Recently, a prominent gaming YouTuber Jameskii has begun a campaign to save his channel after a licensing company gave him a copyright strike for a video in which he reviewed clips from an app titled Tik Tok. Even worse, Jameskii alleges that they are demanding payment to prevent the strikes.
James Swire, most notably known as "Jameskii," is best known for his videos titled "VRChat in a nutshell" in which he plays the game VRChat with viewers on stream then uploads the highlights to YouTube. The series gets between 1M to 11M views per episode; a remarkable feat for a YouTuber with only 1.4M subscribers.
Swire took to his channel and social media accounts on Friday, claiming that his channel had received a copyright strike and four copyright claims on one video from CollabDRM, a licensing company. For everyone following the faulty history of YouTube's copyright process, CollabDRM is most notable for taking down a video in an earlier copyright dispute between Twitch streamer Alinity and PewDiePie, where Alinity uses the licensing company to illegitimately strike the video after an insult.
Jameskii had originally received four copyright claims from the company with no given reason other than citing "video clip," prompting the broadcaster to appeal the decisions twice. Collab had denied every appeal, leaving Swire with a second copyright strike on his account that will take action in six days. For those unaware, a second copyright strike limits monetization options, live streaming functions, and even prevents the channel from uploading content for a prolonged period of time.
Due to this, Swire has begun a campaign to get Collab to revoke the strike using the hashtag #SaveJameskii. Since it began, Collab's social media accounts have been flooded with efforts to protest their business practice. The co-founder has since got in contact with the YouTuber, but is apparently holding the channel hostage with intent of payment or permission to continue unlawfully claiming the videos for revenue.
Shortly after the campaign started, the original copyright strike that was on Swire's channel unrelated to Collab was revoked, taking it back down to only 1 copyright strike. This will mean he can continue to upload videos, but Collab is still threatening to claim future videos that include their licensed content -- even if under fair use. The legality of such a threat is questionable, and we'll have to see what the outcome turns into due to such a response.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles-based CollabDRM has gone dark in the wake of the controversy. The company's official Twitter account has stopped tweeting as of January 3rd and the company's website has been taken offline. However, it is unclear if that was done willingly or a potential DDoS attach.
YouTube's copyright claim practices have been suspect for some time, with many content creators moving to other platforms and or being openly hostile to YouTube in response. To check out the situation in full, feel free to watch Jameskii's video on the subject below: