DMCA Horror Stories
Internet Reviewer Bullied off of YouTube
By Gareth Van Camp (The Necro Critic)
“As an internet reviewer, I have dealt with a lot of abuse from companies in the past. By far, the worst instance was when I spent two full months fighting a copyright claim for my Felix the Cat: The Movie review. The claim was from a company called Egeda, who I knew for a fact didn’t own any copyright for that movie or any other clip I used in that review, and they never claimed a specific portion of the video or named what it was they were claiming. So when I disputed it, I thought they were just some random company trying to scam YouTube’s copyright system with a false claim. It wasn’t until my second counter claim got rejected and the video was taken down that I learned that Egeda was a third-party company who automatically makes copyright claims on behalf of the copyright holder. The worst part was: they weren’t even representing the company who owned Felix the Cat: The Movie. They were representing the Spanish-language distributor for the movie. When I made my last counter-claim, it took the full month of inaction before the video went back up and my strike was lifted.”
“That was the instance that made me quit YouTube. I don’t post full videos on YouTube anymore. Nowadays, I just post a brief clip of my review with a link to the full version on another video distribution platform (It used to be Blip.tv, but ever since they shut down I’ve migrated to DailyMotion). Even then, I’m not safe. Just the other day, I had the preview clip for my School Days OVA review taken down for copyright. A video that is less than a minute long that links to the full, Fair Use compliant video, got taken down and left me with one of the three copyright strikes required to take down my channel.”