Ludwig Ahgren was hit with what he thought was a suspension from YouTube just three days after leaving his massive Twitch following. According to Kotaku, during his stream, Ahgren was playing other YouTube videos when he came across the infamously catchy Baby Shark song. Ludwig’s stream was suspended after, giving the impression to his viewers and to himself that he had been banned for violating YouTube’s copyright policies.
Ludwig was not hit with a copyright strike or suspension and also he was not suspended, according to Lauren Verrusio, YouTube’s head of creator and consumer communications and that their Content ID tool was picked up while he was playing an unlicensed video while he was going live to his fans.
The whole incident was just a case of confusion, and Ludwig could have continued the livestream just fine if he had just stopped playing the copyrighted material and explained that he wasn’t sure what he was seeing on the backend and thought it was a suspension.
Ludwig addressed the incident in a video on his secondary channel, interpreting the warning as a ban and claiming that the corporate overlords who own Baby Shark “have, like, an iron fist on YouTube, and so they took me down.” YouTube has contacted Ludwig to explain the platform’s copyright policies, and Ludwig plans to go live again today, according to Verrusio.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, has caused problems across all video sharing and live streaming platforms, with creators’ videos being taken down and demonetized without their knowledge. Twitch launched a tool that makes it easier to delete old videos with copyrighted music earlier this year, and then issued a wave of copyright strikes in response to DMCA complaints. YouTube, like Twitch, has a three-strike policy: three copyright violations and you’ll be permanently banned. To mitigate the impact of the DMCA, YouTube began informing creators if their videos contained copyrighted material before they were published.
Ludwig’s mistakes are likely to be noticed as he gets to know his new streaming hub. He currently has 2.19 million YouTube subscribers, with more on the way from the rest of his Twitch fanbase.
