I got a copyright strike.

So it was about 2am last night. I just finished shooting a dumb thing that seems so insignificant in the grand scheme of everything now, I went to dump the footage on my computer and found my channel to have a strike, I had to go to 'copyright school' (read as: condescending bullshit) and found the American Satan video to be taken down by Ash Avildsen of Sumerian Records. No shit. He actually manually showed up and flagged my video. 

Now I think it would be rather difficult to look at my video as anything other than fair use. While it might not be the press Ash wanted for the movie, it's still press that follows all the guidelines of fair use. His taking down of this content is unjustified and damaging. Now I don't want everyone to get all up in arms and attack him online or something, but I have a couple plans for how this all might go down from this point. 

Last night I emailed him and tweeted him. He did not respond to either even though he was clearly up browsing YouTube for videos to take down because he didn't like them. So I uploaded a mirror to Vidme and am letting everyone know they are free to mirror it to their own youtube channel. It's the Hydra-method, cut off one head, two grow in it's place. 

The next method involves submitting a counter-notification. Now this is tricky and kinda scary. Basically I tell him and youtube that the claims against the video are not valid and that I am protected by fair use. If Ash decides that the defense I've given is not valid, he can't take down my video again as much as he will have to target me with a lawsuit. SCARY SHIT. No one wants a lawsuit. I made like $5 on this video, I don't see what damages he could possibly come up with. ALSO I told people to go see the damn movie multiple times in the video. 

So I have to wait ten days to see what happens with that. I am confident that it will go well and the video will be reinstated as there's no reason for Ash to actually take me to court for using the fucking trailer to the movie that he published FOR THE PRESS TO USE. The goal here seems pretty obvious to me. 

This is censorship, I don't like to throw that around but that is what this is. If you look up the movie on YouTube, you will see next to no videos about the movie, the ones you do see are not-well-produced or by Bryan Stars who was obviously paid to plug the movie. I don't know if Ash actually watched my video, maybe he did and I'd prefer not to speculate on that, but my views on the film are as simply as: I thought the movie was weird and if you like weird stuff, you should go see it. However the title was misconstrued as saying that movie is trash...like in a bad way, not realizing that me calling the film a trash baby is a term of endearment if anything. I have tons of trash baby movies, and I prefer that term of guilty pleasure because I don't feel guilty about liking my trash baby movies. I didn't feel guilty for liking this movie for being so off-the-wall, but now I do.

Now I want to tell everyone to avoid the thing. Not as if my platform has a lot of standing but if all the people that liked my video paid for a ticket...(quick math 1400 likes, $10 per ticket; the movie would have made $14,000 off my video alone.) But instead, Ash decided to remove what he saw as negative press on the grounds of using clips from the film. This is the sort of abuse of the system which should absolutely not be tolerated and should be seen with some sort of punishment. He didn't know much about the whole fair use thing on YouTube yet went right to fucking with someone's livelihood. 

As it stands I'm not sure which features I'll be getting back or losing after this counter notification thing is over and done with. My channel could be deleted. I could get sued. I may just end up with a strike and have to deal with losing live streaming and longer than 15 minute uploads. I'm not really sure. But regardless, if the channel goes down another will show up in it's place and we'll just start this whole crazy ride over again. It might be hard for the first few months but we'll get back to normal. I don't want this to be the stupid thing that beats me and my channel (finally) and I'm going to try my best to fight it. 

That said, I'll probably be taking a significant hit for the remainder of the month, which really sucks because I had the big Madea video planned. If I can still upload it in one piece on Halloween, you bet your butt it's gonna happen. We'll get through this...hopefully.

<3 Nyx

PS I really want to thank all of you that are here helping out. After the mass demonetization, the drop in view count, AND NOW THIS, I would be broken if it weren't for you guys and what you do to keep me afloat. Thank you all so very much.