On July 10, Lofi Girl shared that a copyright takedown issued by FMC Music Sdn Bhd Malaysia has made some of their videos unplayable on the platform. — Media photo created by jordy_pp - www.freepik.com
YouTube said it will terminate the account of a local music company that issued a copyright takedown notice to a popular YouTube channel, after it determined that the complaint was “abusive”.
On July 10, Lofi Girl shared that a copyright takedown issued by FMC Music Sdn Bhd Malaysia has made some of their videos unplayable on the platform.
One of the videos titled “lofi hip hop radio – beats to relax and study to” is a 24/7 livestream first created in February 2020. Prior to its takedown, the video had garnered more than 668 million views, with most viewers saying the music helps them to remain focused and calm while studying or working.
Lofi Girl’s “lofi hip hop radio – beats to sleep/chill to” has also been affected by the issue.
Lofi Girl raised the issue on Twitter with the hashtag #BringBackLofiGirl, in the hopes that YouTube would resolve the matter.
The online video sharing platform later responded on July 11, saying it had resolved the strikes and that it would take between 24 to 48 hours to reinstate the channel’s videos.
“Confirmed the takedown requests were abusive & terminated the claimants account we’ve resolved the strikes + reinstated your vids – it can sometimes take 24-48 hours for everything to be back to normal! so sorry this happened & thx for your patience as we sorted it out,” YouTube said in its full statement to Lofi Girl.
In a separate statement to followers on Twitter, Lofi Girl thanked fans for their support.
“We’re shocked and disappointed to see that there’s still not any kind of protection or manual review of these false claims. At the end of the day, it was entirely out of our control, and the sad part is that there was no way to appeal beforehand/prevent it from happening,” it said on Twitter, adding that their entire channel had also been mistakenly taken down back in 2020.
The team behind the channel added that the issue highlights the problem of false claims affecting content creators on YouTube and hoped that changes can be made to the copyright reporting system to prevent such issues from recurring. Created in 2015, Lofi Girl’s channel has over 10 million subscribers with 1.2 billion views for its videos.
In the aftermath of the incident, FMC Music has been inundated with hate comments on their official social media channels.
On Instagram, netizens slammed the company for “bringing shame to Malaysia” while some have also spammed the comment section on their latest YouTube video with the hashtag #bringbacklofigirl.
Similarly on Facebook, users also left angry messages for the company.
As of press time, the FMC Music channel on YouTube, which has over 1.8 million subscribers, is still accessible.
When contacted by LifestyleTech, a spokesperson from FMC Music said the company has reported the matter to YouTube and is awaiting the results of their investigation.
In a separate statement to Malaysiakini, the company claimed their YouTube account was compromised by hackers over the recent long weekend and used to file the copyright infringement claim against the Lofi Girl channel.
“We have already reported this to Google and we are hoping that this works out in the end,” the company added.
