Home / Tech News / Featured Announcement / Vox Media caught trying to suppress criticism from tech YouTubers with false DMCA notices

Vox Media caught trying to suppress criticism from tech YouTubers with false DMCA notices

Last year, Vox-owned website, The Verge, released a $2,000 gaming PC build guide on YouTube. Almost immediately, commenters and more knowledgeable tech YouTube channels began picking the video apart due to the poor advice it gave first-time builders. Things on that front went quiet for a few months, until last night, when Vox Media began issuing Copyright strikes against YouTube channels.

The build guide was originally posted to The Verge's YouTube channel. The video initially had comments disabled and was then removed entirely. The accompanying guide article still remains live though and people can find the video easily enough, as large chunks of it were preserved by tech channels critiquing or parodying the guide.

Channels like Bitwit and ReviewTechUSA were hit with copyright strikes on YouTube after Vox Media manually issued DMCA claims. False copyright strikes have been an issue on YouTube for a long time now. Time and again, companies have taken advantage of the system to suppress criticism, even when it violates Fair Use law in the United States. This penalises YouTube channels, which can be left without access to certain features after receiving a strike. Getting a strike removed can also be a painful process with no guarantee of success.

The ironic part is that The Verge itself regularly reports on YouTube's copyright problems. Which makes the decision to attempt issuing copyright strikes even more baffling.

Sure enough, after news of the copyright strikes came out, other YouTubers and fans across social media began speaking out against Vox's decision. This in turn, caught YouTube's attention, enabling Bitwit to get the copyright strike removed from his channel. In an email sent to him, YouTube stated that the video fell within Fair Use and that Vox Media's copyright claim was unwarranted and has thus been removed.

Other channels are still waiting to have their claims removed but it looks like YouTube is keeping on top of the situation for a change.

KitGuru Says: YouTube can be slow when it comes to taking a stand on Fair Use but in this case, it looks like the company got around to fixing the issue quickly. Ultimately, Vox Media should have known better- DMCA strikes against critical videos never, ever go down well and only serve to invite backlash. 

Become a Patron!

Check Also

franchise Resident Evil 9

Resident Evil 9 will reportedly reinvent the franchise

For well over a year now, we’ve heard an increasing number of details surrounding Capcom’s next mainline RE title Resident Evil 9. While we’ve yet to get any official announcement, one known insider has claimed that the next game will reinvent the franchise – similar to RE4 and RE7.

We've noticed that you are using an ad blocker.

Thank you for visiting KitGuru. Our news and reviews teams work hard to bring you the latest stories and finest, in-depth analysis.

We want to be as informative as possible – and to help our readers make the best buying decisions. The mechanism we use to run our business and pay some of the best journalists in the world, is advertising.

If you want to support KitGuru, then please add www.kitguru.net to your ad blocking whitelist or disable your adblocking software. It really makes a difference and allows us to continue creating the kind of content you really want to read.

It is important you know that we don’t run pop ups, pop unders, audio ads, code tracking ads or anything else that would interfere with the KitGuru experience. Adblockers can actually block some of our free content, such as galleries!