Fran Blanche: This Is Not Legal
I have private access to some pretty cool motorsports/boat-racing/etc stuff that a majority of people don't get to see (prototype/development vehicle testing, etc). I thought it might be fun for me to make some videos of these and share them, with the full support of the owners/teams behind this stuff. They gave me extra access, let me film everything over 2 days (3 full days of work considering the remote location in another state etc), and I put my first video up on YouTube showing off a prototype vehicle that was going for a world record.<p>The video went pretty viral... 8 digit views, got me 5 digit subscriber count, was posted on dozens and dozens of news sites and blogs and shared widely. I was excited, off to a great start with this whole YouTube thing.<p>No music, no audio other than the engine sounds, absolutely zero reason anyone could possibly do a copyright strike... right?<p>Nope, some church minister in some tiny country did a copyright strike saying they own the rights to the word "spirit" in my video title (it was part of the name of the vehicle itself)... so they got all the money I earned from that video + I got a strike on my channel and a scary warning from YouTube saying my entire Google account could get banned including my Gmail. I disputed it with a very clear explanation of the situation, and they quickly reply saying they sided with the complainant and they'll be ignoring all future disputes.<p>Fuck YouTube/Google.<p>Edit: I went back to find the emails from Google and realised the story is even crazier than I remember. YouTube never reviewed the dispute, they let the person making the claim review their own dispute!!<p>> Hi [Name],<p>> After reviewing your dispute, [Dodgy Fuck's Name] has decided that their copyright claim is still valid.<p>> Copyrighted content: Spirit<p>> Claimed by: [Dodgy Fuck's Name]