- This video was brought
to you by Legal Eagle's CopyrightCourse.com, giving
all creators the tools they need to fight bogus copyright claims. (eagle screams) YouTube stands up for creators everywhere and fights back against
an alleged copyright troll who not only apparently tried
to extort fellow YouTubers, but tried to have one killed. Yep, it may be true. This case is wild. (regal music) Hey, Legal Eagles. It's time to think like all of the lawyers that YouTube just hired to
go after a copyright troll who may have been trying to extort a bunch of individual creators. YouTube has filed a federal lawsuit against a YouTube creator
who they claim was trying to extort fellow creators and actually may have swatted one of them. Now, before I begin I want to emphasize that these are only allegations. All of these facts come from the complaint that YouTube filed in federal court. A complaint is the document
that you use to start a lawsuit and it contains your side of the story. YouTube is the plaintiff here. That means they started the lawsuit. And because we're still
in the very early stages of this particular lawsuit, all of the facts are
gonna come from YouTube. So take everything with a grain of salt. Now first lemme give you some background to help understand this
lawsuit that YouTube has filed. Congress passed the DMCA in 1998 to deal with copyright-infringing
material online. It allows websites to not be responsible for copyright-infringing material that its users upload under
certain circumstances. The DMCA is one of two laws that give websites a safe harbor, the other being the
Communications Decency Act, Section 230, which is something I will definitely cover in the future because it is in the news
every single day these days. The bottom line is that, under the DMCA, a website isn't liable for
copyright-infringing material so long as they take down
the offending material when they receive a notice from the person that owns the copyright. This is called a DMCA takedown notice. You'll find it in 17 USC 512, which is a totally easy law to understand. You can look it up by searching
Google for 17 USC 512. Now, YouTube asserts in its complaint that one Christopher Brady issued a false DMCA takedown notice
to extort certain YouTubers, people that made Minecraft videos. Basically the complaint alleges that he claimed he owned the copyright to Minecraft and therefore demanded that YouTubers pay him money or he would issue a DMCA
takedown, a third one. Now, YouTube has a system where if you receive three DMCA takedown notices your channel is deleted. When a DMCA takedown notice is
levied against your channel, YouTube gives you a strike, and three strikes and you're
out of the YouTube game. Now, allegedly Brady would
issue two DMCA takedown notices and then try to extort hundreds of dollars from those creators by threatening a third takedown notice, which would result in
potentially the deletion of these people's channel. Now, if true, this is illegal and violates the DMCA Section 512. This happens. I've talked to creators who have dealt with false DMCA takedowns. I, myself, have been the
victim of a false DMCA claim. So this is definitely something
that exists in the world. But it's also relatively unusual. The big boys, the music
labels and the movie studios, rarely mess around with DMCA claims. Now, sure they abuse the content ID system that YouTube has created, but a DMCA takedown notice
is a little bit different. It's created by copyright law and YouTube doesn't have a
whole lot of control over it. Basically from the people that I've talked to behind the scenes, none of the big players
will file a DMCA takedown without talking to a lawyer first, or often they'll have the
lawyer issue the DMCA takedown. Why is that? Because it's a big (beeps) deal. As paragraph eight of
YouTube's complaint states, to submit a takedown
notice using the form, parties must affirmatively check a box next to a statement that reads, "I acknowledge that under Section 512 f "of the DMCA takedown, any person "who knowingly material misrepresents "that material or activity
is infringing may be subject "to liability for damages." If you issue a false takedown, not only are you liable for damages, in other words the loss of revenue that comes from the videos, but you're also liable
for attorneys' fees, and when you're talking about
YouTube, that's a lot of fees. Now, I know YouTube gets a lot of flak for taking down videos pursuant to the DMCA takedown request, but YouTube actually doesn't really have much choice in the matter that's apart from the
whole content ID system which YouTube controls. Paragraph nine of YouTube's complaint says that YouTube receives thousands of DMCA takedown requests each week through its online web form. It also received notices by email, postal mail, and facsimile. I'd guess that, if anything, this is probably an understatement. I'd guess that YouTube probably deals with on the order of millions
of DMCA takedowns per year, and YouTube doesn't really have much choice in how to deal
with these particular claims. It's all enshrined in copyright law, both the timeframes and the consequences. So if YouTube gets a DMCA takedown, they don't really have much choice but to take the video off of YouTube, otherwise YouTube would potentially lose their copyright safe harbor and become liable for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of copyright infringement
actions per year. So let's talk about the
actual facts of this case. In paragraph 21 of the complaint, YouTube alleges that in January 2019, defendant Brady, using
several falsified identities, sent YouTube multiple notices of alleged copyright infringement
pursuant to the DMCA, claiming that two videos uploaded by Kenzo and two videos
uploaded by ObbyRaidz supposedly infringed
copyrights that he owned. In the next paragraph, YouTube asserts he represented that he
was the original creator of those videos and that he
held the copyright to them. The complaint goes on to assert that Brady tried to
extort a third YouTuber, and in fighting one of those allegedly false DMCA takedown notices, that YouTuber provided
