Attackers use YouTube’s copyright strike to extort money from authors

The nightmare of any video-blogger in reality

There was only the lazy who didn’t complain about the copyrighted content protection system that runs on Youtube. With its help, the authors of various videos are forced to delete their own works, because someone complained of theft. YouTube doesn’t really know who stole anyone, so the principle of “who is first is right” is used.

Recently, a description of the new method of work of attackers who extort money from the authors of commercials has appeared on the network. If you do not pay, the extortionist sends complaints about the content in order to block the videos or the entire channel.

Well, since YouTube has millions of bloggers who download videos hoping to make money, this “business” can bring considerable money to persistent “racketeers”. The threat is far from vague, the fact is that if the channel receives three strikes - warnings from YouTube, then such a channel will be blocked. In most cases we are talking about the eternal blocking without the possibility of recovery.

Naturally, this situation does not suit those who have been running their channel for many years, releasing high-quality content and receiving considerable funds for it.

The first problem raisedYouTube user ObbyRaidz, who showed that strikes have become a reliable tool for extorting money from the authors. The blogger ObbyRaidz maintains a channel, the subject of which is Minecraft. January 1, he received his first "gift" - a strike from an incomprehensible account, which he first saw. At the end of the month another strike came.



According to the author of the channel, he began to extort money for the fact that the third strike was not sent soon. “I received two strikes and was very nervous. If I do not pay this guy, he will send a third strike to block my channel. ”

Scammer contacted the blogger via Twitter. He (or she) stated that if the victim did not pay (PayPal or Bitcoin), a third strike would soon arrive, which most likely would lead to channel blocking.

Intruder accountclosed , and in the profile description it is said that the author is against racism, and his grandfather "walked alongside Martin Luther King." Perhaps this is done so that Twitter moderators do not block an account, seeing a fighter against racism.

These are relatively small amounts - $ 150 in the case of PayPal and $ 75 for Bitcoin. The attackers promise not only not to continue their activities, but also to cancel the previous strikes so that the channel does not have any problems. The report said that there was very little time to think about the proposal, so it’s worth evaluating the pros and cons quickly.



The blogger told about this story after unsuccessfully trying to get help from the YouTube team. According to him, the service did nothing at all to help, to contact anyone failed.

The blogger says that he worked on his channel very hard, and after he achieved a lot, the threat of losing all the achievements appeared in front of him. He is simply scared and does not want to lose control of the situation. The blogger considers YouTube, the authors' protection system, not too good, and asks the support service to improve it so that the situation described above cannot be repeated.

The channel itself is small - it has only about 5.2K subscribers. The blogger is trying to draw attention to the problem in order for YouTube’s support to take some measures, in case of publicity, the likelihood of this is increasing.

As for strikes, they can arrive for many reasons. Non-observance of copyright applies to videos, musical compositions and recordings in commercials, pictures, photographs and works of art, lectures, articles or any other written works. If the system detects a copyright violation, the strike may appear without any warning (it is usually sent, but anything happens). Most often this happens when a video, music, article or graphic image is listed in ContentID. Then the content is deleted, followed by subscribers, likes and comments.

Three strikes are very bad, but even one affects the channel ranking. Traffic decreases, and with it decreases earnings. On the Russian-language Internet, this also happens.



Of course, the rules of the system must be respected, but when they begin to be used for blackmail, it means that something went wrong.