YouTube’s broken copyright system is being exposed once again. This time fake copyright claims are being filed against reaction videos to the Sonic the Hedgehog movie trailer for using the track “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio and L.V. which is featured in the trailer. Some of these reaction videos didn’t use any audio from the trailers which means they received bogus claims despite the track never being played in their reaction videos.
Reaction videos are generally protected under fair use because the commentary and response to the trailer transforms the reaction video into an original work. Even if reaction videos use music or audio from a movie trailer, they shouldn’t be subject to copyright claims.
However, since many YouTube creators are familiar with YouTube’s overzealous copyright system, some chose to mute the trailer music and audio in their reaction videos as an extra precaution to avoid fake copyright claims.
This extra precaution wasn’t enough to stop false copyright claims being filed against various creators on their Sonic the Hedgehog trailer reaction videos.
Here’s a bogus copyright claim that Joe Vargas, host of the Angry Joe Show, received:
His video featured no audio or music from the trailer but was still falsely claimed.
Here’s another fake claim that was sent to the social commentator The Quartering:
And here’s a third false claim that was filed against YouTuber YongYea:
YongYea was eventually able to upload an edited version of his Sonic the Hedgehog trailer reaction video to YouTube and avoid copyright claims when he muted the trailer audio.
One thing to note is that The Quartering also uploaded his reaction video to the video hosting site BitChute and this version of the video didn’t receive any copyright claims.
This also happened when independent journalist Tim Pool received a fake copyright claim against one of his videos which led to the video temporarily being taken down on YouTube. He also uploads his videos to BitChute and when the YouTube version of his video was temporarily taken offline, the BitChute version of his video stayed online.
This indicates that BitChute is more resilient to fake copyright claims than YouTube and won’t take action against creators when bogus claims are filed.
