"
Hello! This was a false positive in our systems at
@ChainPatrol
. We are retracting the takedown request, and will conduct a full post-mortem to ensure this does not happen again.
We have been combatting a huge volume of fake YouTube videos that are attempting to steal user funds. Unfortunately, in our mission to protect users from scams, false positives (very) occasionally slip through.
We are actively working to reduce how often this happens, because it's never our intent to flag legitimate videos. We're very sorry about this! Will keep you posted on the takedown retraction.
"
This seems like a huge abuse of the copyright system to me. It sounds to me like ChainPatrol doesn't actually have any IP to protect, but they are instead deputizing YouTube's copyright system to fight what they deem to be crypto scams. Absolutely wild if true.
> We have been combatting a huge volume of fake YouTube videos that are attempting to steal user funds. Unfortunately, in our mission to protect users from scams, false positives (very) occasionally slip through.
So did ChainPatrol have the video taken down for copyright infringement or for "attempting to steal user funds"? Did ChainPatrol have to file an actual DMCA takedown notice to take down 3Blue1Brown's video? If so, would this not be perjury?
Haha, they see themselves as ‘good cops,’ deciding what content is acceptable and what isn’t. It’s not even about copyright—it’s about what they think is good for users and what isn’t.
And in the process of playing ‘police’ they end up taking down one of the best videos explaining how Bitcoin works.
There aren't that many channels with over 5M subscribers. 3Blue1Brown is 706th in the world. It's insane to me that YouTube still doesn't have a manual sanity check for claims against their top ~1000 channels or so. That couldn't possibly cost much, and it would fix a PR problem that hits so often you can use it as a calendar.
So the big-name channel gets a personal response. What about the many non-famous channels that ChainPatrol must have made false claims against? How many strikes or false claims does ChainPatrol get before they are permanently booted off YouTube and all their revenue streams get taken from them?
I think https://chainpatrol.io/ is fake. Look at things like the "legal terms." To make a DCMA (US Law) counterclaim, they want "a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the Province of Ontario." [0]
If you are unsatisfied with our services, please email us at [EMAIL ADDRESS] and we will address your concerns in a prompt and timely manner. [0]
This seems to be a new shakedown racket of a business. "Subscribe for our services, or be victim to our shoddy automated takedown notices". Not too dissimilar to online ID protection services, that simultaneously sell your information
Unless they're compensating the entirety of the Youtuber's lost revenue, this is worth as much as a granny tech support scammer claiming they were really planning to help out granny fix her computer.
This company is basically an extreme nobody and has like 1-3 likes on their posts. It is absurd how imbalanced the power is with regard to automation and copyright strikes.
If you and your company are responsible for attempting to take legitimate things down either purposely or though incompetence, you should at least be publicly identifiable and accountable.
I think a good baseline might be that you need to deposit say $1M and then when oops, you accidentally made a bogus claim it's OK that $1M is split between the victim of your oopsy and Youtube for their trouble - you just pay $1M to get back into the game. Outfits like this could explain to their investors that while their technology does sometimes have little goofs that cost a few billion dollars per year, once they invent perfect AI they can scale infinitely and make that back easily, so if you invest $10Bn of your fiat currency today, in 18 months they can 100% guarantee nothing in particular, wow.
This works for actual creators, who are occasionally slightly inconvenienced but handsomely rewarded when that occurs, for Youtube, who get paid each time these "rare" mistakes happen, and for the companies "innovating" by making up nonsense and taking people's money. Just as well the "investment" goes to a Youtuber as to some random office park or an ad firm.
Just a friendly heads up. Anyone who wants to avoid Twitter, since it has become so toxic, can use the domain xcancel.com in place of twitter.com or x.com. like so:
It's deeply haunting to think about how badly AI is going to mess up the world over the next few years. Today, it's YouTube videos. Later, it will be a rejection of the insurance claim for a kid's life-saving surgery.
If you're in a position of influence in an organization that's losing its marbles over AI, please, at the very least encourage others to pump the brakes and think.
If there was ever a time to speak up when you know implementing something will lead to a likely disaster, it's now.
UnitedHealthcare is already using AI to deny claims, and reportedly I've heard that 90% of the AI denials that are appealed end up approved when it gets to a human.
If only this had to do with AI. This has been going on for many years, long before LLMs. These are simple scammers. Many a good article has been written about the way these scams work. With or without AI, their claims are entirely bogus, they have never needed AI to pretend to have a claim, and nothing has changed in that regard.
