How Youtube banned our channel and how we restored it
One morning we saw a letter from Youtube in the mail: “ Due to repeated or serious violations of our community principles, your YouTube account has been suspended .”
We in Alconost make videos for applications, games and services, and our Youtube channel is the only (until recently) place where we store all our videos. Ban account meant that all the videos that we have ever posted on the network (on our website, on social networks, in posts on Habré, etc.) were not available. Instead of videos, the audience saw only the message “The account is blocked”, and when they switched to the channel itself, they ran across the accusation of fraud and spam.
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There is nothing on our channel that could be classified as “ deception, spam, fraud ”. Looking ahead, we say that we have proved our point and eventually restored our channel. But for this we had to do - read under the cut.
Following the first account blocking letter, another thing came to us: “ The YouTube community members flagged one or more of your videos as inappropriate. Marked videos are checked by the YouTube team for violations of community guidelines. After reviewing the following videos, we came to the conclusion that they contain materials that violate our principles . ”
Here is the video, which was discussed in the letter:
After “unraveled”, we removed this video from Youtube far away and placed it on Vimeo.
As you can see, there is nothing seditious in the video. This is a trailer we made for Disk Drill , a product that allows you to recover information from damaged hard drives in Mac OS.
Perhaps the video was reported by users who could not recover information (for example, if something was recorded over it), or the competitors of the client, or our competitors. Perhaps the audience was embarrassed by the call to try the free version of the product: it allows you to view deleted files and make sure that they can be restored, and the restoration itself takes place after paying for the full version.
If it happens that the Youtube account is banned, you can appeal: https://support.google.com/accounts/contact/suspended?p=youtube&rd=1
By the way, deleting the offending video is not worth it - it will not affect the decision of Youtube, and you will not be able to appeal the verdict .
Of course, we exercised our right to challenge the account ban. Considering that we work with netive translators, our appeal was made in perfect English. But this did not help either: apart from the letter confirming the completion of the form, no reply was received.
Frustrated, we began to fill the channel on Vimeo and update the entire network hundreds of publications, which were attended by our videos.
Our last hope was the American lawyer Dmitry Dubograev and his colleagues from the company Femida.us . We met in the ISDEF community, and then opened a company in the States with their help and repeatedly consulted on various legal issues. These guys, like us, specialize in services for IT companies, and among their clients are such giants as Kaspersky, Alawar, Gaijin Entertainment, ElcomSoft, Polimaster, InvisibleCRM.
In response to our “help, we have blocked a channel on YouTube here” the guys from Femida.us promptly made a detailed English-language appeal to Youtube on their own behalf. But first they asked us a lot of questions about the current situation, so that the letter was true, complete and based on the real situation. Three pages is too much to copy all the text here, so just give a link to the letter .
In the appeal, the lawyers described the principle of the product, which is described in the video, emphasized that there is nothing in the video that could deceive the viewer, as well as the fact that on our client’s channel this video gained a total of one million views ( video made in different languages). According to lawyers, the letter should be reasoned and thoroughly (perhaps even redundantly) describing the situation.
In addition, a significant part of the letter told about who Alconost is, what we have been doing, how many years we have been working, and how “decent and fluffy” we are. As the lawyers explained, to instill a positive opinion about yourself and put yourself on the “side of good and truth” - this is Masthev at any official appeal or appeal.
It is noteworthy that despite the fact that the letter is basically “asking” and “explaining,” there is always a direct or veiled threat in such letters “from a lawyer”. After all, even monsters such as YouTube, can not act arbitrarily and must also adhere to the rules. Otherwise, the damage they have caused improperly may result in legal action.
It's not easy to get through to Youtube, so the letter was sent by regular mail, e-mail, FedEx, and also sent via the support form.
The letter was sent on February 24, and already on March 4, lawyers received a response from Youtube about revising the circumstances of blocking our channel: “After checking your YouTube account, we made sure that it does not violate the Terms of Use, and resumed its validity. Your account is active again and can be used . ”
Our conclusion is that it is not easy to conduct international business even for a small company without legal support. To paraphrase a well-known quotation, a kind word and a lawyer can achieve much more than just a kind word. We hope you do not have to deal with such an unpleasant thing, like banning your Youtube account. But if it ever happens, now you know what to do.
about the author
Alconost is engaged in the localization of applications, games and websites in 60 languages. Language translators, linguistic testing, cloud platform with API, continuous localization, 24/7 project managers, any formats of string resources.
We also make advertising and training videos - for websites selling, image, advertising, training, teasers, expliners, trailers for Google Play and the App Store.
