This week, my YouTube channel was victim to some malicious copy-strikes from a home inspector in Arizona. Short story, I exposed his arrogance in a blog post on electricdramatic.com last year, that post was used in a hearing against him earlier this month, and he chose to lash out.
The videos he copyright-struck were on a secondary channel from my main channel, and they were uploaded as unlisted, used only to support proper embedding into the blog post, and to avoid losing parts of the record. This is clearly a “fair use” situation.
Clearly pissed about my post being used against him in court (unbeknownst to me, might I add), he copy-struck ALL videos uploaded, including videos he did not own. This is against the policy for how the DMCA takedowns feature is allowed to be used, but YouTube has very little recourse for a smaller creator like me to fight malicious actors who know how to play the system.
The secondary channel was taken down, obviously, but what I didn’t realize was that any YouTube channels on the same Google account are also often disabled when this happens. And so, the solarboi’s YouTube presence disappeared. All videos, all subscribers.
Yes, YouTube has some tools for submitting for a repeal of this decision, but it’s extremely limited, and I’ve exhausted all the ones I can find already.
I’ll be doing my best to rebuild what I’ve lost, but I need all of YOUR help with this, too. I don’t intend to be cowed by well-known but insecure entities, but that only works when others feel the same way.
If you enjoy what I do, and support my work to inform the solar industry’s workers and customers, please consider sharing this post and subscribing to my new YouTube channel! To all those who have already shared the new channel and subscribed, thank you all so much for your support, it’s very appreciated. ❤️
By the way, please do not attempt to find the person responsible to harass or bully them in any way. He’s not worth it, I’m fully past the possibility of getting my channel back, and I don’t want to get into it with him any further. He’s a silly boi, and he’s playing games and finding out the hard way all on his own. I’d just like to wash my hands of this entire situation and move on.
This coming week, I hope to release a video where I’m playing with arc fault testing, which promises to be fun, and start a conversation around needing better tools for maintenance. Hope to see you there. 😄