Hello forum,
My new YouTube channel is:
http://www.youtube.com/user/SvenFielitz, feel free to subscribe! If you're interested in why I've made that new account, just keep reading. If not, you don't need to, I don't want to annoy you with this.
I felt like making this post, because I didn't want to make my video 10minutes long, and embarrass myself with my decent English. Besides, I've already gotten some messages asking about more details of this, or they did not quite understand it. I will start from the very beginning.
In 2007, two of my newest videos have been blocked, because of a claim by SoccerShowDown Bv
http://i487.photobucket.com/albums/rr239/RoySv/SSDcopyrightclaim.jpg. They were two videos of my "Sven Freestyle Football Part X" series (which I continued later until Part 10). Back then, I was 16 years old, and I didn't really know what to do. I remember I e-mailed YouTube, because I was quite angry about this incident, and told them that SoccerShowDown does not own ANY content in my videos. I got responses like "You need to own all of the content in your videos, including the audio" blabla. As far as I know, SSD neither is a music label nor anything else related to music. They also told me if I really owned all of the content, I should file a counter notification, which could end up in court though. Since I did not have the copyrights of the audio (I used some Linkin Park song in one of the two videos, but it was no song related in any way to SSD), I was not courageous enough to fill out this counter notification. I dropped this case, and a few months later deleted the 2 videos, because I had no use of them. But this was a big mistake which I would regret later.
Ok let's get to 2010. Between 2007 and now, nothing really happened. Then, in October 2010, some people suggested me to become a YouTube partner. I wasn't quite informed, and read about the conditions to become a partner. I read that normally, you don't need to have surpassed a certain amount of subscribers, but usually you should have more than 1000 subs, and around 50k video views. I had around 2000 subs, and more than 600k video views (mainly because of Don't Drop It and Everything is possible). So I applied for this, and about a week later, I got a response telling me that it was currently impossible for me to become a partner, because my account was not in good standing (check picture above). The way they wrote the mail I could hear that there was only this sanction that was in the way of me becoming a partner. I become really furious at SSD.
Let's make some things clear. I do not have anything against the freestyle members of SSD (Christiaan, NickZ, TomV, etc.), I think they're really great fsers and I also respect them a lot. My anger was (and still is) only directed towards SSD itself.
What I did is I contacted SSD. At first, they did not respond me at all. I waited like 2 weeks, and I was wondering why I did not get any answer. I asked NickZ if he could tell SSD to answer to my e-mails (Thanks Nick for your help!). A few days later they did respond me. They told me that this was not possible, and came with cheap excuses like:
"We are an official marketing & management company that work with artists and have specific agreements with the artists which includes the rights of the players. Even if you have recorded our artists you still need to have approval from us to even be able to put this on your channel. You cannot just use anything you want."
Seriously? Why would I put a video from SSD on my channel? What would I benefit from it? Besides, the videos are called "
Sven Freestyle Football". Now the problem was that this claim from SSD dated from 2007, and as they said, they did not know about it anymore, which I can understand. But that problem was not so difficult to solve. I uploaded both of my videos (which I still had on my PC) on sendspace, and sended them via e-mail to SSD. Now they would be able to see that my videos were not only called after my name, but that they actually only had footage from me in it (excluding the audio of course).
They still said that they could not be sure that these videos were the same that I posted 3 years ago, but come on. In both videos, I look 3 years younger than now, the title even was IN the video so there was no doubt that it was not the same video as 2007. However, after a few more e-mails, SSD knew that they had done a mistake, and said that it must have been Touzani who had claimed both my videos. The questions I am asking myself now: Who does Touzani think he is to take the rights and videos of a young freestyler be blocked, who was still in his freestyle beginnings? Anyway, SSD agreed to cooperate.
I went to YouTube and e-mailed them, I wrote that both my videos were misidentified somehow, and showed them the mail I got from SSD, who agreed that they did not own any content in the videos I showed them. I did not get any answer from YouTube.
I saw as only solution to file a counter notification. It was a long process, filling out everything about me, the reasons why I send this counter notification etc. I also had to agree that I might end up in court, if the original claimant does not retract their original claim. Then, a few days later, I got a mail from YouTube, telling me it was impossible to accept the counter notification and restore my videos, since I had already deleted the two videos. I did not insist of getting the videos
restored, I only wanted the sanction to be removed from my account. YouTube also wrote:
"If we receive a retraction of the claim from the original claimant, we will be able to resolve the strikes immediately.
A formal retraction must be sent from an alias affiliated with the initial takedown and contain a statement of retraction, the URL(s) in question and a signature. This may be sent to copyright@youtube.com."
I e-mail SSD again, telling them that they only had to write that e-mail including a signature. I did not get a response anymore, even though I e-mailed them like 3-4 times. I finally gave up since I was not even sure that if they retracted their claim, that my sanction would be removed from my account. I read somewhere that it was impossible to get rid of sanctions against your account, they will be there forever.
Besides, I had a second sanction on my account, from WMG, who blocked my most popular video "Don't Drop It". I did not understand why that ended up in a claim against my account, since normally you ony get the audio blocked, however in my case the whole video got blocked,
even though I had the rights of the second song used in the video. We only did not have the rights of the first song, which was used for about 1min. Maybe it was because the video had gotten that many views, I don't know. Anyway I also tried to get in contact with WMG, however this also failed. My plan was to get the rights now, so that my video could be online again without infringing any copyrights. Why they should do it? I told them that the video had more than 300k views, and that a lot of people were asking the name of the song, because they liked it so much. WMG could only benefit from it. However, it was impossible to get an answer from them. That's when I realized I could not get rid of both sanctions.
Moreover, even if I didn't want to become a YouTube partner, and continued on RoySv, I can't be 100% there won't be any more sanction against my account. 3 sanctions against any account will end in the account being deleted completely. That's one more reason why I decided to make a new one.
This whole process was going from November until the end of December, since it always took either SSD or YT ages to respond. That's the reason why I did not post any videos anymore, since I was uncertain about the outcome of this whole process.
However, if you like my videos and want to help me get back to 2000 subs, go and subscribe to
http://www.youtube.com/user/SvenFielitz From now on, I will try to post only videos with audio where I do not infringe anyone's rights.
Your help and support is much appreciated, I'm overwhelmed to see how many people already subscribed to my new channel.
Thanks, thanks so much, I love you guys!
