My “Hair-Raising” Personal Experience With The Pandemic

Philip DeFranco called for videos about personal experiences with the pandemic. The timing was great since I wanted to make a pandemic-related video. I can also put his picture on the thumbnail to get more clicks. Here’s my “hair raising” personal experience with the pandemic.

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Black Friday/Cyber Monday 2021 Shopping Haul

For Black Friday/Cyber Monday 2021 deals, I bought four products to change different aspects of my life.

Let’s look at my shopping haul for this year.

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George Floyd’s Death Blurred Out

YouTube sent me a late night email on Wednesday, August 4, 2021, informing me that a video on my channel was no longer compliant with the Community Guidelines and age restricted (a viewer must be 18 years or older and logged in to view the video).

That was odd.

I maintain a family- and advertiser-friendly, and, under the Federal Trade Commission’s COPPA, not “made for kids” channel. All my videos are suitable for a general audience (13 years or older).

Which video got age restricted?

My montage video that alternated clips from George Floyd’s death and the first SpaceX crewed flight while Gil Scott-Heron narrated his 1970 poem, “Whitey On The Moon,” about poverty on the earth and white men on the moon.

Read the rest of the essay on Medium. If you’re interested in supporting my writing on Medium, become a paid member and I’ll get a referral bonus.

Does Storyblocks License Supersedes Creative Commons License?

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

On my YouTube channel, there are two types of videos that get copyright claims I can do nothing about.

  • Copyrighted music at public events
  • Videos I make on purpose with copyrighted music

A copyright claim allows a collection agency — a third-party working on behalf of a copyright owner — to collect ad revenues from videos with copyrighted music.

A third type of video that sometimes get copyright claims are the videos that I make with Creative Commons music. I always appeal to release the copyright claim on these videos.

Creative Commons is an irrevocable license. If a musician signs a label deal, their new licensing doesn’t affect my usage of the music under the Creative Commons license.

The relevant part of the license is this: “The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.”

When I cite that line in a appeal, the collection agency releases the copyright claim within hours or a few days.

A recent copyright claim on the behalf of Storyblocks took a bit more effort to resolve because they tried to assert their licensing over the Creative Commons licensing. That was unacceptable.

Read the rest of the essay on Medium. If you’re interested in supporting my writing on Medium, become a paid member and I’ll get a referral bonus.

Why I Buy $20 US Mouse When I Have $300 US Keyboard

I tweeted last month that I replaced the Cougar Minos X5 mouse with the Cougar Minos X2 mouse. The scroll wheel on the X5 became “twitchy” when cycling through inventory in FortNite. The last thing I want to pull out during a firefight is an unloaded weapon. The X2 was half the cost of the X5, similar in size, and didn’t have RGB. That created a controversy for some viewers of my YouTube channel. Why do I buy a $20 US mouse when I have a $300 keyboard on my desk?

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Why JayzTwoCents Is Using Gleam For Giveaways (Again)

YouTube cracked down on Gleam, a popular contest management service, in early 2019. Two dozen small content creators got community guideline warnings for having Gleam links in the description. Nobody cared about them. When JayzTwoCents got a warning for using Gleam for his giveaway, it became a real big deal. He could have avoided the warning if he had paid attention to YouTube policy changes. I’ll explain what happened then, what changed since then, and JayzTwoCents’s new giveaway.

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Revisiting The Verge PC Guide Fiasco w/Stefan Etienne

Linus Tech Tips had a surprising episode with special guest Stefan Etienne this week. If he looks familiar, Stefan hosted the infamous The Verge PC build guide video two years ago. Linus gave him the opportunity to tell his side of the story while fixing the mistakes he made in that video. I’m going to recap the PC guide fiasco, the copyright strikes that followed, and the new info from Stefan.

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