UPDATED! YouTube Account RESTORED!

[djpretzel]

UPDATED 11/21/2011 @ 6:00PM EST - WE'RE BACK @ http://www.youtube.com/user/ocremix, THANKS FOR YOUR HELP!




Our YouTube account has been suspended without warning for “spam, scams, and commercially deceptive content”.
We don’t spam, we don’t scam, and since we’re not selling music but giving it away for free, it’s pretty much impossible for us to be commercially deceptive.
Hundreds of hours of unpaid labor went into uploading thousands of videos to help spread a love & appreciation for video game music - without any warning or explanation, Google/YouTube have removed that work, possibly due to the actions of a few individuals - we can only guess, since they provide no details!
Basically, the same thing happened to Darren Rowse (@Problogger): http://bit.ly/kbkQnj - we agree & echo everything he says, and we couldn’t have said it better ourselves. We love YouTube. Why did they break up with us? :-D
We NEED YOUR HELP in letting YouTube know that OC ReMix’s account, used for ReMix previews, album trailers, and more, doesn’t spam, scam, or “commercially deceive” anyone.
HERE’S WHAT YOU CAN DO: Tweet at YouTube: This is one of the things Darren said could help. We need EVERYONE who supports OCR to send the tweet at YouTube so they’ll realize we’re legit and will restore the account.
CLICK THIS LINK to tweet at YouTube: http://bit.ly/RestoreOCRsYouTube

[Prophecy]

Would you mind if I wrote them instead of tweeting?

[djpretzel]

Would you mind if I wrote them instead of tweeting?

Please go ahead; part of the reason we're having users tweet is that the Internet is full of horror stories of people waiting 10+ days for a response, or never getting one, so anything that is legal, civil, and likely to have some sort of effect is worth pursuing.

[Kadosho]

Also tweeted, hope the message gains enough notice. This really bites. >.<"

[Main Finger]

Geez, this is really unsettling. Hopefully it was just a misunderstanding that can be cleared up. But with all the talk of internet censorship lately, the whole thing makes me very uncomfortable.

[Bahamut]

Totally disappointed at YouTube for their action here - shame on Google! Whatever caused this, I hope they find a way to address this and improve it so it doesn't affect legitimate accounts.

[KieranCarden]

Also tweeted, though I don't use twitter that much so I'm not sure the extent of which it will help.

Pretty disappointed in YouTube but honestly it doesn't really surprise me (the fact that YouTube would pull something like this that is).

[scarslasher]

Have you checked your email (including spam) telling you which video caused it.

Apparently it's standard YouTube procedure to tell you which video is was.

[Souliarc]

Would you mind if I wrote them instead of tweeting?

I would do the same (partly because I don't have a Twitter account, and partly because I hope there isn't a character limit), but I'm having trouble finding a "general" contact form.

I'd imagine this suspension is just a minor mistake.

[Kuolema]

I would do the same (partly because I don't have a Twitter account, and partly because I hope there isn't a character limit), but I'm having trouble finding a "general" contact form.

Same here. Anyone know the correct place to email them?

[KieranCarden]

Same here. Anyone know the correct place to email them?

http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/request.py?hl=en&contact_type=contact_policy&policy=yt&rd=1

This is the only place I found that was talking about being able to e-mail them.

Otherwise there was also:

http://www.youtube.com/t/contact_us

Which has a few different resources.

Not sure if any of that is what you're looking for though.

[Nonamer]

Retweeted. I only have 32 followers...over half of whom have never heard of OCR. Hope it works.

EDIT: Just for fun we should include #OccupyYouTube

[Kuolema]

http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/request.py?hl=en&contact_type=contact_policy&policy=yt&rd=1

This is the only place I found that was talking about being able to e-mail them.

Otherwise there was also:

http://www.youtube.com/t/contact_us

Which has a few different resources.

Not sure if any of that is what you're looking for though.

Yeah, it's looking like email isn't a great option...I assume djp has already contacted them with a dispute anyway.
Good luck with the tweets!

[Dunther]

Retweeted, I'll spread the word on facebook too.

[PROTO·DOME]

I've spread'd the word.

Hngh, lame stuff.

