YouTube owner Google says it will help fund up to $1m (£650,000) in legal fees for some content creators who have received copyright takedown notices.
It will step in if it feels their material is considered to be fair use.
However the firm admitted that only a handful of people have been chosen to benefit from this support.
Copyright holders are able to make requests to Google - or other sites - to take down content under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
However there are exceptions to the law, which vary around the world but can include the use of other material for the purposes of commentary and parody.
If a small portion of somebody else's work is used in this context, or in news reporting or for teaching purposes in the US, it can be exempt from copyright legislation.
"We are offering legal support to a handful of videos that we believe represent clear fair uses which have been subject to DMCA takedowns," wrote Fred von Lohmann, Google's copyright legal director, in a blog post.