Back in early March of 2009, many users that did Aaliyah fan-made videos were getting their accounts suspended. The reason was because of alleged copyright infringement from Blackground Records. Now most Aaliyah fans know that Blackground Records used to be the record label that Aaliyah was signed on when she first got into the music business. We couldn't understand why they would suspend us when all we were trying to do was keep Aaliyah's legacy alive. We weren't trying to gain monetary profit in any way.
It kind of seemed legit until my SkibopTV account got suspended. See now SkibopTV was my vlogging account. It was purely captured videos of me talking about various subjects. I couldn't understand why they would suspend such an account when I never even used any copyrighted Aaliyah videos for my vlogs. I just had Aaliyah music playing softly in the background as I spoke over it and occasionally wore my Aaliyah hoodie in videos, but that still was not a just reason to suspend me.
As I researched more into this, I realized that not every person who did Aaliyah fan-made videos got suspended. It seemed as though only the group of Aaliyah fans that I talked to had gotten their account suspended. I knew something was up. That's what made me decide to get my accounts back. I hope that if you or somebody you know got their account suspended because of copyright claim from Blackground Records, that you can follow the instructions posted below in order to get your account back:
- The first thing I did was visit Youtube's Help Center to find out how I could get my videos back. After reading what was posted on the page, I saw that I had two options to send a counter-notification: by mail or by sending an e-mail. I chose to use e-mail.
- I sent an e-mail to copyright@youtube.com using the e-mail address that I used to sign up for the Youtube account. In the Subject line I put "YouTube DMCA Counter-Notification."
- I began the letter with a general greeting, then stated the purpose of the letter in the first sentence.
- Immediately following, I listed my name, phone number, address, e-mail address, and youtube username.
- I then posted the title and URL for a few of my videos that got removed. (You only need one URL if you are trying to get your account back. Once they give you back your account, all the other videos will be replenished with it.)
- I restated the purpose of the letter, then added the mandatory statement "I consent to the jurisdiction of the district court in whose district I reside.I swear, under penalty of perjury, that I have a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of a mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled."
- I then ended the letter with a closer, name, date, and an electronic signature. (If you have a facebook account, you can use a profile badge that displays your name and e-mail account as an electronic signature. You can also scan your physical signature and link/paste it into the e-mail.)
- Still confused? Click the picture on the side for an example of how your e-mail should look like -------->
- After I sent the e-mail, youtube contacted me the same day saying that they recieved the counter-notification form and explained that they were reviewing the claim. They explained that they were forwarding the email to the third-party that made the copyright claim, and that if the third-party failed to reply back to youtube about seeking a court order within 10 days, then my videos would be back on youtube.
- After the 10 days was over with, Youtube sent me another message saying that they reinstated my account and were sorry for the mistake they had made in suspending my account. I got all of my videos back, and retained everything that I had on my account prior to getting suspended. The only thing is, that once you get your account back, your videos count won't display properly on your page. So what you have to do is either upload a new video or delete an old video for it to go back to normal.