[Nex]

Done and done. Will try calling them tomorrow to see if that helps.

http://www.youtube.com/t/contact_us
YouTube, LLC
901 Cherry Ave.
San Bruno, CA 94066
USA
Phone: +1 650-253-0000
Fax: +1 650-253-0001

[DaMonz]

May the OCR love prevail! :D
I'm spreading the word to everyone I know.

[Shhteve]

This is madness! I'll do my part to help out.

[Chernabogue]

I'll do what I can as soon as I come back from work.

Lame stuff, as other said. I can't believe what happened... OCR = Spam? Seriously wtf...

[timaeus222]

This is an outrage!

[Inferno232]

I helped spread the word. Dammit, Youtube, this is just plain silly.

[Brandon Strader]

There was probably a deaf guy who saw every OC ReMix video as it was posted, saw that each one was exactly the same thing, and flagged them all. I know that sounds silly but anything is possible.

Also Youtube is only like 30% to blame, this was people who reported OCR's vids... :-(

Youtube is partially to blame because they don't actually look into any claims, and they do let improper copyright claims go through constantly, as mentioned earlier.

[timaeus222]

JOSE! Someone. Go to this link!
http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/request.py?contact_type=accountdisabled&hl=en-US
Did you try asking there yet?

[DjMystix]

done and done.

I really hope that they restore the channel with all the hard work done intact (that "terminated" word is very scary).

EDIT:

Goddammit! All OCR videos are gone from my favorites list on YT! So we'll have to re-add them when the channel is back I guess.

[Brandon Strader]

JOSE! Someone. Go to this link!
http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/request.py?contact_type=accountdisabled&hl=en-US
Did you try asking there yet?
This is good stuff ^

I didn't know that page existed. Hopefully DJP sees it!

[Txai]

All OCR videos are gone from my favorites list on YT! So we'll have to re-add them when the channel is back I guess.

Or maybe you could add the music to, you know, a winamp playlist or something.

[Fishy]

This is closer to spam then the channel ever was.

[Kenogu Labz]

Thing is, it's entirely unfeasible to investigate each individual claim. This is the reason they have the suspension system in place: the automated system suspends the channel, after which real people can step in and evaluate claims, etc. My guess is this is an automated procedure, triggered after the channel hit some critical mass of flags or reports. Could be very wrong, though.

[Lyrai]

Maybe someone got scared over SOPA or the e-Parasite or whatever it's called now and "acted pre-emptivly"

[DjMystix]

okay I need to clear one thing. When I open any OCR YT URL,

I see this:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3443029/ocr_terminated1.JPG

and NOT this:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3443029/ocr_spam.JPG

Not sure where the whole spam thing came from (or am I the only one seeing that "terminated" message)?

EDIT:
Never mind. Just tried going to the channel/user page and saw this:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3443029/ocr_spam2.JPG

This gives hope that all videos are there. They simply need to re-activate the account and nothing will be lost.

[Rexy]

I've done my part and re-tweeted. This is a bad day for OCR I am sure :(

[cfx]

This is closer to spam then the channel ever was.

So YouTube, you think we spam? Now we will!
Jokes aside, I share the sentiment, Fishy. But at the same time, this is totally ridiculous.

OCR has a judges panel to help make sure music is sufficiently different from the original to avoid exactly this type of thing (on top of forcing people to not to be lazy in their remixes).

I did my tweets, and now to hurry up and wait. Armchair activism at its finest?
We need to assemble and protest!

[Fishy]

I was joking. I spammed that shit on twitter anyway. TWICE!

[Kureejii Lea]

There was probably a deaf guy who saw every OC ReMix video as it was posted, saw that each one was exactly the same thing, and flagged them all. I know that sounds silly but anything is possible.

That's what I was thinking. Well, not necessarily the deaf part, but that the videos all appear the same and someone jumped the gun before using their brain.

[Shael Riley]

Man, fuck the po-lice! I mean YouTube.

Tweeted.

[timaeus222]

This is good stuff ^

I didn't know that page existed. Hopefully DJP sees it!

You know what, I'll just PM DJP.