his true home address as required by law. That makes sense. That is one of those
statutory requirements to being able to fight
a DMCA takedown notice. The problem, as alleged in this complaint, is that part of the DMCA allows you to issue a subpoena to get that information when it's uploaded, the purpose of which is that, if you are issuing a DMCA takedown, you need to be able to take these people to court if they file a counter-notice and put the video back up. The complaint goes on to assert that on July 10th the third
YouTuber announced via Twitter that he'd been the victim of
a swatting scheme that day. And they go on to define swatting as the act of making a bogus call to emergency services in an attempt to bring about the
dispatch of a large number of armed police officers
to a particular address. If that's true that this
guy did use the information he gained by abusing the
DMCA takedown process to issue a false SWAT call
against a fellow YouTuber in the hope that the
SWAT team would be called to this guy's actual house, that's a felony and this
guy should be in jail. This is a despicable act, if true. People have died because of swattings, because if you're playing a video game that involves gunfire and the
SWAT team hears the gunfire from the outside, they might come in with guns drawn and people have died in the course of being falsely swatted. The bottom line is that YouTube alleges that this particular individual, Brady, falsified DMCA takedowns, committed perjury, and
used that information that he gained to extort fellow YouTubers and may have even tried to
kill one of those YouTubers. Frankly I was astounded when I saw this lawsuit being filed by YouTube. 17 USC 512 f does in fact
give service providers like YouTube a private right of action to sue over false DMCA takedown notices. I've just never seen a service provider actually file a suit like this. If true, this seems like a very, very good thing on
behalf of most YouTubers and a blow against potential people who are trying to abuse
the copyright process for their own ends when
they don't own the copyright to allegedly infringing material. This could be the first of many lawsuits on behalf of YouTube
protecting its YouTubers, and if indeed the allegations
in the complaint are true, I think YouTube is doing all of us a favor by getting rid of some of
these YouTube copyright trolls. I think YouTube is
trying to send a message against this troll and potentially others. They have the resources to do it, and I will repeat that we
don't know all of the facts. This is all one-sided, so please do not dox the defendant, Brady, or attack him in any way online. Let this legal process play out. YouTube, in its prayer for relief, is asking for compensatory damages, attorneys' fees, and an injunction, in other words, a court order that forces the defendant to stop. This is probably bad enough. I checked and this case is being litigated by a local firm in Omaha,
where the defendant lives, and also by a very well-known attorney with one of the top-tier law firms, Wilson Sonsini, which is the law firm that has handled Google and YouTube's most important and famous cases. And I was curious how much
Wilson Sonsini charges, and according to court documents, if you can get a 10%
discount for a lead partner at Wilson Sonsini, you
will only pay $900 an hour. In other words, if this defendant loses, he'll probably pay on the order of $1,000 per hour for hundreds
of hours of attorney time. Also a parenthetically
that Phil DeFranco covered this lawsuit earlier today, and although he did generally a great job covering it, he put some special attention
to the end of the complaint, specifically the prayer which asks for such other further
and different relief as the court deems proper
under the circumstances. - Kind of a question mark, saying that they pray for such other, further, and different relief as
the court deems proper under the circumstances. So something even potentially bigger here. - He kinda freaked out about this. That's a totally normal
thing to put in a complaint. It's just a catch-all, a lawyer's CYA, to allow them to ask for something else not specifically
mentioned in the complaint. So Phil, my dude, reach
out to me next time. I'll let you know what is notable or not in a complaint like this. As an attorney I have
dealt with copyright trolls for a very, very long time, and I am tired of creators getting pushed around by bogus copyright claims. So I decided to do something about it. I made CopyrightCourse.com to give all creators the tools they
need to fight meritless claims and stand up for their rights online. It's not only an entire law school course on copyright distilled into a few hours, but it's also a system that I developed to fight claims on YouTube
and other platforms. I should know because I get a lot of claims against my videos, even though they are clearly fair use, and spoiler alert, made by
an actual copyright attorney and trial lawyer. CopyrightCourse.com is all the tips and strategies that I use to beat claims and make sure my videos are safe. I think it's time that we fought back against the copyright trolls and made fair use actually fair. You can check it out at
CopyrightCourse.com right now and you can get early
access to the beta course, which will be half the
price of the final course. You'll get every module
as soon as it comes out and your comments will help
shape the final product. I am really looking forward to being able to help creators and fight back
against the copyright trolls because there are a lot of them out there. So do you agree? Leave your objections in the comments and check out this playlist that has all of my other real
law reviews over here, where we deal with all of
the pressing legal issues of the day. So click on this playlist, and as always, I will see you in court.
Unrelated to this - he talks about how his channel gets the occasional DMCA claims.. What kind of fucking idiot would fraudulently file a DMCA claim on a fucking copyright lawyer. That is pants-shittingly stupid.
This guys entire body shakes left and right whenever he's talking.
Glad youtube is doing this.
This feels like a PR stunt by YouTube