After a complaint from YouTube channel Lofi Girl over the abusive false copyright strikes, YouTube said it will be terminating the YouTube account of a local music company that issued the copyright takedown notice.
On Sunday (10 July), Lofi Girl took to Twitter to share that they can no longer play the livestreams after a Malaysian music company named FMC Music Sdn Bhd Malaysia lodged a copyright strike against them.
Following the copyright strike, Lofi Girl’s videos titled “lofi hip hop radio – beats to relax and study to” and “lofi hip hop radio – beats to sleep/chill to” were taken down from YouTube’s platform.
The lofi radios have been taken down because of false copyright strikes, hopefully @YouTubeCreators @YouTube will sort this quickly… pic.twitter.com/X01hL6jT2N
— Lofi Girl (@lofigirl) July 10, 2022
The videos feature a widely-recognisable animation of a girl studying at her desk with headphones on, and it is popular for its calming music that people enjoy listening to while studying, working or even sleeping.
Angry fans of Lofi Girl have also started the hashtag #BringBackLofiGirl on Twitter, in the hopes that YouTube would resolve the matter.
On 11 July, YouTube responded to the issue and said 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 ❤️🩹
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) July 11, 2022
FMC Music’s response
In response to the outrage, FMC Music Sdn Bhd has come forward to explain that it wasn’t their intention to file the false copyright strike against Lofi Girl on YouTube.
Speaking to Malaysiakini, a spokesperson for the company said it was a victim of hackers who used the company’s YouTube account to file the now-infamous copyright claim against Lofi Girl.
The spokesperson also claimed that the alleged hacking had occurred during the long weekend.
“We only found out yesterday morning when we came into the office and realised that someone had hacked into our channel and made a copyright claim.”
“We have already reported this to Google and we are hoping that this works out in the end,” said the spokesperson.
Meanwhile, the spokesperson added that company has no reason to bring copyright accusations against Lofi Girl as their music genres were vastly different.