[LostChronos]

Hey Mr. Lloyd. Maybe it might be a good idea to put your own music sampler into the site until the Youtube debacle gets straightened out. If it ever does... First I lose a ton of videos on my YT page because they were the property of EMI, and now this shit!

[Sinewav]

I don't want to live on this Internet anymore.

[Electrolisystem]

I bet someone used the spam flag "Mass Advertising: means someone who is using automated systems or bots to advertise."

Where we? Um,
NO(Resub)

Jokes aside, I think that you should tweet at @Google along with @YouTube. This might get things working again.

Also, if any OCR people happen to work at a Google facility, please see if you can do something about this.

Also,http://galeri4.uludagsozluk.com/113/i-don-t-want-to-live-on-this-planet-anymore_173479.jpg

[Crulex]

Youtube: First you fuck with SMG, and now OCR? This is war, I tell ya, WAR! I don't have Twitter, but I'll find another way to help or at least spread the word and get others in on this.

[Noraean]

They were just mad at how much traffic a not-for-profit organization was generating.

[Mae]

I retweeted the suggested tweet...kind of looking a bit like, um, spam :nicework:

I also tweeted a link to the OCR content policy. I'm kind of wondering if the error page for OCR on YouTube is just a standard "Suspended due to drama" message, and maybe they're afraid of copyright infringements due to most content on OCR's channel being video game music/video related. By the way, no I did not read any posts before mine except the intro post. So if someone else already mentioned that, sorry for stealin' your thunder. I have life to get back to and don't have time for the forums much anymore

[DrewGourley]

Probably a preemptive strike for SOPA and PROTECT-IP. This is what the United States Govt. is allowing our internet to become. I'm frustrated beyond words.

[Electrolisystem]

I don't want to live on this Internet anymore.

Probably a preemptive strike for SOPA and PROTECT-IP. This is what the United States Govt. is allowing our internet to become. I'm frustrated beyond words.

Make a new internet then

[Sinewav]

Make a new internet then

Good idea! I'll go over to the hardware store and pick up some tubes.

[Mae]

Good idea! I'll go over to the hardware store and pick up some tubes.
Be sure to set the tubes up in parallel. We've seen what happens when one thing breaks in this current series of tubes.

[The Author]

Spammed the spam...

err

Tweeted the tweet.

[Prophecy]

Spammed the spam...


I think we're all aware that sending large quantities of the same message to youtube may not be the best way to prove we aren't spammers. But what alternative exists? Youtube has effectively thrown away hundreds of hours of effort on the part of the ocremix team, defamed them without just cause, and disrupted their ability to function as a non-profit entity. Youtube's actions have severe consequences. To add insult to injury, they've provided no direct means of rectifying their error. Therefore, I believe we are justified in pursuing any reasonable action to correct this grievous mistake.

[BardicKnowledge]

Related to this, if you're a US citizen please consider signing the petition at http://stopcensorship.org/ -- as people who have a relatively greater understanding of the importance of the Internet, we really need to be leading the charge against these two bills.

[Meteo Xavier]

I work at a marketing company and today I am checking and confirming our list of clients we have on Google accounts - logins and passwords, and a huge number of them, including my own personal Gmail account, had been disabled - mine seemed to give me the disabled message in error.

I've yet to get to the real bottom of this, but it made me think of OCR's predicament. As Google has been updating so much of their stuff lately, I'm wondering if there are some errors going around. I'm pretty sure thats not what's going on here, but something I thought to share as it might be relevant.

[Dasgust]

Tweeted and shared with people. This is horribly unfair.

[KennyFarino]

Tweet and shared everywhere, as well as making a Blistered Thumbs page reporting on the news so that support could be rallied against this unfair action! GameJams supports the OCRemix community!

[Sinewav]

Be sure to set the tubes up in parallel. We've seen what happens when one thing breaks in this current series of tubes.

Yeah, ever since they shut GeoCities down, the whole thing has gone straight to hell.

[PhatJon]

Is You Tube really that out of touch? How can they not know what OCRemix is about. This whole debacle has got to be the work of some moderator over there that is living under a rock.

[Electrolisystem]

Is You Tube really that out of touch? How can they not know what OCRemix is about. This whole debacle has got to be the work of some moderator over there that is living under a rock.

