Dear LoveCat Music Part 2

Doesn’t a decade fly? Ten short years. Ten years since I had to abandon my fledgling youtube channel – Goodbye MrCheapkills.

So why am I posting this? Surely you’re still not bitter Dave?

Well no, I’m not. In fact the only time I ever reflect on the events that caused me to abandon a channel as it was starting to take off was when a fake account would message me out of the blue to ask me to take my original posts about the issue down. Like this one:

Yes,  2017. Three years ago.

What about the stuff from 2010, what’s that all about? Well you’d need to have a look at the saga, and especially the comments from that time: Here’s all the relevant posts from that time

So why post now?

Because after a decade I’ve had another communication, this time from the man himself. Mr Randy Fischer everybody, the Big B himself, Ariel, Sarah, and Benny. Apparently the posts have upset his daughter, and times are tough.

Apparently I should “let bygones be bygones”. Randy, I have. I did. I posted a contemporaneous account of what happened at the time while you dicked me around from fake accounts, and then I got on with my life.

But since we’re apparently stuck in the past. Let’s rediscover what YouTube (YT) was like in 2010. It was a time when YT was under pressure to act on copyright infringement following a less than exemplary history (during which time it actively encouraged users to upload infringing content).

YT introduced a Copyright Strike system which was a 3 strikes and you’re out system. At the time the strikes did not expire and unless you had a lot of clout you couldn’t really do anything about it. So if your channel got strikes, it was in serious jeopardy.

As well as randomly finding infringing videos, YT introduced a content matching system that would detect if audio used in a video matched an entry in its database. From that match the copyright holder could decide what to do.

The content matching system wasn’t a nuke. It could also be used just to mute infringing content, or be used to take any revenue from advertising on that video. To be clear, for a channel to receive a Copyright Strike (the most serious infringement) THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER HAD TO REQUEST IT.

That’s what our Randy did. To over 600 videos. I don’t know how many channels received strikes, but over 600 videos were gone. Except for two. One appears to be a random video that may have been missed (hey, Randy nuke that shit!) and the other is from the actual content creator (i.e. ultimate copyright holder) whose video STILL encourages users to use his music and upload videos – ten years later (which will then get pulled by the YT content matching system I assume).

So here’s the situation, Randy:

Bygones are bygones. I don’t give a shit about LoveCatMusic, or Love Cat Music, or LoveCat Music, or LoveCatMusic.com. All the posts relating to Love Cat Music are a contemporaneous account of what happened at the time, are not libellous, and are not coming down.

I agree, these are tough times. And I think what’s happening is that you may be attempting to sanitise the history of LoveCatMusic to make you more attractive to clients. But perhaps after weeding out all the bits you can control you find that my decade old blog post suddenly creeps up the search engine ranks? I don’t know, I’m just, as President Trump would say, spitballing here. I haven’t even bothered to google you or your site to see if it’s any better than it was in 2010 because bygones really are bygones.

Randy, you said that your daughter read my posts and was upset and disturbed…. Erm, okay. Well, I guess that’s the price you pay for being a dick a decade ago. For creating fake accounts to try and gaslight me and others. For refusing to even confirm that you had the authority to nuke 600 videos. To take advantage of the YT copyright strike system to make a quick buck (the track had been used in the soundtrack of Super Troopers).

Yup, times are tough. Times were tough in 2010. You have no idea how tough. So here’s some friendly advice for you to move on with, so that YOU can let bygones be bygones. Perhaps even how to explain it to your daughter (if she actually exists).

1. Abandon the business you have tried to build up. Ditch Love Cat Music and recreate under a new name. Can I suggest Cat Love Music? (it’s pretty much what I had to do).
2. Teach your daughter that what you do on the internet is forever. That’s a good life lesson.
3. Explain to her that ten years ago you thought it was more important to be a dick than to consider what would happen to the 600 channels you served copyright strikes on.
4. Make sure she understands the importance of integrity, especially in NOT creating fake accounts instead of engaging legitimately.
5. Lastly and most importantly, ten years after the fact is generally not the time to get the resolution YOU want from the person you fucked over at the time.

