One of the internet’s most well-known YouTube music channels, Lofi Girl, was recently the target of a false copyright claim. The channel’s livestreams were consequently taken down, including one that had been broadcast nonstop for two years, four months, and eighteen and a half days.
Though if you don’t know who Lofi Girl is, you have definitely seen her YouTube streams. The video features a looping animation showing a woman studying at her desk and listening to music through headphones as her cat sits serenely behind her and glances out the window.
Lofi Girl is a renowned YouTube channel with over 10.7 million subscribers. However, a false copyright claim still managed to ruin it all.
The copyright system on the YouTube video platform is well known to infuriate creators. Anyone with access to the Content ID system on YouTube can file a complaint about any piece of content. As a result, they have the power to stop a creator from making money from their videos, take their advertising revenue, and even demonetize their entire YouTube channel.
Of course, YouTubers have the right to refute these misleading accusations, and YouTube is said to take action against violators of the Content ID system. Nevertheless, these incidents continue to happen often.
The two livestreams for Lofi Girls, including the one described above that had been going since February 22, 2020, were unexpectedly stopped on Sunday. Lofi Girl explained what had transpired on Twitter.
“The lofi radios have been taken down because of false copyright strikes, hopefully, @YouTubeCreators @YouTube will sort this quickly…,” tweeted Lofi Girl, along with a screenshot of the copyright strike notice from YouTube.
According to the screenshot, the fake copyright strike was issued by Malaysian music label FMC Music Sdn Bhd.
YouTube apologized for the takedowns on Monday morning and said the copyright claims were incorrect. The copyright troll’s account had also been “terminated.”
“confirmed the takedown requests were abusive & terminated the claimant’s account ? we’ve resolved the strikes + reinstated your vids – it can sometimes take 24-48 hours for everything to be back to normal! So sorry this happened & thx for your patience as we sorted it out ????,” tweeted the TeamYouTube account in reply to Lofi Girl’s tweet.
This is not the first time Lofi Girl’s livestream has been removed due to YouTube copyright issues. YouTube shut down the whole Lofi Girl channel in February 2020, just before the latest livestream went live. YouTube stated at the time that it was a “mistake on their part.”
However, one unique element has emerged from this recent false copyright takedown. Users can see how many total views a video has garnered after a livestream ends. Otherwise, when a livestream is underway, YouTube just displays the number of concurrent live viewers.
Thus, over 668 million people have watched Lofi Girl’s livestream since it began in February 2020.
In addition, it’s astounding how common copyright trolls and false charges have grown to be on YouTube. So who is protected from these copyright violations if a well-known YouTube channel with over 10 million subscribers isn’t?