PewDiePie explains the real problem with YouTube’s copyright system

YouTube king Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg spoke out on YouTube’s divisive copyright “Content ID” system, after fellow creator “Mumbo Jumbo” received claims on all of his videos for music he owned.

Upon browsing the “a**holedesign” subreddit on January 9, Kjellberg came across a May 2019 Tweet from Mumbo Jumbo, who claimed that a company was striking all of his YouTube videos — despite him owning the rights to all the music used in his content.

“A company is systematically copyright claiming every video I have ever made, despite me owning the rights to all music used in them,” he wrote. “Please tell me I don’t have to manually dispute all 1800 claims. Please Retweet. YouTube, your system is broken.”

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As a popular Minecraft YouTuber with over 4.9 million subscribers, this mass copyright striking was certainly an alarming blow to Jumbo’s business — but PewDiePie felt the issue wasn’t necessarily the fault of YouTube, itself.

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While the striking happened due to a minor sample as part of his outro music, Pewds placed the blame on the music industry, noting that many copyright strikes come from massive companies in the business who choose to claim an entire video over a small selection of music.

(Topic begins at 2:00 for mobile readers)

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“It’s so moronic that it blows my mind,” the Swede said of the matter. “The problem here isn’t YouTube. The problem is the music industry. ‘What? You used two seconds of our clip? That’s mine! Mine!’ The whole YouTube video, which has nothing to do with it. It blows my f**king mind.”

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Mumbo Jumbo isn’t the only YouTuber to have been hit due to such a small sample, by far.

In fact, YouTube philanthropist Mr Beast was struck in February 2019, after he and his squad merely sang the chorus of Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer.”

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However, it’s not just the music industry sending out mass copyright claims — anime reaction YouTuber Suzy Lu was hit with a mass “bot” from TV network Tokyo TV in late December, which similarly affected a huge swath of her Naruto-related content.

In spite of the widespread complaints against YouTube’s Content ID system, it doesn’t look like the problems are going away anytime soon, as more and more YouTubers speak out on the huge companies’ ability to take down their videos all at once.