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YouTube says that C3 video block was administrative not editorial

By | Published on Thursday 2 November 2017

YouTube

YouTube has denied it removed a video posted by the US-based Content Creators Coalition on editorial grounds, arguing that the video was stopped from running as an advert on its platform, for a time, for administrative reasons.

As previously reported, the Content Creators Coalition – aka C3 – last week published two videos criticising YouTube. One focused on the fact royalties paid by YouTube to the music community are considerably lower than those paid by services like Spotify and Apple Music, while the other dealt with frustrations around the platform’s takedown system.

The videos are part of C3’s ongoing efforts to lobby for reform of the copyright safe harbour in American law, which the music industry argues is being exploited by user-upload platforms like YouTube to force music rights owners into licensing deals that generate much less income for record labels, music publishers, artists and songwriters.

C3 has posted its campaigning videos to various platforms, including YouTube, where it sought to push its content out further by buying advertising from the Google site. Which means it’s using YouTube to diss YouTube. Which is fun.

However, 48 hours into the campaign, the YouTube platform blocked C3 from pushing out its content. The campaigning group hit back, stating: “After two days of widespread press coverage of our artist-driven campaign to pressure Google into treating artists more fairly you suspended and are now censoring our account”.

YouTube did subsequently unblock the video on C3’s account, and yesterday it insisted that the temporary blockage had nothing to do with the content of the video. A spokesperson for the Google site told CMU: “We never removed this video or any video on this channel from YouTube. The video in question was briefly prevented from running as an advertisement on our systems, due to a payment issue. That issue has been resolved and the video is again running as an advertisement”.

Sources with knowledge of C3’s campaign say that the organisation is unaware of any payment issues on its YouTube account, as nothing changed at its end before, during or after the temporary block. Either way, I think its fair to say tensions remain strained between the Google video site and much of the music community.



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