This will be a long an detailed blog entry, so grab a banana, sit back, and learn about a potential scam running on YouTube right now. This scam is so simple that it is scary, and YouTube does not seem to give a shit. Back in March 2011 I created a Google Search Story video using a new service supplied by YouTube. On a whim I created a conspiracy search story and uploaded it to my YouTube account. A few months went by and suddenly I got an email from YouTube asking me if I wanted to monetize the video:

Monetizing a Video

Hmmm I thought. Not today. There was not a lot of traffic to the video, leading me to believe that there was no money to be made. Thanks but no thanks, so I took a pass and ignored the email. Fast forward to December 2011 and I noticed a significant increase in my daily blog traffic. We are talking 4x the amount of traffic practically over night. Using Clicky (my stats program), I determined that all of this increased traffic was coming to my homepage from this video. A remarkable thing had happened. It had gone viral. At time of writing this, the video is closing in on 3 million views. When I noticed it back on December 11th it had passed the 600,000 view mark.

Don’t forget the Backlinks

It was a good thing that when I had uploaded the video, I had included a backlink in the info box leading back to this site. I try and do that with every video I upload. Free traffic I always thought…and damn, it works great! Almost all of my videos start with an opening link back to this site in the description. Once I noticed this, I immediately monetized the video. Adsense policies prevent me from discussing details of income earned, but needless to say I was very very very impressed.

Copyright Dispute Run Amok

So the video keeps getting more and more views, earning more and more income, ticking along rather nicely earning me passive income. Things were good in the world of The Mad Ape. Then I woke up on Monday morning to this:

Who is GlobalTVCom?

WTF? GlobalTVCom was laying copyright claim to my video? Granted some of the content belongs to YouTube/Google because they provided the online software for me to create the video, but they were the ones who invited me to earn income from it. That tells me that they have agreed to allow me to use the video for income generating purposes. They make a great income off of it too, so it is a win-win for both of us.

I quickly disputed this claim by GlobalTVCom with YouTube using their online, automated dispute mechanism. Now here is where the story takes a strange twist… I have waited for a few days and when I checked the status of the claim today I got the message:

In case that you can’t read what it says:

Your dispute is still awaiting a response from these content owners:

• Entity: GlobalTVCom Content Type: Audiovisual content

The Making of A Scam

So I had to wait until I hear from these people. Why I asked myself. Not being one to sit idly by, I looked through the help section of YouTube and found a suggestion to open a dialogue with the entity claiming copyright. YouTube suggested that I contact them through their user name (http://youtube.com/user/GlobalTVCom). So I tried and then BAM… I was met with this:

It says: This account has been terminated due to repeated or severe violations of our Community Guidelines and/or claims of copyright infringement.

So this user, claiming copyright for my video, has had their account suspended for violating claims of copyright infringement. WOW! This blew me away. I have no way of knowing when their account was suspended but this got me thinking of why they did it.

Potential for Theft of Income

Think about this for a minute. A nefarious, unscrupulous YouTube user makes a bunch of YouTube and Google Adsense accounts then systematically browses YouTube for videos that have gone viral. Next they lay copyright claims on them, making sure not to have the video removed but to insert their monetization into the video.  Once they lay a copyright claim, YouTube, if present, removes the uploader’s monetization.

While this proves that I have had income taken from me because of a bogus copyright claim, from here on I have no proof, only supposition as to what is going on. I have to ask myself why someone would do such a thing? Jealousy? Mayhem? While both probable, I took my train of thought down the Scam Track Railway.

Now suppose for a moment that the claimant has had their monetization inserted into the uploader’s video. I have uploaded videos where the owner claims copyright and they insert Adsense ads into them. I have no problem with that. However if it is bogus and if no one argues the copyright claim, or even if the uploader does dispute it, how much money is scammed prior to YouTube and Google Adsense catching up to it?

YouTube’s Poor User Relationships

Sure YouTube and Google Adsense will catch this eventually, and I think that is what happened here, but what if this is done on a massive scale? What are the odds that some of this is going undetected. It is scary to think about the ramifications of this, but shouldn’t this type of thing  be expected when an online service relies too heavily on automation? I don’t care how good a utility is. If left to run with minimal human interaction, someone out there will hack it. Has this happened here? I don’t know for sure but I have some issues with the way that YouTube is handling the situation.

First and foremost YouTube is very poor in its user relations. They are next to impossible to contact and one has to dig into the depths of their site to find a contact form. Currently I have posted in a related discussion on their forums but the only response says that I should wait 10 days. Normally I would not have a problem with that but when the copyright claimant has had their account suspended for false claims of copyright, I think that my video should have the claim dropped immediately.

How Do I Get My Money Back?

Finally, while I said that I normally would not have a problem with waiting the 10 days, I feel that should the copyright claim be decided in the uploader’s favor, that any income lost should be returned from the claimant. I would suppose that this would be a court matter, unless it became part of YouTube’s policies.

Comments and Opinions

Am I out to lunch here? Please tell me what you think is going on? I am hoping that the search engines pick this up, especially the user GlobalTVCom because I am interested to know if others have outstanding copyright claims from this user. You can do you part by spreading awareness by spreading some love throughout the social media. I want to know what is going on. There is no denying that I have been ripped off.

Updates

I will post all updates in this section of the post as I receive them.

Technorati Tags: Copyright theft, Adsense, YouTube, Google, GlobalTVCom, copyright dispute, viral video, monetize, monetization, customer relations, backlinks, clicky, stats, statistics, making a viral video, Search Stories, Adsense theft, theft

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UPDATE: PLEASE DONATE TO THE CANADIAN RED CROSS. PEOPLE NEED YOUR HELP!

My hometown of Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada has been flooded…BIG TIME. With a higher than average snowfall, rapid melt, and a torrential downpour upstream, the Saint John River overflowed its banks.

CLICK PICTURE TO ENLARGE

The devastation is widespread, damage will be in the millions of dollars, thousands of people will be displaced, and the clean up will be a long drawn out process.

At time of writing, the river has crested here, but downstream is getting it far worse than us tonight. The military has been called in, aiding in the rescue of people that were too stubborn to head the warning of authorities. There have been over 135 people rescued thus far.

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Video Blogging Creates Buzz

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