gets to show pages or read our books to the public.

Also, I e-mailed the national offices of the SCBWI and requested that the leaders of our organization contact YouTube and other social media to ask for a better policy when individuals want to post material from books or a video of a person reading aloud copyrighted material. People should have to prove that they have permission from holders of copyrights to post pages from books or read books aloud.

However, the national SCBWI Advisory Council has declined to pursue social media who violate copyright protection. The Advisory Council stated that many publishers and countries like Australia have allowed more sharing of book material due to COVID. Writers’ and artists’ contracts with publishers vary in restrictions about how much from each book may be posted for publicity purposes. In general, the Advisory Council felt that this issue is too complex to litigate.

I’m disappointed that the Advisory Council will not insist that social media exclude plagiarists. Most schools have returned to in-person classes in 2022, so I see less need for online posting of books. I would like to see all social media platforms clearly inform users that no one may post copyrighted books without written permission and that individuals who do so will get suspended from that platform.

 

Janet Ruth Heller is president of the Michigan College English Association. She has published four poetry books: Nature’s Olympics (Wipf and Stock, 2021), Exodus (WordTech, 2014), Folk Concert: Changing Times (Anaphora, 2012), and Traffic Stop (Finishing Line, 2011). The University of Missouri Press published her scholarly book, Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and the Reader of Drama (1990). Fictive Press published Heller’s middle-grade chapter book about sibling rivalry, The Passover Surprise (2015, 2016). Her children’s book about bullying, How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Arbordale, 2006; 6^th ed. 2018), has won four national awards. Her website is https://www.janetruthheller.com.