Community Guidelines Strike For No Reason

[markkaz]

I remember back in the days where everyone was cramming their descriptions full of "keywords", glad youtube stopped spammers being able to dominate the rankings. But since they are useless now can you still be banned for them? After all it is now just a bit of useless text in a description.

It isn't useless. YouTube does give higher rankings to videos and channels with higher Audience Retention Time or Watch Time but that doesn't mean that the description and tags are being ignored. They are still relevant but have less importance as far as search rankings. Well, that's what YouTube is preaching anyway because we really don't have any inside information as to what the algorithm is to determine rankings and importance.

 

[Crown]

I'm moving this to the brand spanking new forum (copyright / legal etc)

 

[Tarmack]

There's also some deal about commentary on video games. I'm not a gaming person, but I did hear someone yesterday talking about gaming videos with commentary being ok (and again, it's all about which system you're using and who the developer/owner of the game is) but straight gameplay with no commentary/voice over being a problem.

The system itself can't discern between commentary and non-comm. The only thing that commentary can do really, is confuse ContentID into not flagging some forms of background music which seem to be always claimed by some third party company who sold the soundtrack in some country somewhere one time.

The commentary angle is primarily one of attempting an preemptive fair use defense by adding value to the product and making it about the person rather than the game. It's somewhat valid though has never been tested in court.

YouTube doesn't care either way. It comes down to whether the publisher has uploaded cutscenes and game soundtracks into ContentID. Most of them have, but do not have it set to take monetization revenue. Some such as Nintendo, have gone down that road though.

 

[WolfWraith]

It isn't the tags at all! You said it was well viewed right? Well it was a gaming channel where you are monetizing with ad sense. If you have next to no views then youtube won't notice, but if you get views then they will. You CANNOT legally have gaming content on your youtube (generally its only monetized but my friend was not monetized) if it is monetized through ad sense. Youtube does NOT have a contract with game devs so you can get in serious trouble for that. If you want money from gaming on youtube you need a partnership with machinima, TGN, Polaris or any of the other networks. That is how I make my money. I get zero money from google, I don't get to see my monetization numbers, but I do get payed. I get payed by TGN's parent company, broadband tv, who has a deal with game devs. So my advice to you is to remove monetization from your videos and try and get a membership (TGN is easy, most partners average like 10 views a vid) in a gaming network. Like I said, my friend simply uploaded content, wasn't monetized and he got BANNED for having gaming content.

That's false information. YouTube's policy is that you need written permission to post any content that is not copyrighted by the content creator or you need to own the copyrights to post the footage. Being with AdSense does not prevent you from posting gaming content at all. Being with a Network does not protect you if you post copyrighted content unless it's a big network like Polaris or Machina and you generally need to be around 300-500k subs minimum for them to give a damn. Networks HAVE to follow the same copyright laws all content creators have to follow. There is no special deal with game developers/publishers either, none that are actually contracted at least.
If your friend was banned for gaming content it was most likely of a game from a publisher who does not allow monetisation. It's like trying to monetise GTA videos: that's digging your own grave. R* do not allow monetisation but allow you to post footage on YouTube regardless of partner status. Networks are under even more pressure to follow copyrights now then they were before, as they are responsible for their partners. Some may be overlooked but that's all it is, being overlooked by chance. Mr Sark even mentioned on his facebook a few months back that normally networks would say to monetise footage and if anything happened they would step in, so it's basically take the risk sort of thing and they might help. Joining a network for better income is probably the only true part of this statement though. And probably the only reason to join a network at this stage. Any other benefits a network supposedly provides is probably false.

Back OT. I have removed all tags from my descriptions a month or 2 ago, since more channels are getting taken down for this sort of thing. The problem isn't whether YouTube catches you or not, the problem comes from people reporting you. Adding extra tags to your description in an obvious manner is basically giving viewers a way to take down your channel. As mentioned above YouTube HAVE to check every complaint or report, so just 1 person flagging your video for spammed tags can cost you the video. This is why I removed those tags. YouTube do need to fix their system though. It is way to easy to lose a video or channel, as @MaxYT mentioned they were nearing 20mil views/month, that is a lot to lose because of YouTube's lazy methods and failure to validate copyright claims properly. Of course I point this out as an example I have no idea if what happened was true or not, always 2 sides to a story.

 

[Guphanti]

Hello everyone,
I'm the OP in case you forgot. I wanted to post an update and that they rejected my appeal several times and eventually stopped answering my emails. A week later, I logged into my account the video was mysteriously re-instated. I guess someone at YouTube has a heart. Thank God.