Why would I say such a thing? It’s easy! They are overzealous regarding copyright claims on YouTube. Allow me to illustrate the issue.

I have, for a few years now, occasionally uploaded videos to YouTube of various moments of game play from various games. The videos are largely unedited. Most of them are completely unedited, in fact. It’s only recently, within the last year or so, that I’ve started to add a title card and exit card to the videos. Other than that, the original footage is untouched. 80% of the time, this presents no problem. The rest of the time, I’ll get a notice that I can’t monetize the video or that it can’t be seen in certain countries. I’ve been fine with this because I haven’t cared to monetize any of the videos and they’re really only up there so I can share fun moments with a few friends.

Today, all that changed.

[cue dramatic, royalty-free music released under CC0 license]

I uploaded a game play video of a race in Forza Horizons 3 to YouTube. Once it was done processing, I got an email saying that the video was blocked from being viewed because it contained copyrighted material. That material was the song that was playing during the race in-game.

I bought the game. I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m not stealing from the copyright holders or making money off of this. It should be a common sense idea that sharing a clip of a game that you have your music in shouldn’t be infringing. But apparently it is and here we are. So fuck those guys.

Also, enjoy this clip of me racing a tuned Mini Cooper in Forza Horizon 3, set to music that is naturally occurring in the game.