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The YouTube Lawsuit From Indie Labels Over Weak Anti-Piracy Tools Continues

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YouTube is in some hot water after a lawsuit was filed by Pirate Monitor. Composer Maria Schneider claims the platform plays favorites when it comes to permitting powerful copyright owners to block or monetize unauthorized uses of their content, but the same does not apply to “ordinary owners.” YouTube claimed the lawsuit was inaccurate and inadequate evidence was provided, in the hopes the case would be thrown out. Sadly, Judge James Donato did not oblige.

Donato describes YouTube’s arguments as “unavailing” and “not well taken.” Thus, the case goes on. On a larger scale, this affects far more than just Pirate Monitor and Schneider. The composer says the application forces songwriters and rights holders of similar stature to endure an arduous process in order to monitor infringement. As a result, some offenders slip through the cracks.

YouTube believes they have done nothing wrong, citing over $100 million spent on developing “industry-leading tools” to hinder piracy and even countersued Pirate Monitor last year for deceptive behavior used to gain access to Content ID. While that is a whole other case in itself, with a rejected motion to dismiss in the initial case, this process will go on with major ramifications for all YouTube creators, composers, etc.

There is currently no comment from YouTube’s parent company Alphabet.

Eminem, Drake, Kanye West, Taylor Swift, And More Had Their YouTube Accounts Hacked

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We’re about two weeks removed from Joyner Lucas’ Twitter rant where he dissed Lollapalooza and Machine Gun Kelly and later claimed that Russian hackers were to blame for the posts. Most people took Lucas’ claim as nothing more than a joke (which he later admitted through an apology). With that being said, there was actually a recent hacking in the music community and this one was no joke. According to HipHopDX, YouTube channels that belong to big-name acts like Eminem, Drake, Kanye West, Taylor Swift, and more were hacked recently. On Tuesday, fans noticed that odd videos were being posted on the accounts and they took to social media to share their findings.

The videos have been removed from the artists’ accounts, but the unauthorized uploads had titles like “Free Paco Sanz (ft. Will Smith, Chris Rock, Skinny flex & Los Pelaos).” Paco Sanz is a Spanish swindler who was convicted of fraud a few months ago after he scammed numerous people after making them think he had a terminal sickness. As a result, Sanz, who most likely had nothing to do with the hacking, is set to spend the rest of his life in prison. Other artists like Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Harry Styles, The Weeknd, Lil Nas X, and the late Michael Jackson also saw their YouTube accounts hacked with similar videos.

While YouTube has not spoken out about the matter yet, music video partner VEVO released a statement to address the incident. “Some videos were directly uploaded to a small number of Vevo artist channels earlier today by an unauthorized source,” they said to the New York Post. “All of those improperly uploaded videos have since been deleted by Vevo. No pre-existing content was accessible to the source. While the artist channels have been secured and the incident has been resolved, as a best practice Vevo will be conducting a review of our security systems.”

You can see some screenshots and videos of the hacked accounts above.