It's the bane of every YouTuber's existence: False copyright claims.
And one of the internet's most beloved YouTube music channels, Lofi Girl, was just hit with one of these false strikes. Now, as a result, the channel's livestreams have been taken down, including a stream that has subsequently been running nonstop for two years, four months, and 18-and-a-half days.
You've probably come across Lofi Girl's YouTube streams, even if you're unfamiliar with the name. The livestream features a looping animation of a girl studying at her desk listening to music through headphones while her cat serenely looks out the window behind her. Chill lofi "beats to relax/study to" play throughout the livestream for viewers to...work or study alongside.
With more than 10.7 million subscribers, Lofi Girl was a very popular YouTube channel. Yet, that didn't stop a false copyright strike from taking it all down.
YouTube Creators know just how frustrating the video platform's copyright system can be. Any copyright troll with access to YouTube's Content ID system can file a claim on anyone's content. In doing so, they can stop a creator from monetizing their videos, collect that creator's ad revenue for themselves, and even end up demonetizing a creator's entire YouTube channel.
Sure, YouTubers can dispute these bad faith claims and YouTube will, supposedly, take action against those who abuse the Content ID system. Yet, these very instances continue to occur over and over again.
On Sunday, Lofi Girls' two livestreams, including that previously mentioned stream that has been running since Feb. 22, 2020, suddenly ended. Lofi Girl took to its Twitter account to explain what happened.
"The lofi radios have been taken down because of false copyright strikes, hopefully @YouTubeCreators @YouTube will sort this quickly…," tweeted Lofi Girl, along with a screenshot of the copyright strike notice from YouTube.
According to the screenshot, the false copyright strike was issued by a music label based out of Malaysia called FMC Music Sdn Bhd Malaysia.
YouTube replied on Monday morning apologizing for the takedowns and confirmed that the copyright claims were falsely made. YouTube also claimed that it had "terminated" the copyright troll's account.
"confirmed the takedown requests were abusive & terminated the claimants account ? we've resolved the strikes + reinstated your vids – it can sometimes take 24-48 hours for everything to be back to normal! so sorry this happened & thx for your patience as we sorted it out ????," tweeted the TeamYouTube account in reply to Lofi Girl's tweet.
It's good that the copyright strikes have been removed, as these inhibit the Lofi Girl channel from livestreaming and monetizing its videos. However, YouTube's Twitter account seemed a bit confused about reinstating the videos. Livestreams that are more than 12 hours long are not archived for replay, regardless if it was ended intentionally by the creator or not. So, no, there will not be a reinstated, nearly two-and-a-half-year long Lofi Girl livestream for viewers to re-watch.
This isn't the first time Lofi Girl has had its livestream removed due to YouTube copyright issues. Back in February 2020, right before the latest livestream went live, YouTube randomly shut down the whole Lofi Girl channel. At the time, YouTube said it was a "mistake on their side."
However, there is one interesting nugget to come out of this latest false copyright takedown. Once a livestream ends, users can see how many total views the video has received. Otherwise, YouTube only shows the number of concurrent live viewers when a livestream is active.
So, how many times has Lofi Girl's marathon of a livestream been viewed since February 2020? More than 668 million times.
With that aside, though, it's incredible just how much of a problem copyright trolls and false claims are becoming on YouTube. And if a popular YouTube channel with more than 10 million subscribers isn't safe from these copyright strikes, then who is?
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