The Copyright Claim Olympics

"*What I'm going to do is see just how many copyright claims I can get right now on this video.*"
―Erik
Copyright Claim Olympics is the 92nd lesson of Internet Comment Etiquette. It's disabled on YouTube to avoid copyright strikes, but is still available on the official Internet Comment Etiquette Vimeo account. It was originally released in January 2019.

## Summary

Erik looks at a bunch of videos of YouTubers upset about unjust copyright claims against their channels. He decides not to make another video explaining copyright claims, and instead decides to do a social experiment to see just how many he can get. He starts by playing Bird Box in the corner of the screen and plays the Jurassic Park theme while watching the actual Olympics.

Erik explains the difference between stealing content, such as playing the John Wick 3 trailer, and transforming content, such as playing the John Wick 3 trailer where the sound is replaced by royalty free music and farts. But he doesn't want any fair use in this video, so he just plays the Super Bowl. Then he listens to someone explaining how their entire channel was unjustly claimed while also listening to a Taylor Swift song. Then he watches The Last Jedi. Erik decides to leave a comment hating on YouTube while listening to another song.

Erik watches an Arianna Grande music video. Then he watches 10 hours of white noise, which has five copyright claims against it. He reads the comments while listening to a song from The Lion King. The white noise video already has exemplary etiquette, but the pink noise video that claimed it has no comments, so he writes the first comment while listening to the X-Men Animated Series theme song.

Erik puts on the Friends theme and starts clapping to it, but then he sees a fake Internet Comment Etiquette channel pretending to be him. He plays an Adele song while putting copyright claims on all of the stolen videos. Erik fears that the fake channel might actually claim that he's infringing their copyright, and watches a video of someone explaining how that happened to them. He says that it's a Tale As Old As Time, remembers that that's a song, and plays the song. Alexa plays Gettin' Jiggy Wit It while Erik writes an actually constructive comment to the Jurassic Park theme. Then he says that this was just a prank and asks companies not to sue him. Then he plays a Beatles song.

Erik previews the copyright claims that the video will get when he uploads it and only sees two. Disappointed, he opens Spotify's top 50 songs and plays a bunch of music to produce several more copyright claims. Then he's confused because his computer says something about a copyright strike.

### Copyright Claim Olympics Recap

A followup video was released on February 1, 2019.

Erik explains that he got a bunch of copyright claims and even got to the top of r/videos. Erik isn't surprised that the video went down, but then he is surprised that the video went back up. He looks at his own subreddit where they were guessing who would take the video down. Arianna Grande was the correct answer, so Grande gets the gold medal and the user who guessed correctly gets goatse. Erik makes the video private so he won't get a copyright strike, and the guy who guessed Erik takes the video down gets a silver medal, which is also goatse. Erik says that he learned nothing and plays the Jurassic Park theme.

## Comments

*YouTube showed up to my son's funeral and copyright claimed his coffin because it had fidget spinners on it. Then Disney showed up and copyright claimed the hole we were gonna bury him in because it looked too much like the one they dug for themselves when they fired James Gunn over some stupid tweets and handed his ass to DC to make their movies instead. The real sad thing about all this is my beautiful son died while performing that new Fortnite dance where you snort bath salts and charge towards a police officer while reaching behind you. Unfortunately the cop's bodycam was uploaded online and now some dude in Florida is suing our son's ghost because he's saying he came up with that dance move first.*
- Erik

*I made this exact same noise one time while my boyfriend was in the middle of getting my mouth pregnant, so I'm a little offended to see that you're claiming it as something you have the rights to when I've owned it far longer since that exhausting night in the back of my 2007 Ford Fusion. Hey maybe if your entire youtube channel is just random videos of white noise, which I'm guessing it is because you're called "white noise for babies" you don't need to volunteer for YouTube's content ID match system. Looks like someone needs to google "copyright law for babies" because you fuckin suck at it. Either way, I will no longer be playing your white noise for my baby - from now on I'm only going to play the Friends theme song when he sleeps and by the time he's 20 he'll poison my dinner and put my skeleton up in the attic to frighten hitchhikers that he's brought back to our home so he can turn them into headphones to keep that infernal song from playing in his mind 24/7. SO THANKS A LOT FOR THAT YOU JERK. PS why can't white people listen to the Friends theme song without clapping*
- Erik

*Am I doing this right? This dude is reuploading all of my videos and using my name while putting ads on the content. I don't know what all this stuff about comments is, but please remove his channel and give me his money.*
- Erik

*You know it sucks because the copyright system on YouTube is actually what allows us to pretty much make whatever we want without insane rules on what we can and can't upload. The system is only there because of pressure from major studios and record labels who see YouTube as a nest of parasites who want to make money off their intellectual property, when it's actually quite the opposite if you look at it as a normal human being and not some equally parasitic legal department that knows nobody's gonna sue them for a false DMCA takedown. But with all this concern and shit
talk being lobbed at YouTube, perhaps it's also on us as a community to present a viable alternative to the way this copyright system works.**What if, for instance, YouTube implemented a sort of TSA Precheck for YouTube channels where you can apply as a creator and based on your current standing with copyright claims and depending on how big your channel is therefore more likely to be your main source of income), you can get a soft whitelisting that adds extra steps when another company wants to copyright claim you. YouTube's gonna fix all this eventually one day so why not just do it now and save your person who runs @TeamYoutube on twitter a shitload of hateful comments. Thank you for your time and please let us move forward into the future of entertainment with a better connection between platform and creator. GOOD DAY*
- Erik

### Copyright Claim Olympics Recap

*I'm going to go with Arianna Grande, whose song "7 Rings" totally rips off "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music.*
- lurkishdelight

*COLLECT YOUR WINNINGS HERE*
- Erik

*In an ironic twist, you yourself.*
- Nvenom8

*SILVER MEDAL*
- Erik

## Context

1. ↑ He claims that Bird Box is only on Hulu. It was made by Netflix, Hulu's largest competitor.
2. ↑ This lesson was released months before the infamous news story of Disney refusing to allow a child's tombstone to feature Spider-Man.

## Video

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