Slashdot Mirror
YouTube Algorithm Can Decide Your Channel URL Now Belongs To Someone Else
An anonymous reader writes: In 2005, blogger Matthew Lush registered "Lush" as his account on the then-nascent YouTube service, receiving www.youtube.com/lush as the URL for his channel. He went on to use this address on his marketing materials and merchandise. Now, YouTube has taken the URL and reassigned it to the Lush cosmetics brand. Google states that an algorithm determined the URL should belong to the cosmetics firm rather than its current owner, and insists that it is not possible to reverse the unrequested change. Although Lush cosmetics has the option of changing away from their newly-received URL and thereby freeing it up for Mr. Lush's use, they state that they have not decided whether they will. Google has offered to pay for some of Mr. Lush's marketing expenses as compensation.
He's still accesible at youtube.com/user/lush just like every other channel is. youtube.com/lush just happened to be a shorter URL that apparently isn't always unique to you.
IIRC, there are exceptions in trademark law carved out for peoples' names. That is, someone whose last name is Google could not be prevented from using their name as the name of their company. There are likely some nuances to this, such as that the company couldn't bear the exact same legal name "Google, Inc." or choose the name with intent to cause confusion. Two names that existed in separate industries should be considered safe. This case of naming rights on a privately owned service further complicates the spirit of the law, insomuch as a private entity has control of most of the name and can rightfully choose who uses its service.
ICANN at least honors this sentiment for domains. See the case of Uzi Nissan is Nissan Motors v. Nissan Computer, who registered Nissan.com before Nissan Motors. Similarly in nature, Microsoft v. MikeRoweSoft existed, but was settled out of court.
Personally, I'd like to see Google and other services that offer naming of pages to follow similar guidelines: no one can be prevented from claiming their name.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
"Lush" is a well known brand. If people go to www.youtube.com/lush they would expect to see Lush cosmetics, not some random guy. Similar for www.youtube.com/mcdonalds. Not sure what the issue is here. He doesn't own the site.
People entering www.youtube.com/lush expect to see marketing information from the same guy who registered the name many years ago, not some random company. Not sure what your thought process is here. Lush cosmetics doesn't own the site.
Yup, the canonical URL for a channel is and has always been youtube.com/user/[channel name]. It just so happens that youtube.com/[channel name] defaulted to redirecting to that if there was nothing else of interest there (there will be other subdirectories with specific purposes there that may be valid channel names but would not redirect) - I would be very surprised if this was ever documented as something to be expected, it was just being liberal with accepting URLs. It yields a redirect, so it's immediately clear that your intended destination is elsewhere, and nobody should be copying and pasting a naked URL like that unless they're doing it deliberately.
It seems Google is now inserting more things into that namespace, effectively using it as a shortener, adding aliases for other channels.
This is just a case of relying on an undocumented feature. You should always be prepared for that to bite you in the ass unexpectedly. It sucks for Matthew Lush, but unless he can point at official documentation that stated that the shorter URL was a valid way of referencing a YouTube channel persistently, he really can't blame Google for this one. Nobody took away his actual channel URL, they just changed an undocumented shortcut that he was relying on.