TheFatRat
5 HN mentions · mentioned in 5 months, 2020–2023
9:32 · 7.3M views · Dec 21, 2018
Musician TheFatRat describes how his video with 47 million views was claimed by another party through YouTube's copyright system and how he got it back.
Cited as an example of false copyright claims hitting even popular creators.
5 comments from Hacker News
> the starving artist The "starving" or small time artist is an excuse that is useful for corporations when they want to manipulate public opinion. No music label cares even the slightest bit about individual artists or their fair payment, they care about megahits and big sellers. If you want to support your favourite artist that isn't already a millionaire or multi-millionare paying for spotify isn't it. To actually support "starving artists" visit their shows, buy some merch (however even this isn't the case anymore for some) or look for independent artists on bandcamp (bandcamp takes 15% of a sold album). If all you do is pay for spotify or something like that you are not supporting a "starving artist" any more than someone downloading the songs, maybe even less because sharing the music on the right filesharing forums might at least lead to some of the sales (merch/concert) above. For anyone interested have a look at [LINK] To add to that: Big labels hurt small time artists immensely. If you are an artist on youtube getting hit with a (false) copyright claim by a large label is a constant threat to you. It even happens to people with songs with millions of views [1]. We have reached a point where using certain chords or chord progression can get you stomped by music labels. Music labels are not in any way friends or allys to "starving artists", only to millionaire artists. [1]: this video
This is the worst part of this whole copyright mess, defenders of youtube constantly preach the "They have to do this", "they are forced to do this" etc. defense. However the way Youtube handles dmca and copyright claims means that if you are a smaller musician, a big corporation can just steal your music and profit off it. Good luck if you don't live in the US and don't have the money to take back what is yours. From that point you can basically just hope that you make the news so that a human at Google looks into the mess they created for once. Just leaving a reminder of how infuriation Youtube copyright handling can become even for larger channels: Back in 2018 TheFatRat got his music claimed by some randoms and Youtube just gave it to them on a silver platter this video . TheFatRat was a popular youtuber even back then, and even for him the process was hard. Now imagine how that situation would have played out for the average musician. When people talk about "protecting the musicians" they typically only mean the richest musicians, the top few % and the largest record labels. No one cares about regular musicians. The same logic also means that dmca claims can be easily weaponized by any entity as long as they choose their targets strategically (or own enough money to tank the situation in which a target fights back, but even then that can create more damage for the target).
> YouTube may have taken down the videos but they also allow him (because of the DMCA) to file a counter-claim and make a claim that the videos aren't infringing. Naive of you to think that works. When you counter-claim, YouTube basically asks the original claimant "Are you sure?", and of course they're gonna say yes. Exibit A: this video - TLDW: Someone filed a false copyright claim against TheFatRat on one of his own songs . TheFatRat counterclaimed, and the dispute was not approved. YouTube does not at any point make a judgement call.
> here artists get denied ownership of their own expression of public domain music Hell why stop there, music artists get their own original music stolen by Youtube who then proceeds to hand it to someone else, for anyone interested in a popular example: this video
You need not use somebody other's work at all to get into trouble. Composing your own song, producing it and publishing it via YT is enough. this video (2018, now resolved)