Game Creator Has His YouTube Video Of Game Demonetized Over Soundtrack He Also Created

from the on-the-money dept

Content moderation, whether over social or intellectual property issues, is impossible to do well. It just is. The scale of content platforms means that automated systems have to do most of this work and those automated systems are always completely rife with avenues for error and abuse. While this goes for takedowns and copyright strikes, it is also the case for demonetization practices for the big players like YouTube.

But how bad are these systems, really? Well, take, for instance, the case of a man who created a video game, and the soundtrack for that game, having his YouTube videos of the game demonetized due to copyright.

Doki Doki Literature Club creator Dan Salvato is being demonetized for his own music on YouTube because the platform claims the soundtrack included in his videos - which he himself composed - is "someone else's content."

Salvato took to Twitter in order to share his grievances. Apparently, his videos have been subjected to demonetization for several months due to purported copyright infringement for the music he used in them - however, Salvato himself composed all of said music, meaning that YouTube is claiming that he is essentially stealing his own intellectual property.

We have of course heard of this sort of thing in the past: a person has videos demonetized despite the content being of their own creation. Still, there is something perfectly simplistic about this case. A game and music maker puts videos up of his own game and music...and it gets demonetized. While no system is ever perfect, that YouTube's system allows for this sort of thing to not only happen, but to go on for months without correction, is an indication that the system sucks and something else should be done.

Now, as often happens, once Salvato complained publicly, YouTube got in touch to investigate. People will point to this as though future rectification made all of this acceptable. But that's absurd. After all, you're forced to wonder just how often this sort of thing occurs and doesn't ever get fixed.

Filed Under: contentid, copyright, dan salvato, demonetization
Companies: youtube