What Happens If Your YouTube Channel Suddenly Disappears?
A recent case out of California, Lewis v. YouTube, continues on my terms and conditions theme from earlier.
The plaintiff in this case had a bunch of videos on YouTube. One day, she found that YouTube had deleted them. The videos had had close to 500,000 views at the time YouTube deleted them. The plaintiff claimed that she spent a lot of time and money promoting them but there was no commercial aspect to the videos; she didn’t make any money off of them.
Upon realizing YouTube had deleted her videos, she sent YouTube an e-mail asking what had happened and if her videos could be restored. She received in response what appeared to be a form e-mail informing her that she’d violated YouTube’s terms and conditions but not giving any truly specific information. The best that I can discern is that YouTube thought she was a spammer.
The plaintiff replied to the e-mail from YouTube saying that she had not engaged in any behavior violating the terms and conditions. She received another response from YouTube identical to the first. She filed a formal appeal with YouTube, and received another identical response.
So that brings us to the lawsuit in question, in which the plaintiff was alleging that YouTube violated the covenant of good faith and fair dealing implicit in its terms and conditions when it deleted her videos unjustifiably and without any notice.
To be honest, I see the plaintiff’s point and I’m kind of on her side. It’s frustrating when you have no idea what you’ve done wrong and you can’t get a website to explain anything to you and you just feel kind of powerless. The good news is that at some point she did get YouTube’s attention enough that it did restore her videos. I don’t know if that happened before or after the lawsuit was filed.
It seems, therefore, like the plaintiff got what she wanted, which was restoration of her videos. The lawsuit appears to have really been about trying to get damages, but the court pointed out that YouTube’s terms and conditions (which, let’s face it, none of us reads) contained a limitation of liability clause that is valid in California, so the plaintiff couldn’t seek any damages.
I think this is a situation where the court just thought that plaintiff had what she wanted and was just being greedy. I would be curious to see another case challenging the limitation of liability clause where the plaintiff could prove actual damages that might sway a sympathetic judge. But, for now, YouTube’s terms and conditions do act to protect YouTube from having to pay out damages. If you find yourself a victim of YouTube’s apparently aggressive anti-spamming patrol, you might just have to settle in for a bit of a fight in getting YouTube’s attention, without much hope of compensation for any of that time and effort.