01Found itYou found it on someone else's channel
You know before you've finished reading the page. Same thumbnail. Same cut. Someone else's name under it.
So you file the claim, because that's what the process is for. And the platform writes back asking for evidence that you hold the rights, and sometimes for a licence agreement on top of that.
Fine. You have evidence. You screenshot your own dashboard with the upload date on it. You send the link to your original. You offer the project file, the raws, the whole folder if they want it.
Creators report that this gets rejected, and it's worth understanding why rather than taking it personally. Everything you sent proves you have the material. None of it proves you had it first. And all of it comes from an account on the platform you're making the claim against.
02Ownership vs evidenceYou already own it. That was never the problem.
Here's the part that makes this so maddening. You do own it.
Copyright exists from the moment the work exists. You don't file anything, you don't register anything, you don't pay anyone. The second it's finished, it's yours, and nobody in this process is arguing otherwise.
Ownership was never the question. Evidence is.
A claims team needs something they can look at and act on, and your word isn't that, however true it happens to be.
Formal registration is one answer, and a decent one. It's a real record with real weight behind it. It also costs money, takes time you don't have while a copy is live and collecting views, and applies in the country you registered it in rather than everywhere your work travels.
The other thing people reach for is their own files. The project, the raws, the timeline, the folder with the date on it. Those prove you hold the material. They don't prove you held it first, because file dates can be changed in about four seconds and a claims team knows that.
03The platform sideWhat platforms actually ask you for
Worth being precise about what the tools do, because the names promise more than they deliver.
YouTube's Copyright Match Tool scans new uploads against videos you've already uploaded and tells you when something matches. That's genuinely useful. It surfaces the copy. What happens next is left to you, and the tool doesn't take anything down by itself.
Claim forms ask for rights documentation. What creators report being asked for is evidence of ownership, dates, and in some cases a licence agreement showing how the rights got to you.
Notice what's missing from all of it. None of these processes make your evidence for you. They assume you turn up holding it.
04Two jobsFinding the copy and proving it's yours are two different jobs
This is the distinction the whole category blurs, so let's be blunt about it.
Detection finds the copy.
Fingerprinting services scan platforms, match against your originals and tell you where your work has turned up. That's a real job, it's hard to do well, and it's worth paying someone to do it.
JubJub does the second job.
It does not do the first. If you want scanning, run a detection service alongside this. They aren't alternatives, and it's worth knowing which one you're buying.
But finding a copy tells you nothing about which version came first. A match says two files are the same. It doesn't say who made one.
05The publish recordWhat a publish record gives you
Publish through JubJub and the record is written as part of publishing. No extra step, no separate service, nothing to remember on the day you're least likely to remember it.
Three things make that record useful when a claim goes sideways, and they happen to be the three things missing from everything else you could reach for.
It exists before the theft.
It's made when you publish, not assembled afterwards out of whatever you can still find. By the time you need it, it's already dated and already sitting there. That's the whole trick, and it's the one part you cannot go back and do later.
It isn't held by the platform you're claiming against.
The record is written to Base, a public network, and tied to a wallet you control. It doesn't live in an account administered by the other side of your dispute. Nobody in the argument can edit it, including you.
Anyone can check it without asking you.
It's public. A claims team, a lawyer, or the platform itself can look it up directly. No permission from you, no login, no JubJub account.
It's free to use, and there's no fee per file.
It's part of the ownership record every piece gets.
06The limitsWhat this does not do
Its own section, because a page like this is usually where the overclaiming happens.
07Your first hourIf it's already happened: your first hour
Do this before anything else. The evidence you need has a habit of disappearing while you're deciding how to feel about it.
Capture the infringing URL.
The full link, copied, somewhere safe.
Record the uploader and the upload date.
Screenshot the page with both visible. If they rename the video or flip it to private, what you saw is gone and your screenshot is the only surviving copy of it.
Note your original.
Your file, your own publication date, your record.
Don't message the uploader.
It's the most satisfying thing on this list and the worst. It warns them, and a deleted reupload is harder to claim against than a live one.
File through the platform's formal process.
Not a comment, not a DM, not a post tagging them in. The form is the thing that produces a decision.
Attach your record.
Something dated, external, and checkable by someone who isn't you.
08Proof and paymentThe record that proves it is the record that pays you
The registration your claim rests on is the same one your money runs through. Collaborator splits are set against it, so your editor and everyone else on the piece get paid out of the same record that says who made it.
That pairing is the part nobody else does. Registration services give you a record and no revenue. Payment platforms give you revenue and nothing you'd want to put in front of a claims team.
