{"id":178223,"date":"2019-02-03T21:46:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-04T02:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/02\/03\/modern-extortion-youtube-style\/"},"modified":"2019-02-03T21:46:00","modified_gmt":"2019-02-04T02:46:00","slug":"modern-extortion-youtube-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/02\/03\/modern-extortion-youtube-style\/","title":{"rendered":"Modern Extortion, YouTube Style"},"content":{"rendered":"

Extortionists are targeting YouTube channels with copyright “strikes” to extort money<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In a terrible abuse of YouTube’s copyright system, a YouTuber is reporting that scammers are using the platform’s “three strike” system for extortion. After filing two false claims against ObbyRaidz, the scammers contacted him demanding cash to avoid a third – and the termination of his channel. Every week, millions of YouTubers upload content for pleasure and indeed profit, hoping to reach a wide audience with their topics of choice. <\/p>\n

On occasion, these users run into trouble by using content to which they don\u2019t own the copyrights, such as a music track or similar. <\/p>\n

While these complaints can often be dealt with quickly and relatively amicably using YouTube\u2019s Content ID system, allegedly-infringing users can also get a so-called \u2018strike\u2019 against their account. Get three of these and a carefully maintained channel, with countless hours of work behind it, can be rendered dead by YouTube. <\/p>\n

As reported on many occasions, this system is open to all kinds of abuse but a situation highlighted by a YouTuber called \u2018ObbyRaidz\u2019 takes things to a horrible new level. <\/p>\n

The YouTuber, who concentrates on Minecraft-related videos, reports that he\u2019s received two bogus strikes on his account. While this is nothing new, it appears the strikes were deliberately malicious with longer-term plan to extort money from him.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

While people should be protected from this kind of abuse, both from a copyright perspective and the crime of extortion, ObbyRaidz says he\u2019s had zero luck in getting assistance from YouTube.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very unfortunate and YouTube has not done very much for me. I can\u2019t get in contact with them. One of the appeals got denied,\u201d he explains<\/a>.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s the nature of Google that no matter what happens, you never ever get to contact a human being, so if they take you down, you are basically completely f%$#ed.<\/p>\n

Tech support literally does not exist, and this is a core policy of Google, which means that any <\/p>\n

As is noted at Naked Capitalism<\/i>, “If your business depends on a platform, you don\u2019t have a business<\/a>.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Extortionists are targeting YouTube channels with copyright “strikes” to extort money: In a terrible abuse of YouTube’s copyright system, a YouTuber is reporting that scammers are using the platform’s “three strike” system for extortion. After filing two false claims against ObbyRaidz, the scammers contacted him demanding cash to avoid a third – and the termination …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[365,395,520,368,428,385],"class_list":["post-178223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-business","tag-computer","tag-copyright","tag-corruption","tag-ip","tag-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178223"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}