The Vietnamese company’s animated Wolfoo video was copyrighted by producer Peppa Pig and hidden by YouTube, losing billions of views.
Since August, many people who follow Wolfoo’s channels on the platform YouTube say they have no longer seen the appearance of some of the previously popular videos. On some YouTube channels of this character such as Wolfoo Family, Wolfoo Channel, Wolfoo’s Story, the latest videos have been posted since June, then no new content appeared.
According to statistics on the Social Blade tool, in the period from June to October, the three channels above were all deducted from 2 to 3 billion views. On YouTube, channel loss of views often comes from videos being hidden or removed from the platform.
Wolfoo Channel has many videos hidden and lost more than 2.8 billion views in August. Photo: Social Blade
On October 22, a representative of Sconnect, the producer of the Wolfoo wolf cartoon character, confirmed this and said that it had lost about $ 2 million from having videos deleted and blocked from posting new content. “The number of damage continues to increase by the hour,” this person said.
Why was the Wolfoo wolf video deleted?
According to Sconnect, the removal is because the content produced by this unit posted on YouTube is copyrighted by Entertainment One – the owner of the Peppa Pig character.
“Entertainment One pretends these videos are derivative works of Peppa Pig to complain to YouTube. YouTube accepts Entertainment One’s copyright requests and proceeds to delete the Wolfoo video,” a Sconnect representative said, adding that both Entertainment One and YouTube “wrongfully implemented YouTube’s policies.”
Image from the cartoon Wolfoo.
Earlier, Entertainment One filed a lawsuit in courts in Russia and the UK, accusing “Wolfoo wolf” as a remake of “Peppa pig” and using the company’s art style and sound effects. . However, the court in Russia dropped the case in July, while the British court has not yet accepted the lawsuit. Sconnect said Entertainment One used an unresolved lawsuit to copyright the Wolfoo videos.
In its first response to the matter, Entertainment One (eOne) asserted that the hiding or deletion of the video was due to YouTube. “The blocking of some videos in the animated movie Wolfoo is not the decision of eOne or any other party, but of YouTube,” eOne wrote in a document sent to four Vietnamese ministries recently.
According to eOne, YouTube’s terms give any copyright owner the right to file a complaint with the platform asking to remove or block content if it finds it infringing. Sconnect uses YouTube’s services, which means that you have agreed to the platform’s terms of service. “YouTube’s actions show that we have made a proper complaint,” eOne asserted.
Responding to the accusations of both sides, on October 22, YouTube affirmed that the platform does not mediate copyright claims, but only provides the parties with tools to protect themselves.
“We provide copyright owners with tools to protect copyright, as well as for video uploaders with tools to appeal inaccurate copyright protection claims,” a YouTube representative said.