Nope, it's an automated server that's done it.

Apparently, if a channel gets enough flags, then a server will suspend the account. Then someone else has to come and check out the claim, then decide to fix it or not, based on the claims and the flags sent, in this case, "spam".


How about we begin emailing Google and YouTube about it?

[Cash and Change]

I made a twitter account just for the occasion, which I'll probably never use unless OCR needs my help again. I tweeted and shared on Facebook. I hope the account is up and running again soon.

[LiquidRain]

Total balls! I've tweeted at YouTube from the Rainwave account, for what it's worth.

I also know someone who works at YouTube, and I forwarded him this info. He said he'd be reaching out soon. That might be worth more than my tweet. :)

[edit] The YT account is back up!

[Prophecy]

Yay, it's back.

[Brandon Strader]

Looks like it has to generate all new thumbnails, hahaha!! Glad the videos are back though. That's a lot of thumbnails to regenerate. It's their own darn fault. :lol:

[Syllix]

Nice teamwork guys! Glad this was all sorted out! Huzzah for the OCReMix Community! :)

[Crulex]

Victory is OCR's!

yay.

[Angry Ancestor]

*applause* Yay! Well done to everyone involved in the restoration movement.

[psychowolf]

Nice work everyone. :D

[SuperiorX]

Did they ever explain why they actually disabled it in the first place?

[Dyne]

EXCELLENT NEWS! Congrats OCR for getting your YouTube Channel back!

[myudoicp]

GJ guys.
Any news/reason/explanations about it?

*Edit: Good thing I haven't deleted my embedded videos, everything working as expected.

[timaeus222]

Success! All is well again! =d

[CC Ricers]

GOOD NEWS EVERYONE, you are now reading this message in Dr. Farnsworth's voice.

And score one for the OCR crew. I can get back to my regularly scheduled listening of Goonies 2 - I'm Taking It All Back, which was my plan before the channel went under.

[Bored_Man]

This reminded me a whole lot of the issue with SilvaGunner and others that uploaded music. At least Youtube has no actual reason to keep ocremix's channel down, so thank goodness for that.

[Mae]

VICTOLY! Now back to lurking by not lurking.

[Dj Mokram]

Yay! Glad that the account was brought back to life so swiftly. :)

By the way, in regard to:
it’s pretty much impossible for us to be commercially deceptive.
I'm just gonna go ahead and speculate since no other reason for the takedown was given and this wasn't mentioned anywhere in this thread.
Could the links in every video description to buy hoodies/shirts and to make donations have led some people to draw the wrong conclusions?

[cfx]

I was joking. I spammed that shit on twitter anyway. TWICE!

I did one cookie-cutter and one of my own. :smile:

[Sinewav]

I did one cookie-cutter and one of my own. :smile:

Yeah, same here. I retweeted MAGFest and wrote out my own.

[DaMonz]

Yay! :-D
I'm glad this took so little time!

[Platonist]

congratulation, guys.
if i had seen this sooner, i would've tweeted my ass off 8)

[Top Gun]

Maybe the celebration was a bit premature...it looks like the video for "Zelda's First Trip to the Village" was taken down for the exact same reason. WTF is going on, YouTube?

[Brandon Strader]

There's gotta be something set wrong somewhere that is causing this... I doubt people would report it just to be mean. Maybe there's a tag or something in the description or even something in the video itself that is setting this off now. :cry:

[Meteo Xavier]

I doubt people would report it just to be mean.

Have you been on the internet long? History has shown people will do all kinds of outrageously awful things with the mask of anonymity just because they can. The internet has been the playground for that kind of behavior for two decades and running.

Could be any kind of combination of company employees, copyright sphincters, scorned submitters, dickheads, proletariat, occupy OCR protesters, debt consolidators, out-of-work lead saxophone players from 1985, sentient human embryos, imprisoned Nigerian royalty, desperate housewives, juggalos and Bill Watterson making things a mess for us.

These people exist, and they are threatening OCR's way of life.

[DusK]

Occupy YouTube?

