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YouTube Has a Copyright Strike Problem — and It’ll Sue to Fix It
The company has decided to sue someone who had allegedly weaponized its copyright system for extortion
YouTube’s worst-kept open secret for years has been the ease with which copyright strikes on the platform can be weaponized to quell dissent or — in extreme cases — to extort people. Now the site has decided to be open about it, in the most public way possible: a lawsuit.
The site has lodged a suit in the Nebraskan district court against someone it claims used YouTube’s copyright strike system to allegedly extort money from creators. In the documents, first found by AdWeek’s Shoshana Wodinsky, YouTube claims the defendant, Christopher Brady, “threatened to send additional fraudulent notices to YouTube and to cause the wrongful termination of users’ YouTube accounts unless the users pay him off.”
According to YouTube, the video sharing website receives “thousands of DMCA takedown requests each week” online, plus more “by email, postal mail, and facsimile.” Dealing with the backlog costs YouTube millions of dollars.