And a final life lesson. Posting “Confidential” on a an unsolicited private message does not make is private, or confidential. So here’s the last round of comms from you:

The blogs stay. Don’t message me again. The water is under the bridge. The bygone is gone. Don’t be a dick.

It’s Been a Long Time

Since I posted anything on anywhere. With my work contract winding up it’s been difficult to think of gaming in any other way than just playing. I’m looking to change that in the near future and get back to posting more frequently, and also on backslashgaming.com.

In the meantime, here’s a quick run down of what’s been going on:

Borderlands Let’s Play. After one episode I’m going to be abandoning this particular debacle. Sulley is great in the comms and we tried to get Duck in with us last night, but the rubbish lobby system prevented us from being in the same game together. The game that Sulley and I were working on was then tainted by a moral dilemna (and I don’t care what the spell checker says that is the correct spelling of dilemna!). I’ll put a video up explaining all, but the issue meant that we couldn’t in good faith continue with our characters and neither of us wants to start again. We even tried to have another friend, Shiznit, host a game, but we couldn’t even see him in the lobby menus.

If you missed it, here’s episode 1 of the series [NSFW]:

Still been playing BFBC2, unlocked Magnum Ammo on the Xbox version and made a video about it which was accepted and posted to the Pixel Enemy Revive channel (thanks guys)

I’ve been following the same method for playing on the PC, but I don’t find it as enjoyable on PC. I’m getting old and lazy so prefer the controller to keyboard and mouse. I’ve not recorded any PC gameplay as even with a new graphics card, my computer still struggles a bit with it.

After recently being gifted Team Fortress 2 by the Awesome D, it’s now free to play. Typical. I returned the favour with Monday Night Combat which we have yet to play, and a game that I’ve only played for about thirty minutes. I mix up some TF2 gameplay with info on a MNC giveaway in this vid:

Another game that is now free to play is Arma 2. I downloaded it last night. Not had a chance to play it yet, but it looks pretty good. You can get it from here: http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=14588

Oh, I’ve also been on YouTube for just over a year. Well just over a year uploading vids and the like. Here is my anniversary video:

When I started my channel I did not go in to it lightly. Having lurked for a number of years I was aware of the level of random hate and trolling that is an everyday occurrence on YouTube. I was lucky in a way that from the start I was part of the Battlefield community and gained support from a great bunch of subscribers and fellow uploaders. I was all too aware that just because you upload to YouTube, or play a certain game does not mean that everyone who does the same has to either like you, or support you. But then, that’s the same in everything you do in life. So I’ve always treated YouTube as something that I do to amuse me and those close to me. Subscriber count is just a number and ratings don’t matter.

Erm, that’s pretty much it for the now. I’ve probably missed out loads, so there may be some updates in the very soon.

Peas and loaves.

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Find me on PSN – MrCheapKills
Find me on XBL – MrCheapKills

David Nicol is Articles Editor for hupitgaming.com, YouTube gaming commentator and blogger based in the UK.

Why not check out my new gaming site: backslashgaming.com

No YouTube, You Haven’t Found What I Like

I hate sales, I hate sales people. I hate being sold to. I hate being told what I should like and what I should think. I know what I like, I know what I want. If you haven’t got what I’m asking for then I’m not going to buy some other stuff because it’s in stock, and if I’m not buying other stuff off the shelf then it’s because I either don’t like it, or it doesn’t interest me in the first place.

Ooooh, bit of a rant there, but that’s how I feel about crap like this:

GTFO!

Every time I log in to YouTube I get this rubbish. “Hey why don’t you subscribe to Machinima, and Wingsofredemption and Woodysgamertag? We show you their channel link every day so why not just click subscribe and we’ll stop?” Maybe it’s because I don’t want to subscribe to those channels, I’ve been subscribed to those channels and unsubscribed for very good reasons (which regular and historic readers of this blog may or may not remember).

