Class Action Lawsuit Against YouTube

Recently I was contacted via twitter by GeoGodley who wanted to know if I would be interested in joining him in his class action lawsuit against YouTube.  I had to decline for several reasons.  First, YouTube's decision to terminate my account was justified.  I violated YouTube's trademark policy and the only course of action for them was to terminate my account.  You can read the full report about YouTube's decision HERE.  Likewise the other channels such as TheHealthyChannel were taken down for copyright violations. 

Why TheHealthyChannel was terminated

As some of you may know I had a channel called TheHealthyChannel where I vlogged about my diet attempts, exercise and weight loss.  Recently I was vlogging about doing a water fast.

Yesterday I discovered that account was terminated by YouTube.  For a time I believed it was due to my videos on water fasting as it could have been perceived as doing something that can be dangerous.

I filled out YouTube's account termination inquiry forum and learned that the channel was targeted for copyright violations.  See below.

Now this has some good news and some bad news.  The good news is that now that I know the issue is copyright, all I have to do to regain my account is fill out the appropriate counter-notice.  Per the 1998 DMCA law, YouTube must restore my account within 10-14 business days of receipt of a counter-notice so long as the claimant does not file a motion in Federal District Court.

The bad news is this email neglected to tell me the URLs that I require to correctly fill out the counter-notice form.  Until I get the URLs I am unable to correctly fill in the legally required information for a counter-notice.

I will keep you updated on my status, but for now the only way to contact me is via twitter.  Per YouTube's rules I am prohibited from accessing my other accounts that I still have and I am prohibited from creating new ones.

UPDATE:  I got this email regarding SockPuppetBalloon, one of my test accounts.  I used this account to test out different features from time to time.  As with TheHealthyChannel the issue is copyright, but no URLs for me to fill out the counter-notice.

HappyCabbie Account Terminated

When I logged on to my computer, I was greeted with a prompt informing me that there was suspicious activity on my account and that I needed phone verification to access my account.  So I entered in my telephone number and received the automated prompt to enter in the 5 digit code.

I was then taken to this page.

I filled out the form on the contact us page and waited for a response.  I checked my email to see if any messages came in from YouTube regarding a strike on my account or a DMCA.  There was nothing.  There was however this message.

Later I got this message from YouTube's Trademark team.

So that leaves me with one of two guesses.  The first is someone hacked into my account, even though I have Two Step verification enabled on my account.  The second is that my name HappyCabbie is infringing on someone else's trademark.

Either way, I will respect YouTube's decision to terminate my account.  If I broke the rules by using the HappyCabbie name then I deserve to suffer the consequences.

Furthermore, in compliance with YouTube's rules, I will not create any new account nor will I access any of my old ones.  To do so would be a violation of the Terms of Service.

For those who claim that this is a free speech issue I disagree.  Free speech is a Constitutional protection against our government.  YouTube/Google is a corporation and they have the right to disable accounts if they feel they violated the Terms of Service.  As stated in the above email, I violated their trademark rules.  As such I will honor my suspension.

Thankfully, I am only banned from YouTube.  My Blogger account is not terminated and it is a completely different service offered by Google.  So here along with Twitter I can still post.