Political commentator David Pakman’s coverage of the public hearings on the impeachment inquiry into President Trump has been hit with yet another bogus YouTube copyright claim which led to it being blocked for some viewers.
Pakman tweeted out a screenshot showing that his coverage of the third day of the impeachment hearings was being blocked for some viewers who were instead greeted with a message that read:
“Video unavailable
This video contains content from Turner CNN LIVE CID, who has blocked it on copyright grounds.”
Despite containing no CNN footage and using public domain footage from C-SPAN 3, the video was still flagged and blocked by YouTube’s copyright system.
Pakman’s coverage of the first day of the impeachment hearings, which also used public domain C-SPAN footage, was hit with a similar claim from CNN. And Pakman’s video covering the second day of the impeachment hearings, which again used public domain C-SPAN footage, was hit with a YouTube Content ID claim from NBC News.
These claims have now been lifted but Pakman said they resulted in him losing views and monetization at key times on a video that he and his team spent all day producing. He described the situation as “indistinguishable from parody.”
Pakman said he is talking to lawyers and seeing if he can “fight this in a more systematic way.” “If we have to fight for the revenue once those videos are archived, I’m ready to do it,” Pakman added. “We’re going to try to fix the system if we can but if we can’t, we will work within it and do everything that we can to keep doing this content and to keep providing the commentary.”
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