One of the reasons that copyright processes are so biased towards traditional rightsholders and against individual creators is that the latter group is simultaneously captive to the platform and unorganized/decentralized; YouTube needs licenses and goodwill from, say, Universal, far more than it needs 3blue1brown individually.
And the incentives for rectifying this are skewed: video platforms simply need to address individual cases with influential creators just reactively enough so that collective action isn't incentivized; that's far cheaper, and far easier to not need to coordinate with traditional rightsholders, than addressing the problem systematically.
If we believe that the vision of being an independent content creator is important to humanity - and I think it's becoming vital as "a way to distinguish myself" that folks are able to dream about from an early age - then we need to seriously work to protect it. Not everybody will get their "big break" but we can at the very least start having conversations about protecting creators from an AI-driven DMCA bot arbitrarily destroying their career through automated channel-disabling rules.
I wish Youtube etc would blacklist requests by these companies, but am not optimistic. Curation seems like the path here, but it seems difficult. (See also the recent Kagi thread here, highlighting how being able to curate which sites appear on your search results is a big deal)
I agree, but the economics currently don't favor YouTube caring enough to solve this sort of problem
In fact, everything aligns to incentivize them not to care: making the barrier to make a successful claim higher and the larger rights-holders start to cause problems; the cost of seriously adjudicating claims is substantial and may well be unsustainable.
The consequences of bad policy are also quite low for them: most channels that will get hit unjustly have too small an audience to be heard; fixing problems for the larger creators is one-off enough that it's simply cost efficient to squash those when they happen; any bad publicity doesn't seem to be sufficient enough to cause a siginficant drop in either viewers or content creators willing to stick with the platform.... in fact I expect most content creators so unjustly hit this way would simply swallow the indignity and loss and continue p YouTube.
I don't know the laws or agreements at play here, but it seems like some sort of class action suit, if feasible, would be the only way to scale these complaints into something that YouTube management might take seriously.
The problem is not YouTube, but the law. The DMCA requires that online service providers (YouTube, Reddit, etc.) comply immediately with any takedown request and without question, so long as it meets sufficient conditions.
The system is broken; if youtube (etc) do not respond to DMCA takedown requests on time, their service may be taken down - and back when YT was new and people were uploading movies and whatnot left right and center, they were very close to that. The consequences for YT for not taking something down vs invalid takedowns are much worse and more direct.
You have to think of YouTube and other platforms as a mechanism for distribution, not a source of truth.
If you're a creator it's essential to have your own place on the web were you can host and publish anything without fear that it will be taken down for any reason — even accidentally.
As it becomes cheap to automate both creating takedown requests and processing requests, the volume of spam requests is going to skyrocket and it seems likely there will be more false positives.
can we start permanently banning companies that submit false-positive takedown requests?
3 strikes for them should result in not being able to submit any strikes anymore and all their content being removed
if the content creator can get their channel removed, same thing must apply to the opposite side as well
You can just create a new company. There is an asymmetry there which your tit for tat approach does not take into consideration. And no, creating a new channel requires far more work.
When I first saw this I was reminded of the Mend it Mark copyright takedown event where he fixed and documented a phono preamp and the maker of that preamp filed a copyright take down against the video.
> The request seems to have been issued by a company chainpatrol, on behalf of Arbitrum, whose website says they "makes use of advanced LLM scanning" for "Brand Protection for Leading Web3 Companies"
Tech built on copyright abuse used for copyright trolling? Too early for peak irony of 2025!
A policy I think would be interesting: copyright violation stops being about who is able to post what, and starts being about who is profiting from what. Content takedowns are impossible, but affected artists are directly and nontransferrably allowed to legally assert rights to the profits directly derived from their content and can legally reclaim lost funds. Preferably there would be a similar mechanism for false claims. No one loses money they aren’t entitled to, the rightsholder doesn’t need to play whack-a-mole to enforce an artificial monopoly, and no disruption for viewers in any case.
We need something that frees us from this prison. I still remember when it was normal for youtube videos to play mainstream music in the background. Now draconian enforcement has created this artificial power that people beyond music labels can abuse, and it affects our art adversely. Feels clear to me we need something new that operates in 2024, not from the era where individual movie pirates faced 6-7 figure fines and jail time.
The year is 2030. After the AI bot wars, FaceBook and Google have been crippled. They let AI automation control their content and it was deleted after OpenAI GPT10 discovered vulnerabilities in automated copyright strikes.
Taco Bell won the franchise war and is the only restaurant remaining.