Fine, let’s go to my subscriptions list because that’s where the channels that I want to watch live…. oh wait, YouTube is trying to tell me something again:

“HEY! YOU SEEM TO HAVE MISSED IT ON THE FIRST PAGE…. WHY DON’T YOU SUBSCRIBE TO THESE GUYS? THEY’RE REALLY GOOD, HONEST!”

Seriously YouTube: FOAD

I’m fairly confident that they are not the only three gaming channels on YouTube…. or are they paying for the privilege of polluting my screen? Either way, YouTube needs to sort this rubbish out. If they’ve shown me the same channels more than three times and I still haven’t clicked on there then chances are I’m not going to.

It would be much better for me, and YouTube uploaders in general if they rotated these “featured” bods like in the good/bad old days. Which reminds me of a video that Chris (redd_dragons) tweeted a while back where AndrewBravener talked about how YouTube no longer helps out the smaller channels to get noticed while the bigger channels just keep getting bigger.

I suppose there are parallels to real life and capitalism there which are quite apt as YouTube is a business and as we all know businesses nowadays are only interested in turning a profit by whatever means (and who cares about the little guy right?).

Peas and loaves.

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Find me on PSN – MrCheapKills
Find me on XBL – MrCheapKills

David Nicol is Articles Editor for hupitgaming.com, YouTube gaming commentator and blogger based in the UK.

Why not check out my new gaming site: backslashgaming.com

YouTube’s Content Matching

To save me time, this is pretty much how YouTube’s content matching works:

There are 8 differences....

YouTube compares existing content on the database against a reference copy from the copyright holder.

So here’s what happens. A copyright holder, or their representative, provides YouTube with a copy of their material. YouTube crunches it using a super secret technique that allows it to be cross checked against existing content on the database and any new material being uploaded.

The content is given a digital fingerprint which provides a number of pieces of data that can be searched against in a similar fashion to forensic fingerprinting. Anyone who’s watched CSI will have seen them search the fingerprint databases for a ‘match’.

Essentially when searching content the YouTube algorithm is not going to be set to only find 100% matches since usage of some materials may be small in the overall content of a video. This can create false positives (although rare) where legitimate content gets flagged for potential copyright infringement.

Content that is matched to the content match database on YouTube will either automatically have the artist name and a link to buy the track included in the description area:

Some artists/copyright holders understand the power of free advertising (like Lady Gaga above) and so they allow their work to be flagged in the manner above. Others will instruct YouTube to automatically disallow their content from being reproduced – this will result in either the video having its audio stripped (in the case of an audio match) or the video being removed immediately and a Copyright strike made against the uploaders channel. A copyright strike can only be removed if it was implemented in error, that is, only in cases where an uploader has permission to use the content, or is the copyright holder.

So what about non-matched content, cover versions and live versions? Good news and bad news. You’ll be able to use those without any trouble…… until the copyright holder gives YouTube copies of those recordings to content match against.

All this relates to both video and audio content too. The fact is, YouTube is owned by Google. Google are very good at doing search related things. They’re also a business. Copyright infringement is bad for business so they’re not going to be interested in fighting your corner with regard to copyright issues.

If you’re a YouTube Partner, and you upload an infringing video, it’ll be set to private and you get a nice message telling you to sort your shit out. Everyone else gets the video removed and a copyright strike until such time as you can provide proof that you have permission to use the content.

My advice to anyone out there is to avoid using other peoples material altogether. Sure, there are a million songs that are begging to be used. And any forward thinking artist would love to have their material reach a wider audience, unfortunately business comes first, which means the copyright hammer hangs over everyone who uses other people’s material, no matter how apt or well intentioned.

(yes, there are exceptions and allowances within copyright law….. YouTube is not interested in those. If you want to argue points of law then you’ll have to set up your own ISP and host those vids yourself thanks to the DMCA and EUCD)

Peas and loaves.