Read more: https://alconost.com
We in Alconost make videos for applications, games and services, and our Youtube channel is the only (until recently) place where we store all our videos. Ban account meant that all the videos that we have ever posted on the network (on our website, on social networks, in posts on Habré, etc.) were not available. Instead of videos, the audience saw only the message “The account is blocked”, and when they switched to the channel itself, they ran across the accusation of fraud and spam.
')
There is nothing on our channel that could be classified as “ deception, spam, fraud ”. Looking ahead, we say that we have proved our point and eventually restored our channel. But for this we had to do - read under the cut.
Reason ban
Following the first account blocking letter, another thing came to us: “ The YouTube community members flagged one or more of your videos as inappropriate. Marked videos are checked by the YouTube team for violations of community guidelines. After reviewing the following videos, we came to the conclusion that they contain materials that violate our principles . ”
Here is the video, which was discussed in the letter:
After “unraveled”, we removed this video from Youtube far away and placed it on Vimeo.
As you can see, there is nothing seditious in the video. This is a trailer we made for Disk Drill , a product that allows you to recover information from damaged hard drives in Mac OS.
Perhaps the video was reported by users who could not recover information (for example, if something was recorded over it), or the competitors of the client, or our competitors. Perhaps the audience was embarrassed by the call to try the free version of the product: it allows you to view deleted files and make sure that they can be restored, and the restoration itself takes place after paying for the full version.
Appeal
If it happens that the Youtube account is banned, you can appeal: https://support.google.com/accounts/contact/suspended?p=youtube&rd=1
By the way, deleting the offending video is not worth it - it will not affect the decision of Youtube, and you will not be able to appeal the verdict .
Of course, we exercised our right to challenge the account ban. Considering that we work with netive translators, our appeal was made in perfect English. But this did not help either: apart from the letter confirming the completion of the form, no reply was received.
Frustrated, we began to fill the channel on Vimeo and update the entire network hundreds of publications, which were attended by our videos.
Legal assistance
Our last hope was the American lawyer Dmitry Dubograev and his colleagues from the company Femida.us . We met in the ISDEF community, and then opened a company in the States with their help and repeatedly consulted on various legal issues. These guys, like us, specialize in services for IT companies, and among their clients are such giants as Kaspersky, Alawar, Gaijin Entertainment, ElcomSoft, Polimaster, InvisibleCRM.In response to our “help, we have blocked a channel on YouTube here” the guys from Femida.us promptly made a detailed English-language appeal to Youtube on their own behalf. But first they asked us a lot of questions about the current situation, so that the letter was true, complete and based on the real situation. Three pages is too much to copy all the text here, so just give a link to the letter .
In the appeal, the lawyers described the principle of the product, which is described in the video, emphasized that there is nothing in the video that could deceive the viewer, as well as the fact that on our client’s channel this video gained a total of one million views ( video made in different languages). According to lawyers, the letter should be reasoned and thoroughly (perhaps even redundantly) describing the situation.
In addition, a significant part of the letter told about who Alconost is, what we have been doing, how many years we have been working, and how “decent and fluffy” we are. As the lawyers explained, to instill a positive opinion about yourself and put yourself on the “side of good and truth” - this is Masthev at any official appeal or appeal.
It is noteworthy that despite the fact that the letter is basically “asking” and “explaining,” there is always a direct or veiled threat in such letters “from a lawyer”. After all, even monsters such as YouTube, can not act arbitrarily and must also adhere to the rules. Otherwise, the damage they have caused improperly may result in legal action.
It's not easy to get through to Youtube, so the letter was sent by regular mail, e-mail, FedEx, and also sent via the support form.
Result
The letter was sent on February 24, and already on March 4, lawyers received a response from Youtube about revising the circumstances of blocking our channel: “After checking your YouTube account, we made sure that it does not violate the Terms of Use, and resumed its validity. Your account is active again and can be used . ”
Our conclusion is that it is not easy to conduct international business even for a small company without legal support. To paraphrase a well-known quotation, a kind word and a lawyer can achieve much more than just a kind word. We hope you do not have to deal with such an unpleasant thing, like banning your Youtube account. But if it ever happens, now you know what to do.
about the author
Alconost is engaged in the localization of applications, games and websites in 60 languages. Language translators, linguistic testing, cloud platform with API, continuous localization, 24/7 project managers, any formats of string resources.
We also make advertising and training videos - for websites selling, image, advertising, training, teasers, expliners, trailers for Google Play and the App Store.
Read more: https://alconost.com
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/257939/
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