As Walled Culture the book (free digital versions) details, for decades the copyright industry has lobbied consistently (and successfully) for more and harsher laws targeting alleged infringement. Against that background, it is hardly uprising that these laws are used on a massive scale every day. But some companies take this to extremes. Here, for example, …
I used to make stuff and put it on YouTube, I didn’t monetize it because it was mostly for fun and I didn’t want to annoy people with ads. Anyway, one of my videos had some (very provably) public domain music in it which some bot flagged for copyright infrigement.
YouTube not only immediately sided with the bot, they also turned on monetization on my video without my consent so they could send my non-existent ad revenue to whoever flagged it.
I’ve contested these things before, but it takes ages and there’s nothing to stop another bot from just doing the same thing again immediately anyway, so that was the last straw and I just took everything down and closed my channel.
Fuck YouTube.