Want to know how to comment on or subscribe to this blog? Click here.

Find me on PSN – MrCheapKills

David Nicol is Articles Editor for hupitgaming.com, YouTube gaming commentator and blogger based in the UK.

Why not check out my new gaming site: backslashgaming.com

The Gamer’s Craic Episode 3 and other Fruit

Episode 3 of The Gamer’s Craic, hosted by Donncha and I is now available.

Listen via the player or right click and download here to listen later.

Our guest this time is NGT director and Hupit bod Gary, AKA Hypermole and also mole237 on YouTube.

The main topics of the podcast are the C64 PC (?!), Homefront, Vanquish and Battlefield Play 4 Free.

On Donncha’s post regarding this episode he urges listeners NOT to listen past the end jingle……

Don’t forget that Don’t Revive Me Bro also have their podcast running, with the most recent featuring Daniel ‘Zh1nt0’ Matros, the community manager for BattleField games at DICE. You can find it all here

DrunkinDunkin’s blog here

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If 40 minutes of me, Donncha and Gary whittering away is enough for you then I also have a 20+ minute vid up. It’s a request effort, live commentary play by play of a game of Conquest on Panama Canal. There are some sweary bits, so NSFW.

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And lastly, I recently put up a video entitled ‘Let’s Talk About: Copyright’. It’s the first time that I’ve shown my face on camera and so I’m a little talking head in the corner over some gameplay. The main theme of the video is why it’s not worth trying to get around the issue of copyright on YouTube, why it’s right for content creators to be protected by copyright and the usage of Creative Commons material as an alternative.

The next Let’s Talk will be on the subject of subscribers.

That’s all for now.

Peas and loaves.

Want to know how to comment on or subscribe to this blog? Click here.

Find me on PSN – MrCheapKills

David Nicol is Articles Editor for hupitgaming.com, YouTube gaming commentator and blogger based in the UK.

Block That!

In my last post (How to get Blocked 101) I used a real life example of the sort of message that most people who upload to YouTube can expect to get.

I had blocked the channel mentioned and reported for spam and went on my merry way. Part of my way of merrying is to have loads of tabs and windows open. It’s something I’ve always done for no particular reason. I’m like a hoarder, but with bits and bytes and wasted memory space, but I digress.

So I’m closing down tabs in readiness to shut down when I come to the tab of the offending channel. Being nosey I decided to refresh the page to see what gems of joy the other people who they’d spammed had left in the channel comments (I’d opted for a rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ with the words wittily changed to ‘Happy Block Day’).

On F5ing the page I got this:

Okay, so I thought that YouTube was tough on copyright…. but they actually TERMINATE you for spamming. So kids, the next time you post a spam comment on YouTube and there’s a stranger at the door…. maybe it’d be best to pretend your name is not Sarah Connor.

Peas and loaves.

Want to know how to comment on or subscribe to this blog? Click here.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

David Nicol is Articles Editor for hupitgaming.com, YouTube gaming commentator and blogger based in the UK.

How to get Blocked 101

How to get blocked on YouTube

I know there are people out there who are desperate for subs, but do people actually fall for this crap? And please, don’t follow the link in message, I don’t know where it goes.

Other quick ways to get blocked:

– Post “sub4sub” or “I subbed sub back pl0x” or similar anywhere on my channel
– Be amazingly retarderated. I’m not on about just posting “OMG your a noob” or similar. I’m a growed up, that sort of thing doesn’t bother me. I mean when the reply to the request for elaboration is so amazingly devoid of…. direction, purpose or sanity that I can feel my IQ being lowered just by reading it.

And obviously having a channel filled with hate, or Obvious Troll is Obvious is not going to do you any favours either.

Why can’t I get Akismet for my channel!?

This has been a community service announcement on behalf of the bleeding obvious.

Peas and loaves.

Want to know how to comment on or subscribe to this blog? Click here.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

David Nicol is Articles Editor for hupitgaming.com, YouTube gaming commentator and blogger based in the UK.

