A Satellaview research blog.

On matters directly affecting the blog’s quality: YouTube betrayed me.

Kiddo

I will once again sincerely apologize for the hoopla surrounding the video embeds lately. You see, YouTube has been swindling me. I’ve commented on this prior in my Twitter, and I’ll summarize the past month of this malarky here.

To start, back on November 2nd – the same day as the forced Google+ integrations, if you recall – YouTube abruptly disables monetization on my original channel. In a panic I tried changing my channel and moving stuff over, only for them to, 20 days later, disable the monetization on THAT, as well, SPECIFICALLY CITING my previous account. YouTube will not even let me start over.

I will note that both accounts were completely in good standing when this happened, and I had no prior warnings or incidents to explain this. The timing of it, in fact, gave me the perception that they simply wanted to screw over a legacy YouTube user for their “Fresh new thing” in the Google+ integration.

As I struggled with trying to speak to them (Help Center has not responded to any of my messages, and the support forum abruptly stopped talking to me the moment I noticed a contradiction between their stated policy and the reality of my circumstances.), something ELSE happened that rubbed the salt deeper into the wound.

The attack of the ghost of 4Kids.

This video was copyright striked:

Under a claim by the supposed “4Kids”.

Now, cast aside all prior thought on this, and let’s get this fact straight: 4Kids has been defunct for over a year, and no longer owned anything in that video. Furthermore, the very e-mail domain main of the alleged claimer was nonfunctional. In other words, there was no one going to be on the receiving end of the inevitable counter-claim I made, which is why this video is back up.

But, the question is, why? Not just why it happened at all, but why the TIMING of it? I had that video up for TWO YEARS, and during the time 4Kids was alive, they knew, because they already had that claim on my video WITHOUT copyright striking it.

Combined with the lack of a 4Kids in the current day, and… it’s quite apparent, YouTube (under Google’s ownership, so as to not cause confusion with the legacy of YouTube, as I’ve been a member of the site since 2006) THEMSELVES did this.
To give them the benefit of the doubt, I’d presume they tried strengthening their copyright bots and just neglected to remove the claims from an obviously-defunct company… but still! This is the most outrageous thing that’s ever happened to me in my entire time on the internet yet! And with how it was timed, it’d be easy to believe they were intentionally trying to take me down! This is SICKENING.

Some kind of action needs to be done. These sorts of issues with YouTube can’t stand.
They should NOT be allowed to harass their community like this, especially with money on the line.

I think sooner or later I’m going to contact a lawyer…

7 thoughts on On matters directly affecting the blog’s quality: YouTube betrayed me.

  1. I am also a YouTuber, and I have looked into these issues before. Believe me, they are not out to get you.

    Actually, what has happened is a bunch of things:

    1) you’ve become popular. Once you start getting more views on a regular basis (a ‘promoted user’ which is essentially a low grade YouTube Partner), they become more attentive to what you’re up to. This is why you can be okay for some time, then you’ll start getting claims. The bonus is by being a user of importance, they will also protect you from others stealing YOUR content (more on that in a minute).
    2) YouTube have recently revamped their copyright claims engine to be more accurate to duplicate content. Their system is automated, based on signing up for protection against others thieving your content. This is why a supposedly defunct company (who still have their copyrighted materials filed with YouTube) have managed to file a claim. It’s not malice on their part, it’s just algorithms.
    3) When you set up your dupe channel and moved stuff there, YouTube saw you not as the same user, but as one of those annoying people that rip content off others on YouTube. As such, the system believed you were ripping off the ‘real’ KiddoCabbusses, and so flagged you against your own content.

    You question why ‘Let’s Play’ers don’t get caught out by this. Well, long story short, they do. Most games companies like people doing Let’s Play’s as it raises the popularity of their games (free marketing, yay!) Recently, however, Nintendo added their content to the system, and as such Let’s Players of Mario games suddenly found themselves losing monetization on WiiU games. Supposedly, Nintendo stepped back on this decision and apologised to people (search for ‘nintendo let’s play’ for more information on this case) but it definitely ruffled a few feathers in the community.

    The true problem is that you personally don’t create the majority of the content on your channel, and hence you will sadly be more susceptible to copyright claims over content you unearthed if someone out there has a claim – and despite what you think someone owns the distribution rights to all the content (and yes, even the 4Kids content, even if its just the person who owns their liquidated assets). The only way to deal with the claims is gracefully, tactfully and always clearly stating your case. Every claim that falls in your favour is one more green tick!

    In the most cases, the best solution is stake your ground and be the first person to get the content on YouTube – you’re less likely to run foul of the auto-claimer if you’re the first user to upload it!

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