More Issues With Copyright Enforcement At Scale: YouTube Reinstates Videos After False Claims

It's no secret that Techdirt believes YouTube's copyright enforcement program is an absolute mess. On the one hand, it's difficult to be too hard on the company. After all, it is trying to figure out how to enforce draconian copyright laws in countries like America at a scale that is absolutely absurd. On the other hand, the way it works today is so wide open for fraud and abuse, that it's literally a challenge to pick out which of a ton of stories I want to link to in order to show the history of fraud, mistakes, and nefarious copyright claims taken for reasons that fall completely outside of any interest in copyright law or protection.

And it just keeps happening. Meet Lofi Girl, the name of a YouTube account that streams low-fidelity hip hop music to serve as background music for studying or resting. Two of Lofi Girl's live streams were taken down after someone submitted a copyright takedown notice for them. That copyright takedown notice was shared by Lofi Girl on Twitter and, well...

The lofi radios have been taken down because of false copyright strikes, hopefully @YouTubeCreators @YouTube will sort this quickly... pic.twitter.com/X01hL6jT2N

- Lofi Girl (@lofigirl) July 10, 2022

Forgive my American-centric viewpoint on this, but it seems like a copyright claim from some random music publisher" in Malaysia probably should have triggered a deeper dive into whether there was actually infringing activity here or not. Instead, because of YouTube's stock policy, YouTube simply took the streams down and informed Lofi Girl it had done so. Many on social media noticed all this and took to the streamer's defense.

Many rallied behind Lofi Girl on Monday using the hashtag #BringBackLofiGirl, with some also criticizing YouTube's copyright strike policies.

And eventually YouTube rescinded the copyright takedown and removed the strikes from Lofi Girl's channel. And that's all well and good, except that the only reason anyone even had to go through this exercise is because YouTube's reporting system is so completely wide open that it practically begs for this kind of fraud and abuse.

The remaining question is, when is YouTube going to get around to doing anything about that?