Last year I found all of my audiobooks on several channels on YouTube. It made me incandescent with rage because they're not only screwing me out of money but my narrator too. This issue is something that has been going on for years on pirate sites, but YouTube is supposed to be legitimate, right? Technically, yes, but in reality anyone can steal content and upload it as their own. What can a rights holder do when they find their content on Youtube? I discovered that there ARE a couple of things Rights Holders can do to not necessarily stop the pirates outright, but hobble them at least. The first thing I did was to search YouTube using lots of different keywords relating to my audiobooks. I reported the illegal audiobooks individually on all of the pirate channels, and reported the persons who set up the channels.
Then, I set up my own channel and uploaded the Audible retail samples of all of my audiobooks to my channel. I don't care how many subscribers I have for this channel. For once, this is not about getting followers or subscribers. The reason for setting up a channel was to claim my content.
Unbeknown to most users YouTube has a Content ID software that scans uploads.
YouTube needs the legitimate rights holder content to match with the pirate content. Otherwise they cannot identify what is legit and what is pirate content. So, if you want to do something to prevent your audiobooks getting uploaded onto YouTube I suggest that you start a channel, upload your Audible retail samples, and claim the ID of your audiobook content so it can be matched to illegal uploads - which will be removed.
I've had my channel up for a year and it 'seems' to have been working for me. I check YouTube once in a while and rarely find my audiobooks on anymore. But... yes, they are still on a billion other pirate sites!
Click on this link to find out about CONTENT ID https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797370