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YouTube apologises for hitting Lofi Girl with a DMCA takedown

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Two of the platforms’ most popular livestreaming music videos were removed after users abusively reported the channel with false copyright claims.

One of the internet’s most beloved livestreams – which provided more than two years of non-stop lo-fi background music for hundreds of millions of people studying or trying to wind down – was removed by YouTube on Sunday night after users lodged a bogus copyright dispute.

Up there with the platform’s longest-ever-running content, the infamous ‘lofi hip hop radio – beats to relax/study to’ and ‘beats to sleep/chill to’ videos (recognised for their 24/7 loops of vibey beats against the image of an anime girl wearing headphones) have collectively amassed a total of 797,341,998 views since being uploaded.

Today, the channel is revered by the dedicated audience of listeners it has cultivated, who often gather on the chat feature to swap tips and support.

So when both videos were hit with a DMCA takedown out of nowhere and began serving a ‘this recording is not available’ message, fans were unsurprisingly concerned.

‘Hopefully it isn’t over yet, this stream is legitimately a hugely important part of YouTube culture,’ reads the top comment at present, referring to the various spin-off communities Lofi Girl lives in, including the 30,000-member r/LofiGirl subreddit and 700,000-strong Lofi Girl Discord. ‘I never thought this would end,’ says another.

But end it did, thanks to FMC Music, an obscure Malaysian record label that claimed the livestreams featured its tracks and had YouTube remove them, despite how Lofi Girl’s creator is widely known to own the rights to all the music it plays via its music label, Lofi Records.

How did this happen?

Essentially, the takedown came from an automatically issued copyright strike, meaning someone submitted a claim that the channel was playing copyrighted material.

YouTube’s system is built so that when such violations are reported the video is automatically pulled down without verification and it’s then on the creator to prove they didn’t violate copyright.

Until they’re able to do so, they are prevented from monetising their videos and collecting ad revenue.

In short, if a copyright owner submits a valid DMCA complaint through YouTube’s webform, it will take down that video and apply a copyright strike. If a user gets three of these in 90 days, their account, along with any associated channels, will be terminated.

It’s for this reason that people argue reinstating Lofi Girl’s videos isn’t enough.

That YouTube must conduct a long overdue reassessment of its current copyright policy which currently states that ‘creators should only upload videos that they have made or that they’re authorised to use,’ that ‘everyone has access to YouTube’s Copyright Management tools, which give rightsholders control of their copyrighted material on YouTube.’

Has the issue been resolved?

Fortunately, it wasn’t long before lo-fi-enthusiasts took to social media to voice their disdain regarding the ‘unjust’ deletion, a tumult that prompted YouTube to investigate and subsequently realise it had made a mistake.

‘Confirmed the takedown requests were abusive & terminated the claimants account,’ TeamYouTube tweeted, adding, ‘we’ve resolved the strikes + reinstated your vids — it can sometimes take 24-48 hours for everything to be back to normal! so sorry this happened & thx for your patience as we sorted it out.’

In referring to the claims as ‘abusive,’ YouTube has confirmed that they were leveraged as an attack against the channel, rather than out of actual concern for copyright violations.

But this isn’t even the first time Lofi Girl’s been removed over trolling copyright claims.

In 2020, YouTube similarly mistakenly removed the channel (previously called Chilled Cow) for violations of the Terms of Service, then later admitted on Twitter that it was an error.

It’s an error the platform is no stranger to committing, due to its reporting system which – as we now know – has made it incredibly easy for trolls to abuse.

For years, they’ve been falsely reporting channels and sometimes extorting them for money to get them reinstated.

The bane of every YouTuber’s existence, the problem first made headlines after Quantum TV went head-to-head with The Act Man under the same circumstances.

Yet regardless of the frequency of this behaviour, YouTube continues to struggle with determining which reports are legitimate and which are unsubstantiated, and little to no intervention from the company has been seen to take place.

No wonder, then, that the Lofi Girl account has repeatedly highlighted its disappointment towards the inherent lack of protection and manual review of these false claims.

‘[The takedown] was entirely out of our control, and the sad part is that there was no way to appeal beforehand,’ it tweeted. ‘This event has shone a light on an underlying problem on the platform: it’s 2022, and there are countless smaller creators out there, many of which engaged in this discussion, that continue to be hit daily by these false claims on both videos and livestreams.

YouTube says it is working to reinstate the channel’s videos, but it is unclear when the livestream will return. Sadly, however, if past precedent holds true, Lofi Girl’s next stream will have to start again from the beginning, rather than as a continuation of the existing 20,843-hour-long stream.

Feature Media Manager & Senior Writer London, UK

Sofia (She/Her) – I’m the Feature Media Manager and a Senior Writer at Thred, specialising in exclusive articles and live interviews, fashion and beauty with a focus on sustainability, women’s rights, psychedelics, and Latin America. I studied Spanish at the University of Exeter and International Journalism at City, London. Follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and drop me some ideas/feedback via email.

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