It truly protected web3 from the "normies" that could have learned about crypto from this video. AI moderation is such a joke, every reupload (or a completely different video on the same subject) can take a video down because they look "similar" enough for the AI and no person would bother checking it. I expected a different treatment of their bigger creators, but that's what it is.
CinemaStix has also been fighting these lately. In their case, YouTube seems to have zero regard for Fair Use, and short-sighted film rights holders are striking every video containing any amount of their film, even though the publicity CinemaStix gives them likely increases sales.
I apologize in advance for not offering something constructive to say. I just wish anyone here who is younger could see the difference between what the promise of the web was in ‘95 and what it has become. Such a burning pile of trash, it’s heartbreaking.
I hope YouTube can make this a better experience extremely soon.
With YouTube video being used as a proxy for credible content on search results..
3 relatively anonymous complaints, in bad faithc can end so much learning and work… without evidence or reply kind of is deterring from having great content on YouTube.
The deterrent to creating good content on YouTube lets the bad content win, except it might not keep the eyeballs for advertising as well or broadly.
I’m not sure if the complainant must be required to contact the channel prior to accepting a dmca complaint? EBay has a built in messaging system, maybe YouTube can too.
Further if there’s ways creators can be protecting their creations before posting they should be built into the workflow, whether it’s registering custom music, etc.
Otherwise the price of success is targetable in an automated fashion to take down a channel if they don’t comply or pay out.
A channel inbox might force behaviour into first creator to creator before escalating straight to too easily triggering things.
Maybe new complainants found to have too many complaints in short order or some other pattern could possibly have to pass much higher kyc requirements to help each other communicate more effectively.
I wonder if it makes sense for someone to do a huge IP troll bot network to make copyright claims on all the big YouTubers in such an egregious and in-your-face wrong way that youtube would be forced to redesign or remove the system. It'd suck for a bit but I think this slow burn affecting people that can't defend themselves (3blue1brown can) is worse.
[+] [-] RobertDeNiro|1 year ago|reply
" Hello! This was a false positive in our systems at @ChainPatrol . We are retracting the takedown request, and will conduct a full post-mortem to ensure this does not happen again.
We have been combatting a huge volume of fake YouTube videos that are attempting to steal user funds. Unfortunately, in our mission to protect users from scams, false positives (very) occasionally slip through.
We are actively working to reduce how often this happens, because it's never our intent to flag legitimate videos. We're very sorry about this! Will keep you posted on the takedown retraction. "
[+] [-] hamandcheese|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] blendergeek|1 year ago|reply
So did ChainPatrol have the video taken down for copyright infringement or for "attempting to steal user funds"? Did ChainPatrol have to file an actual DMCA takedown notice to take down 3Blue1Brown's video? If so, would this not be perjury?
[+] [-] dowakin|1 year ago|reply
And in the process of playing ‘police’ they end up taking down one of the best videos explaining how Bitcoin works.
[+] [-] Miraste|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] buildsjets|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] adolph|1 year ago|reply
If you are unsatisfied with our services, please email us at [EMAIL ADDRESS] and we will address your concerns in a prompt and timely manner. [0]
0. https://chainpatrol.io/legal/terms
See also "Fake AI law firms are sending fake DMCA threats to generate fake SEO gains"
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/fake-ai-law-firms-ar...
[+] [-] JoshTko|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bhk|1 year ago|reply
But according to many replies to that tweet, they were actually working on behalf of actual copyright infringers.
Not sure what to believe.
[+] [-] jimbob45|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Shorel|1 year ago|reply
This will continue happening to smaller channels and creators, and they will continue to have their content stolen.
[+] [-] maeil|1 year ago|reply
Pure evil.
[+] [-] Mistletoe|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] olliej|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] 8note|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] websap|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] indoordin0saur|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ikiris|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mmmBacon|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] johnneville|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] 1oooqooq|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] paulbecker1919|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tialaramex|1 year ago|reply
This works for actual creators, who are occasionally slightly inconvenienced but handsomely rewarded when that occurs, for Youtube, who get paid each time these "rare" mistakes happen, and for the companies "innovating" by making up nonsense and taking people's money. Just as well the "investment" goes to a Youtuber as to some random office park or an ad firm.
[+] [-] daveguy|1 year ago|reply
https://xcancel.com/3blue1brown/status/1876291319955398799
This links to independent Nitter to provide a full thread.
[+] [-] rglover|1 year ago|reply
If you're in a position of influence in an organization that's losing its marbles over AI, please, at the very least encourage others to pump the brakes and think.
