Okay, it seems like eight months is not long enough for YouTube to sort out their slooooooowwwwww servers I see! I'd forgotten what a hassle it was to use YouTube on Sundays, with the entire world making videos. Maybe they have one server room full of devoutly Jewish hardware which is unable to work? Needless to say, this is one of the many things on YouTube which I did not miss while I was away. I will now wait until more of the world goes to sleep.

I'm spending the rest of the weekend putting the 'reinstated' intros on all my videos. Not far to go now, but I'm not going to try uploading until the speed comes back. That path leads only to madness!

I woke up on 12 October 2007 and found that I had been reinstated on YouTube. Well about time too! So here's how and why, and it's the only time I am going to say this so please take it all in - I really cannot spend as much time as I did when I was banned answering 'conspiracy theory' questions. This is all there is...

I was removed from YouTube for copyright infringement. And I can say that 10,000 times and still some people will not believe me. Even now people will say, 'duh, that Nick Ginsberg dude he got flagged by the Muslims and they banned his ass'. I don't have to correct people like that over and over, I just have to tell you once: they are wrong. I uploaded various videos to YouTube and on 3 separate occasions I had videos removed because YouTube received DMCA copyright notices. On YouTube, after 3 such 'strikes' they close your account and you are banned.

'Duh, but they said Inappropriate Content' with the Qur'an quotes video and Ginsberg got taken down and it's all lies'.

No. It's not. YouTube got their wires crossed, yes, and they handled it badly, but I have seen the DMCA notification for the Qur'an quotes video. YouTube sent me a copy of it. This is the last time I will ever mention it. It was not a campaign by Muslim haters which removed me, it was a small section of music at the end of the video, and I've made that clear many, many times. Get over it. I have.

Okay, back to the sensible people who take the time to listen to me and understand what I'm saying. Sorry about showing you my frustration there!

That all happened in mid-February 2007, and messed up my book launch, messed up a lot of things, but with tremendous support from the YouTube atheists and in fact much wider support than that, I started this site and just kept on going. My videos are everywhere on YouTube, and it's hard to miss them, but I had no access to uploading videos to my own account.

Here's a secret which I kept very poorly: I did have a YouTube account for most of the time since I was banned. But it was never, ever, going to be possible to upload videos to it. I used it to subscribe to people and a few of you knew about it because I sent messages to some of you now and again. If YouTube knew, they certainly did not do anything about it, but be certain that if I'd uploaded videos at any time and said 'hey I'm back', they would have removed me again. Brett Keane tried to come back half a dozen times after they banned him, and they got him every single time. It just takes one idiot to send a message to YouTube and they will find you and take you down.

If you need further proof that will happen, only yesterday someone posted this on my reinstated channel:

I heard that you are not supposed to be preaching on youtube. In fact I have been informed that you were suspended many months ago therefore you are not allowed back on youtube, do yourself a favour and close this new page of yours otherwise I am going to report you

There is always some dick who has it in for you, so that's why I only used my 'secret' YouTube account for subscribing to people and keeping track of my favourite atheists. Of course the idiot who posted the above comment can do nothing. I'm not trying to sneak back in. YouTube reinstated me.

Eight months is a long time. In fact the first video I had taken down was sometime in late 2006, and that's a long time to go without challenging the takedown. That is, if you want to challenge the takedown. If you challenge DMCA notices you open yourself to the possibility of court proceedings. If that happens, needless to say you are on a road to financial ruin to defend yourself. So I had to back off rather than expose myself to the legal process. And with 3 unanswered infringements, I was banned from YouTube.

As I mentioned above, I'd already seen the DMCA notice for the Qur'an video, alleging copyright infringement for some of the audio in it. People kept telling me it was fair use and I should challenge it, but again, the big companies could take me to court and I would need expensive lawyers to make my case for me. Then, several weeks ago, I decided to ask YouTube to show me the DMCA notices for the other two videos. Just out of curiosity, just to see if I had been singled out or, as had been the case with the music publisher with respect to the Qur'an video, if my video was part of a huge list of videos swept off YouTube by a single DMCA complaint.

Surprisingly, YouTube told me they didn't have a record of the DMCA notices so couldn't show me. Remember that many months had passed by now. YouTube housekeeping must be particularly bad to lose important documents like that, but then remember how many times you've seen videos get pulled for copyright reasons. That's a lot of paperwork and for some reason they seemed not to have put mine in a very safe place.

That just switched on a light in my mind. The companies who send out these DMCA notices just want their content taken down. They don't want to take people to court unless you keep uploading their stuff. They don't really have anything to do with the '3 strikes and you're out' rule at YouTube. They don't really care about me at all. So would they care if I sent a DMCA counter-notification?

Perhaps one of my greatest influences in deciding what to do was the situation with RabidApe and the Rational Response Squad, who were also fucked up by DMCA notices. They managed to get back. They didn't get hauled off to court. Time for me to give it a try.

On 28 September I sent YouTube a letter with counter-notifications for all three notices. Then I waited.

It was a risk. I don't want to explain how I worded the DMCA counter-notifications because if you asked me if I had actually broken copyright law in the three videos I would have to decline to answer, though fair use should, in theory, apply in all three cases. But the content had been taken down months ago, and I had no intention AT ALL of uploading it again. Why should those companies really care about me, when they already had what they wanted?

I just needed one of those counter-notifications to pass through the system unanswered by the companies who filed the original DMCA notice. And on 12 October 2007 I was told that two of them had not responded, and that I was therefore allowed back on YouTube.

The third one? YouTube told me they had messed up the counter-notification process and did I want to re-file a single notice? Er, no thanks! I was already back, and I quit while I was ahead. So I still have that one strike to my name. I have no intention of uploading anything remotely close to copyright infringement. At all. Ever. Maybe :o)

As I write, I am uploading dozens of my videos to my original channel, Gisburne2000. And as I write, I have received over 500 subscribers, starting from zero, in just the two days since I let people know I was back. That is breath-taking support from you people. I can't begin to thank you enough, but thank you is all I have. You have all kept me going and the immense respect I feel that you have for me is recognised, stored away inside, and means a lot to me.

I don't want to make the full story you've just read into a video about how I managed to come back to YouTube, although I will probably mention it briefly. I just want to be back, and do my thing while I'm there. So this is the only place I will be fully explaining what happened, and I think it's important that I write down everything I know so that there is no room for debate.

On YouTube I have my original account back, and I'm now Gisburne2000. Although they gave me my 'NickGisburne' account, which has all my old videos in it, I know that there are bits and pieces of copyright material in them, so I decided to play it safe and use the amended versions, the ones people have been uploading for me for months. That's why I am uploading the whole lot again. You'll get them all in one place, even the longer ones - I have a full Director's account, which means I can post videos over 10 minutes long.

I might be Gisburne2000 but I'm still Nick Gisburne. Things have changed, and my emphasis is still on this web site because whatever happens I have full control at gisburne.com. But it's my intention to make videos for YouTube again. You've kept the place going and there are so many YouTube atheists it's hard to know where I fit into the picture now. Maybe it's time for some of that old school atheism, Nick Gisburne style! See you soon!

Cheers

Nick