Guinness World Records Did An Automated Copyright Strike Oopsie On YouTubers

This is and will keep happening. As complicated a landscape as copyright law is, the idea of automating the policing of copyright infringement without creating all kinds of collateral damage is simply absurd. Our pages are absolutely brimming with example after example of all kinds of entities issuing copyright claims and strikes on all kinds of platforms in error, with the blame always being laid at the feet of the copyright bots" that screwed up. Apparently the wider world is okay with this kind of collateral damage clown show, since it sure doesn't appear to be changing.

The most recent example comes to us courtesy of the Guinness World Records company, which hit at least two YouTubers with copyright strikes for having the phrase World Record" on their videos. The first to note this publicly was a YouTuber going by Ducky."

Ducky wasn't alone.

Ducky wasn't the only big-name YouTuber to get hit with a copyright strike from the company, either. LazarBeam, one of the most iconic Fortnite content creators on the internet,revealed just a couple of days after Ducky's tweetthat he had also been hit with a copyright strike.

Guinness world records making the psychopathic decision to strike YouTube videos that mention world record' or use their logo in thumbnails. Video was 5 years old with 26 million views," he said.

Now, here's where I'll give the Guinness folks some props. The company responded to Ducky fairly quickly and admitted that the strike was issued in error due to, you guessed it, an automated copyright bot. Ducky got the strike removed fairly quickly as well. There hasn't been public acknowledgement that the company reached out in the same fashion to LazarBeam as well, but I imagine it has or is willing to, given how it handled Ducky.

But this simply isn't good enough. It isn't enough that these companies fix their mistakes shortly after the copyright gun goes off. First off, not every company is as responsive and honest about this stuff as the Guinness people. And even if they were, we have pages and pages of real world examples of these bots not working. And we're doing nothing about it.

We would simply not put up with this kind of knock-on fallout in most other situations in our society. Why are we putting it up with it in the name of copyright?