If there was ever a time to speak up when you know implementing something will lead to a likely disaster, it's now.
[+] [-] xiaq|1 year ago|reply
According to this article, it's been happening for a while now: https://www.statnews.com/2023/03/13/medicare-advantage-plans...
[+] [-] connicpu|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] maeil|1 year ago|reply
Sugggest search query: Youtube copyright fake claim revenue scam.
[+] [-] btown|1 year ago|reply
And the incentives for rectifying this are skewed: video platforms simply need to address individual cases with influential creators just reactively enough so that collective action isn't incentivized; that's far cheaper, and far easier to not need to coordinate with traditional rightsholders, than addressing the problem systematically.
If we believe that the vision of being an independent content creator is important to humanity - and I think it's becoming vital as "a way to distinguish myself" that folks are able to dream about from an early age - then we need to seriously work to protect it. Not everybody will get their "big break" but we can at the very least start having conversations about protecting creators from an AI-driven DMCA bot arbitrarily destroying their career through automated channel-disabling rules.
[+] [-] the__alchemist|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] sbuttgereit|1 year ago|reply
In fact, everything aligns to incentivize them not to care: making the barrier to make a successful claim higher and the larger rights-holders start to cause problems; the cost of seriously adjudicating claims is substantial and may well be unsustainable.
The consequences of bad policy are also quite low for them: most channels that will get hit unjustly have too small an audience to be heard; fixing problems for the larger creators is one-off enough that it's simply cost efficient to squash those when they happen; any bad publicity doesn't seem to be sufficient enough to cause a siginficant drop in either viewers or content creators willing to stick with the platform.... in fact I expect most content creators so unjustly hit this way would simply swallow the indignity and loss and continue p YouTube.
I don't know the laws or agreements at play here, but it seems like some sort of class action suit, if feasible, would be the only way to scale these complaints into something that YouTube management might take seriously.
[+] [-] claytonwramsey|1 year ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_...
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] creole_wither|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] the__alchemist|1 year ago|reply
There's a `report abuse` button on the right of that page. I used it. (Category: Bullying and Harassment)
[+] [-] kepano|1 year ago|reply
If you're a creator it's essential to have your own place on the web were you can host and publish anything without fear that it will be taken down for any reason — even accidentally.
As it becomes cheap to automate both creating takedown requests and processing requests, the volume of spam requests is going to skyrocket and it seems likely there will be more false positives.
[+] [-] lousken|1 year ago|reply
if the content creator can get their channel removed, same thing must apply to the opposite side as well
[+] [-] hkon|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] cduzz|1 year ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPIrCaeVtvI
[+] [-] throwaway290|1 year ago|reply
Tech built on copyright abuse used for copyright trolling? Too early for peak irony of 2025!
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|1 year ago|reply
Continued libel that inhibits the democratic exercise of free speech seems like something the government should act on?
[+] [-] malwrar|1 year ago|reply
We need something that frees us from this prison. I still remember when it was normal for youtube videos to play mainstream music in the background. Now draconian enforcement has created this artificial power that people beyond music labels can abuse, and it affects our art adversely. Feels clear to me we need something new that operates in 2024, not from the era where individual movie pirates faced 6-7 figure fines and jail time.
[+] [-] some_random|1 year ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIssymQvrbU
[+] [-] wil421|1 year ago|reply
Taco Bell won the franchise war and is the only restaurant remaining.
[+] [-] chad1n|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] queuebert|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] projectileboy|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] gweinberg|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] j45|1 year ago|reply
With YouTube video being used as a proxy for credible content on search results..
3 relatively anonymous complaints, in bad faithc can end so much learning and work… without evidence or reply kind of is deterring from having great content on YouTube.
The deterrent to creating good content on YouTube lets the bad content win, except it might not keep the eyeballs for advertising as well or broadly.
I’m not sure if the complainant must be required to contact the channel prior to accepting a dmca complaint? EBay has a built in messaging system, maybe YouTube can too.
Further if there’s ways creators can be protecting their creations before posting they should be built into the workflow, whether it’s registering custom music, etc.
Otherwise the price of success is targetable in an automated fashion to take down a channel if they don’t comply or pay out.
A channel inbox might force behaviour into first creator to creator before escalating straight to too easily triggering things.
Maybe new complainants found to have too many complaints in short order or some other pattern could possibly have to pass much higher kyc requirements to help each other communicate more effectively.
[+] [-] vasco|1 year ago|reply