It took regional Fair Use (or equivalent) rules into account. YouTube did something that it’s never done before. It honestly appeared as if someone chose videos at random as if chucking darts at a dart board. Sort of.Ĭontained in this list was frankly the most arbitrary assortment of videos that I had ever seen. And after a lot of weirdness (that you’ll have to watch the video for), they seem to have reached one. Mark says that his contact essentially acted as a mediator between Mark and Toei to come to some kind of understanding. The main issue is that Japan’s copyright laws don’t have such robust definitions for their equivalent of Fair Use. And if they provided the information that they were supposed to supply the first time, it might actually result in Mark’s channel disappearing completely. YouTube told Mark that if the videos were restored in their current state, there would be nothing to stop Toei from starting the process all over again. But because they attempted to circumvent the content ID system, they didn’t.īut because Toei broke the rules, all of their claims against Mark’s video became “null and void”, to use Mark’s words. This wasn’t the end of the story, though. Interestingly, Mark points out that had they responded to YouTube the away they should have done, they’d have likely gotten their way. YouTube requested more information from Toei, but instead of responding, they circumvented YouTube’s content ID system to manually report every single video – which Mark says would’ve given the same end result of the videos being taken down, but without the takedown of his entire channel. Thankfully, YouTube’s copyright claim policy doesn’t allow such requests without checks – specifically, that they may fall under Fair Use or Fair Dealing (or similar copyright rules in various countries). He also says that Toei didn’t just ask YouTube to block the content in Japan but to delete them from his channel entirely – which would have likely resulted in an immediate and large number of copyright strikes against his channel leading to pretty much instant termination. After all, Mark has a pretty substantially sized channel and three years worth of work disappearing overnight is a massive loss in income. Mark says that he seemed to genuinely want to help resolve the situation quickly. Mark says that his new YouTube contact admitted fault that the case hadn’t been escalated sooner by YouTube and that it never should have been left unanswered for as long as it was. I’m not going to lie, hearing a human voice that felt both sincerely eager to help and understanding of this impossible situation felt like a weight lifted off my shoulders After several videos on his own channel, a number of other channels making videos about it, and Mark finally posting the brief voiceover on December 11th, somebody “high up at YouTube” reached out to him to have a voice chat.
Mark then reached out through the proper channels to YouTube support, receiving no response. The longer version is that Mark received over 150 copyright claims on his channel from Toei Entertainment alleging that his videos broke Japanese copyright law. While YouTube has had various regional features for a while now, like with content that’s only licensed for use in one region, for example, this is the first time it’s ever applied regional interpretations of the law to Fair Use. If YouTube believes that it still falls under Fair Use in other countries, it’s still freely available in those countries. If your content doesn’t fall under one country’s Fair Use rules, then it just gets blocked in that country. But the video above essentially goes over the entire story and the final outcome explaining what happened.īut if you just want the TL DR version first, YouTube has essentially regionalised Fair Use (or equivalent) and how it’s applied around the world. Since the ordeal has been resolved, Mark appears to have taken down all videos relating to the events except for a brief voiceover in December thanking his followers for their support.