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YouTube Strikes Now Being Used As Scammers' Extortion Tool (torrentfreak.com)
Scammers are reportedly using YouTube's "three strike" system for extortion. "After filing two false claims against [YouTuber ObbyRaidz], scammers contacted him demanding cash to avoid a third -- and the termination of his channel," reports TorrentFreak. From the report: The YouTuber, who concentrates on Minecraft-related videos, reports that he's received two bogus strikes on his account. While this is nothing new, it appears the strikes were deliberately malicious with longer-term plan to extort money from him. "I have been striked twice and basically extorted," ObbyRaidz revealed this morning. "If I don't pay this dude he's going to strike a third one of my videos down."
The alleged scammer contacted ObbyRaidz, who lives in Texas, via Twitter. He or she warned the YouTuber that unless he paid a sum via PayPal or bitcoin, another complaint and therefore a third strike would be added to his account. "Hi Obby, We striked you," the message from "VengefulFlame" begins. "Our request is $150 PayPal or $75 btc (Bitcoin). You may send the money via goods/services if you do not think we will cancel or hold up our end of the deal. "Once we receive our payment, we will cancel both strikes on your channel. Again -- you are free to charge back if we don't but we assure you we will." The YouTuber was then granted "a very short amount of time" to make his decision whether to pay the amount or potentially lose his channel. The YouTuber goes on to say that YouTube has not provided any assistance resolving this problem. "It's very unfortunate and YouTube has not done very much for me. I can't get in contact with them. One of the appeals got denied," he explains.
The alleged scammer contacted ObbyRaidz, who lives in Texas, via Twitter. He or she warned the YouTuber that unless he paid a sum via PayPal or bitcoin, another complaint and therefore a third strike would be added to his account. "Hi Obby, We striked you," the message from "VengefulFlame" begins. "Our request is $150 PayPal or $75 btc (Bitcoin). You may send the money via goods/services if you do not think we will cancel or hold up our end of the deal. "Once we receive our payment, we will cancel both strikes on your channel. Again -- you are free to charge back if we don't but we assure you we will." The YouTuber was then granted "a very short amount of time" to make his decision whether to pay the amount or potentially lose his channel. The YouTuber goes on to say that YouTube has not provided any assistance resolving this problem. "It's very unfortunate and YouTube has not done very much for me. I can't get in contact with them. One of the appeals got denied," he explains.
YouTube didn't reach out and fix the issue until it gained a lot of attention and bad press. Even then, they did nothing toprevent it from happening again.
What happens to the next person who gets an extortion attempt like this and doesn't get a lot of press attention?
You do realize that YouTube is used by people for all sorts of reasons, right?
A few years back, a plumber I called out was telling me about posting videos on YouTube. His business was already doing just fine, but he was passionate about plumbing and wanted to see more people feel comfortable doing simple repairs. Let's suppose that he talked to a musician and procured the rights to use one of their tracks as a backing track for his videos. A few months later, what's to stop someone else with the rights to that music from making a claim against him? Enough fo those, and all of his videos could be taken down.
There were reports just last week of a Star Wars video that had its audio stripped out (to highlight the importance of John Williams' music) getting hit with a copyright strike by a company that has some of the rights to Star Wars music, despite the fact that all of the audio had been subbed for sounds the video's author made himself.
For me, this stuff actually matters.
Besides posting YouTube videos for fun with some friends (we have a few thousand subscribers to our Let's Play channel, but have turned off monetization since we're just in it for fun), I also post sermon videos for the church I attend. They're nothing fancy, but it's something we can do to include ill and infirm people in the weekly happenings of the church. We've recently been talking about livestreaming, as well as expanding it to cover the entire service. Expanding it would mean needing to procure the rights to stream musical performances for the various hymns and choruses we sing (we're already properly licensed to perform them, just not to stream those performances). Licensing for Christian music almost always goes through the CCLI, but there are a lot of new musicians cropping up all the time, and it's conceivable that not all of them understand the intricacies of licensing. It's conceivable as well that despite being properly licensed to perform and stream a performance of a song, some artist or other rights holder may be unaware of our license with the CCLI and initiate a strike against us, or else some ne'er-do-well may try to extort us.
Given that we risk losing access to years' worth of prior content, these aren't small questions. What happens to my plumber's videos or my church's videos may be small potatoes to you, but multiply that by everyone else at risk and it becomes clear that many of us stand to lose something personal that matters to us.