After receiving the copyright strike, my immediate thought was that this was somebody impersonating Arca Noae, the developers of ArcaOS. Fraudulent claims have been, and continue to be, a serious problem on YouTube that hasn’t been properly addressed.

The email address associated with the claim was a personal Gmail address, but this is not that uncommon because all DMCA notifications have to be made while logged into a Google Account. As it turns out, this claim was actually filed by Arca Noae.

This is the email I received after reaching out to them:

This sounded like good news. It seemed that my video was mistaken for another video that had included a download link to ArcaOS in the description, which would be a legitimate reason to issue a copyright takedown.

ArcaOS is not free software and distributing it for free without permission is piracy. Since I did not provide a link for people to download ArcaOS for free, I asked them to retract the copyright claim on my video.

However, 10 minutes later I received another email from Arca Noae which read the following:

It turns out that I was actually the one being impersonated. Somebody had filled out the contact form on Arca Noae’s website with my email address, and “admitted” to pirating ArcaOS.

For some reason, Arca Noae actually believed that this was me and furthermore, believed that this gave them the right to take down my video.

The fact that Arca Noae actually believed this to be a legitimate message coming from me is something that I cannot even begin to try and explain. If you were pirating software, why on Earth would you contact the developers of that software and admit to doing so?

This is a side tangent, but this demonstrates how easily contact forms on websites can be abused to impersonate people. No verification is required, so if somebody knows your email address, they can send messages to the site operator that look like they’re coming from you.

Whoever the impersonator was, I believe they sent this message with the intent of getting the video taken down or otherwise negatively affecting the channel. I think it goes without saying that I find this behavior absolutely deplorable.

What I find even more deplorable though, is Arca Noae simply taking this message at face value and making no attempts to verify its authenticity. I received no communication from Arca Noae prior to the video being taken down.

I was not using a pirated copy of ArcaOS. A viewer had given me permission to use his license, which is allowed under the ArcaOS license agreement.

This was also the viewer who suggested the idea of making a video on ArcaOS to me. I initially was going to purchase a license myself, but he generously offered to allow me to use his for the video. His generosity enabled me to keep the video sponsor-free.

But let’s assume that I was using a pirated copy. Arca Noae seems to believe that this fact alone (that they have no way of proving) gives them the right to take down a video that was merely discussing and demonstrating Arca OS. This is something I fundamentally disagree with.

I am not a lawyer but from what I can tell, Arca Noae is mistakenly conflating an alleged violation of their EULA, with my video containing copyright-infringing content.

I don’t see how my video could possibility infringe on Arca Noae's copyrighted material by simply discussing and demonstrating their product, even if it was pirated. If I was showing people how and where to obtain ArcaOS illegally, that would be a different story.

This would be akin to Microsoft taking down YouTube videos that display the “Activate Windows” watermark in them, regardless of what the video is about, as the uploaders of those videos are technically in violation of the Windows EULA by having an unactivated copy of Windows.

After me and the person who allowed me to use his license contacted Arca Noae, they removed the copyright strike from my video. For this to happen however, we had to quote Arca Noae’s own license terms back to them to prove that what we were doing was acceptable under the EULA.

I am glad that the strike on my channel is gone, but I am not impressed with how this situation was handled by Arca Noae.

In their defense however, they did tell me that part of their agreement with IBM is to monitor for theft and abuse of ArcaOS licenses, and that they acted on this quickly out of an abundance of caution.

Still, I disagree with their assumption that an alleged breach of the ArcaOS license agreement constitutes my video infringing on copyrighted material.

The video remains online for now, but I am debating whether or not to keep it up. I don't have confidence in Arca Noae's customer support if their immediate reaction is to assume the worst instead of amicably trying to resolve this situation.

Also, it seems that the copyright strike has caused all but 2 of the comments to be removed from my ArcaOS video ¯\_(ツ)_/¯