Prominent YouTube Personality Locked Out Of His Account After A Bogus Copyright Claim

from the so-much-power-in-one-little-symbol dept

Another bogus takedown targeting a prominent YouTube personality. In other words, business as usual for the world's largest video platform. This time it's Jacksepticeye, a very popular creator of videogame-related videos, most of which utilize in-game footage, "Let's Play"-style, as well as plenty of related (and unrelated) commentary. At the risk of sounding like The Narrator in "Fight Club," I know Jacksepticeye because my boys know Jacksepticeye. [There is no generation gap because of cultural osmosis. Discuss.]

Jacksepticeye had put together a video featuring two bots carrying on a conversation. One was Cleverbot Evie. The other was Talking Angela, the female spinoff of the ultra-popular Talking Tom app. Fun stuff, probably, but we can't see it (at the moment) because of some unpleasant takedown shenanigans.

One of YouTube's most known gamer guys, Jacksepticeye, took to his Twitter account on Wednesday morning citing copyright claims against him. The claims were made by Outfit7 Limited, the entertainment company that created the Talking Tom and Friends franchise.

Here are the tweets:

Apparently one of my Evie and Talking Angela vids copyright infringed on something and if I don't acknowledge it my account will be deleted

— jacksepticeye (@Jack_Septic_Eye) January 7, 2015

This wasn't some normal copyright strike either, I can't get into my youtube account now unless I answer copyright questions

— jacksepticeye (@Jack_Septic_Eye) January 7, 2015

So @Outfit7 are the ones who flagged the video. The owners of Talking Angela because I had her talking to Evie :/

— jacksepticeye (@Jack_Septic_Eye) January 7, 2015

If you can't read/see the tweets, they say (in order):

Apparently one of my Evie and Talking Angela vids copyright infringed on something and if I don't acknowledge it my account will be deleted

This wasn't some normal copyright strike either, I can't get into my youtube account now unless I answer copyright questions

So @Outfit7 are the ones who flagged the video. The owners of Talking Angela because I had her talking to Evie :/

Now, the question of fair use will be addressed here because the limitations of YouTube's system won't. Firing up an app to talk to a bot isn't copyright infringement. The app will talk to whoever will chat with it (and vice versa, in terms of CleverBot). Recording this interaction doesn't violate Outfit7's copyright anymore than someone recording their siblings/kids talking to it. The app exists to talk and presumably Outfit7 would like more people to download the Talking Angela app because in-app purchases is a numbers game. The more people that try it out, the more likely the chance that some of them will start tossing money into the company's revenue stream.

So, why take it down? Who knows? But considering the outcome of this situation, it appears it may have been a mistake -- albeit the sort of mistake that is both a) far too common and b) engenders ill will towards the entity who screwed up.

This is Jacksepticeye's latest tweet on the takedown.

The copyright strike against me has been retracted and everything is back to normal :D

— jacksepticeye (@Jack_Septic_Eye) January 9, 2015

If you can't see/read it:

The copyright strike against me has been retracted and everything is back to normal :D

Now, this doesn't necessarily mean Outfit7 came to its senses and walked back its erroneous takedown. It could be that YouTube pulled the strike because it wasn't actually an infringing video. But the former is much more likely than the latter, although there's been no public confirmation from Outfit7 itself.

The video itself still remains dead, at least at its original URL. Perhaps Jack will have to re-upload or he has decided to keep the video offline until he hears more from Outfit7… just in case. Either way, copyright gets in the way of creation again, and someone who makes a living on YouTube came this much closer to losing his source of income -- not the sort of thing that exactly endears IP rights to the general public.

Filed Under: censorship, cleverbot, copyright, jacksepticeye, takedowns, talking angela, youtube
Companies: google, outfit7, youtube