Vietnamese producer has 3,000 videos deleted by YouTube

Sconnect, the Vietnamese producer behind the cartoon wolf character Wolfoo, claims that YouTube has removed "illegal" content, causing the company's YouTube channels to lose more than 3,000 videos with billions of views.

In a report sent to Vietnamese authorities at the end of July, Sconnect said the videos were removed by Google's platform for violating copyrights of images and audio. The party that carried out the "copyright theft" was Entertainment One (EO), the company behind the cartoon character Peppa Pig.

Specifically, in April, EO reported to YouTube that "the scene and setting from Peppa Pig were copied" for use in the Wolfoo video. In July, EO continued to report copyrights for multiple Wolfoo videos for using Peppa Pig's audio. The allegedly infringing audio consists of exclamations such as "oh", "wow", "hmm" lasting about one second in each video.

According to Sconnect, in both cases, EO and YouTube did not provide clear evidence that Wolfoo videos infringed on any Peppa Pig videos' images or sounds. In addition, these are all common images and sounds that are easily encountered in daily life.

"The fact that EO reported copyright infringement and YouTube accepted to remove the Wolfoo video is baseless and illegal," said a Sconnect representative.

The unit also said it had sent information to YouTube representatives since June, but after more than a month had not received a response. Meanwhile, the number of deleted and unrecoverable videos continued to increase, many channels were unable to post new videos, causing "particularly serious" damage.

According to data from the SocialBlade system, the Wolfoo Family channel alone lost about 2.4 billion views after the video was deleted in May.

In the petition sent to the Copyright Department - Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the Department of Radio, Television and Electronic Information - Ministry of Information and Communications, Sconnect requested the agencies to support and discuss with Google and YouTube so that the platform "stop accepting the unfounded copyright request of Wolfoo video from EO".

YouTube and EO have not commented on this incident.

Images from the cartoon Peppa Pig (left) and Wolfoo (right)

Wolfoo and Peppa Pig are both popular cartoon characters on YouTube, appearing on many children's channels with tens of millions of subscribers and billions of views worldwide. Last year, Sconnect was sued by EO for "distinctive art style and sound". EO then used this lawsuit to report YouTube, causing many Wolfoo videos and channels to be hidden from the platform. The matter was resolved earlier this year when YouTube reviewed and restored many Wolfoo videos and channels. However, EO continued to send new accusations to YouTube, causing many channels that had just been opened to be locked again.

In the case last year, YouTube asserted that it does not mediate copyright claims, but only provides parties with tools to defend themselves. The EO also argued that parties who use YouTube's services agree to the platform's terms. "YouTube's actions demonstrate that we have filed a proper complaint," the EO asserted at the time.

According to VnExpress