VIDEO: The Irish Connection

This a Squad Death Match that we played on Isla Inocentes before Christmas. The three of us were recording and have put that together in to one video showing each individual feed at the top and the main window displaying the current action.

In the game you’ll see Duck tearing the map up while Donncha and I paint the town a delightful shade of mediocre. My favourite part is Donncha’s out of bounds kill on Sniper Ridge – total dedication to the cause there.

Our commentary doesn’t actually talk about the gameplay as we decided that that is pretty self explanatory so instead we talk about game tactics and how the slayers get their kills. Yes, we have a Massacring Mallard in our midst.

Duck’s audio came out quite low in the final mix though so headphones are advised to fully hear the conversation.

Also check out Donncha and Duck’s channels on here:

http://www.youtube.com/donncha2001

http://www.youtube.com/iTimoleageDuck

Peas and loaves.

Want to know how to comment on or subscribe to this blog? Click here.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

David Nicol is Articles Editor for hupitgaming.com, YouTube gaming commentator and blogger based in the UK.

Changing Settings

Bonjour peeps, can you give me some input on what settings to go with. I’ve been looking in to using mp4 rather than wmv for the vids. However, as I only have one monitor I can’t really get an objective look at what is the best set up so can you spare 21 seconds out of your life to have a look at the following three clips (7 seconds each) and then vote on which one looks the best.

They all have identical footage and filters (unsharp mask and contrast adjustment) so it’s really just a case of which looks best for you (it’s probably best to view them on YouTube and at at least 480p).

OPTION 1

OPTION 2

OPTION 3

And the poll:

Cheers peeps, much appreciated.

Happy New Year

Peas and loaves.

Want to know how to comment on or subscribe to this blog? Click here.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

David Nicol is Articles Editor for hupitgaming.com, YouTube gaming commentator and blogger based in the UK.

Would The Real Copyright Holder Please Stand Up…

Before we get in to it, let me make my position abundantly clear as Ariel and “Sarah” seem to have missed the point: I fully understand that copyright holders can enforce their rights over unauthorised use of their works. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

My issue with the two copyright strikes that I have received from YouTube is not that I have been ‘done’ for infringing copyright. It’s that I’ve been done for copyright infringement after having what I believed to be implied permission to use the material.

Since Ariel Isabel of LoveCat Music, and the person “Sarah” posting from the same IP address, have been commenting here I’d like to ask everyone, LoveCats and non LoveCats, to please tell me who Dieffe Sas is.

The reason I ask is this: Dieffemusic.com or dieffemusicdotcom on YouTube aka Dieffe Sas claims to be the copyright holder of the video: Bubbles – Bidibodi Bidibu (thanks you all) Read on…! That video is still up on YouTube, but the actual Bidibodi Bidibu video count is now down to 100.

In the video Bubbles – Bidibodi Bidibu (thanks you all) Read on…! that Dieffe Sas claims copyright on it specifically says at 0:13: “Post your new videos of “Bidibodi Bidibu” on You Tube.”

Here’s a screenie to show what I mean (and under copyright law this is fair use):

Permission to use the track?

I’ve googled Dieffe Sas and the majority of the hits relate to Dieffe Sas claiming copyright of Bubbles – Bidibodi Bidibu. I had a look at Dieffemusic.com too and it all seems fairly legit. So where does LoveCat Music come in to it? I tried searching their site for either Bubbles or Dieffe Sas…. unfortunately it wasn’t pretty:

I can recommend a number of web professionals to fix that....

I couldn’t find a search result for Bubbles either…. or access the artist catalogue…. or much else due to many many php and mysql errors. Technology eh!?

Anyhoo, if anyone can shed some light on this then that would be dandy as I know I’m not the only person who’s been caught out by this.

Peas and loaves.

Want to know how to comment on or subscribe to this blog? Click here.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

David Nicol is Articles Editor for hupitgaming.com, YouTube gaming commentator and blogger based in the UK.