[rossjudson]

You probably got hit with a number of DMCA takedown requests. You've filed a counter-notice, which will put the content back up. But you have to wait until that occurs, which could be a while.

You may not have done anything wrong, for this to occur. All it takes is someone willing to _say_ that you infringed on their copyright.

I think you can sue the issuers of the takedowns, if they are fraudulent.

[Karunamon]

You can, but good luck. Filing a counternotice gets you the name (and I think the IP address) of the person that filed the notice, but considering that #1 is just a form input box and #2 is useless for identificiation purposes...

This was likely the act of someone with an axe to grind, not any violation of YouTube policies.

[jacquesm]

This is the counter notification section of youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/t/copyright_counter

The final line reads:

> We may then reinstate the material in question at our discretion.

So it's a toss-up if they're actually going to do something but they will reveal your information to the party that claimed infringement. That seems to be a pretty lousy deal.

[gknoy]

Doesn't your account also get wrecked after you've received a certain number of takedown requests, regardless of their validity?

[mitchty]

Yeah I believe it is up to 3. So basically 3 cries of wolf are enough to get any youtube account closed.

Seems fair. /joke

[MichaelGG]

It is an offense for a party to DMCA takedown content they do not own the rights to. This is assuming it was a DMCA takedown and not YouTube's internal system which doesn't have the same protections the DMCA provides.

Not that it makes it necessarily feasible, but at least there is an option.