I run a decent sized YouTube channel, and occasionally upload soundtracks and trailers of stuff I like. They don't earn me any money, as they're copyrighted but I still do it anyway.
All these videos get automatically tagged by their respective copyrights owner, and their ads run on the video. I have no issue with that. However, it seems YouTube is allowing blatantly "fake" individuals to issue a direct copyright strike on videos.
I uploaded a piece of music from Game of Thrones Season 6 the day it aired (so been a few months). It was immediately tagged as being owned by WaterTower Music, which is correct. In the time since I got more than 2 million views on the video.
However, when I opened my YouTube yesterday, someone by the name of "Sadzid Husic" had claimed ownership of the music and put copyright strike on my video. Now it seemed odd, as it was already tagged as belonging to WaterTower Music. On further inspection, the contact info of Mr. Husic seemed to be a normal Gmail email. Surely, a person from WaterTower wouldn't issue copyright strikes using Gmail?
I tried to find more about this individual, and a quick Google search and at first glance it seemed like this person did own the music. But of course, that's not possible. When I examined the search results more carefully, it seemed more and more likely that his entire online persona was a fabrication.
His apparent Wikipedia page, which only exists on the french Wikipedia for some reason, states that he's worked on literally every recent big project.
So, apparently this guy has been working with Ramin Djawadi for years. A quick scroll through his Twitter shows this. (tweet) Sure sounds like something who has worked with someone like Ramin Djawadi would say.
There's actually a lot more about this person that's suspect, but cutting to the chase: Almost everything that exists about this person on the Internet seems to have been created around October 2016. But somehow, that was enough for the YouTube copyright checkers (?) to believe that he actually owns the rights to the soundtrack of a show like Game of Thrones!
Okay, so I thought I should probably just counter this copyright strike and try to get it fixed. But...to actually counter it, I'll have to go through this. Giving my personal information to this guy? Willingly? Hell no. I would try contacting YouTube, and WaterTower directly, but apparently they have no "contact us" section. Great.
Now, the removal of one video from my channel out of 100s doesn't affect me that much, nor is this the first time this has happened with me. But just the ridiculousness of how creating a blatantly fake online persona can give you the power to remove any video from the internet, even if it's from one of the biggest shows on the earth is just baffling.
Anyway, I doubt I can do anything about it but I wanted to share my ordeal anyway.
by wibblywobblyman http://ift.tt/2gqpdjJ
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