[Verdegrand]

hi, sorry that i post into this thread so late, but i'd like to say something about this. i know that channels that have no connection to vgm, ocremix, remixers or cover channels get friendship invites from ocremix. so, do you guys go around youtube searching for random channels and just send them invites? that looks rather like a bot or crawler system that's doing that, there are systems that extract channel names and then send them invites, and those are prohibited by the youtube terms of use. i guess they changed some stuff and the invite send frequency that worked fine for a long time was over the new threshold and that triggered a ban. but yeah i am just speculating here. i would still be interested what motivates you to send friendship invitations all across youtube, even to channels that are completely unrelated to vgm.
anyway, many greetings

[Liontamer]

hi, sorry that i post into this thread so late, but i'd like to say something about this. i know that channels that have no connection to vgm, ocremix, remixers or cover channels get friendship invites from ocremix. so, do you guys go around youtube searching for random channels and just send them invites? that looks rather like a bot or crawler system that's doing that, there are systems that extract channel names and then send them invites, and those are prohibited by the youtube terms of use. i guess they changed some stuff and the invite send frequency that worked fine for a long time was over the new threshold and that triggered a ban. but yeah i am just speculating here. i would still be interested what motivates you to send friendship invitations all across youtube, even to channels that are completely unrelated to vgm.
anyway, many greetings
That's all wrong and speculative. You're even allowed to use automated systems in a way that doesn't exceed what a human can do, and aren't used to otherwise violate other aspects of the Terms of Service.

You agree not to use or launch any automated system, including without limitation, "robots," "spiders," or "offline readers," that accesses the Service in a manner that sends more request messages to the YouTube servers in a given period of time than a human can reasonably produce in the same period by using a conventional on-line web browser.

As far as who we send friend invites to, it's people who have commented on several years' worth OC ReMix videos not uploaded by us, VGM fans, and gamers, not random people. Some people don't care enough about OC ReMixes or game music, don't know us by name, or are extremely private about friend invites, even though they've liked OCR or VGM fan videos, so that's bound to happen. For example, with 25YEARLEGEND out, we're sending friend invites to Zelda music fans, because they're more likely to give the album a chance. I'd like to think that makes sense.

That said, friend invites had nothing to do with the suspension, and we only send bulletins about music and community news. We only send private messages to individual users, and don't do video sharing.

What we were told by people who were able to look a little more into it was that our account got suspended after a "false positive" report about our video content. That also explains why a couple of days after the account was restored, we had a single video taken down for the exact same spam/scam/deceptive commercial content reasoning (http://youtube.com/watch?v=jLOCmDJgixo). We immediately appealed that and had it restored in a couple of days as well.

My hunch (and it's only a hunch) is that someone on YouTube reported a ton of our videos at once and the sum total of that led to an immediate suspension by way of their automated system. Again, that's a guess, but that all I can infer based on the later video takedown right after the suspension.

The Twitter campaign idea we got from @Problogger's own channel takedown also helped a lot in showing that we had a fanbase that could vouch for the videos being music and nothing spammy, scammy or commercially deceptive. We aren't advertising "making money from working at home," or anything remotely like that.

There are also at least 3 people at Google who are OCR fans who helped us immensely with addressing the improper takedown, and making sure our appeals didn't fall on deaf ears at YouTube. THANK YOU, Googlers (AND MAGFest for the additional help)!

[washudoll]

Glad OCremix got its youtube account back.

Speaking of youtube. They changed the layout again. I don't know what to think of it though.

[Brandon Strader]

I saw this comment on the kotaku article about BadAss and thought it seemed relevant to the discussion of how OCR could possibly be flagged on Youtube for "spam, scams, or deceptive content"

All of the newer stuff strikes me as completely misleading. If there's a remix of something, chances are it'll only contain fifteen to thirty seconds of the original song while the rest is completely new and unrelated.

This boss album largely doesn't do that, which I appreciate, but just about every other remix on the site does.

I'm just posting this to get your opinion on it, I'm not saying it's true or false or forming any kind of personal opinion on it in any way. :-P

Here are some other comments:

ugh, drum machines

Too much final fantasy.

aaarrrgh...the torrent file has no seeds currently!!! (>_<)

WoW, Too many Nobuo Uematsu!!!

Totally deserved!!! he is the BEST!!