After a flaw in SoundCloud’s copyright infringement system was exploited, artists and producers on SoundCloud had their tracks abruptly removed.
Dr. Egg, a notorious troll, filed copyright violation claims against multiple artists and producers. Using two ‘genuine’ e-mail addresses of verified users – Moonboy ([email protected]) and Too Vain ([email protected]) – SoundCloud removed artists’ works.
According to a report, Dr. Egg falsified Moonboy’s signature and used his name to file the copyright claims.
Moonboy – real name Jamie Madsen – quickly received criticism over the filings. Pushing back against the allegations, Madsen took to Twitter to deny he had ever filed a complaint.
“IMPORTANT Please retweet: Copyright claims are being filed under my name. Literally every producer is getting their songs taken down and the guy is trying to put the blame on me. Wanna say I have nothing to do with this. Me and my team are doing our best to sort this out ASAP.”
Dr. Egg apparently filed the takedown claims in an attempt to avenge an unknown offense. Artists on SoundCloud received the following message:
“How are you liking your copyright strikes? Hope you learned your lesson to not f—k with me. Sorry not sorry.”
Bragging about his ability to take down legitimate works on the platform, Dr. Egg continued,
“I am the copyright system. You will all find out soon enough.”
Affected artists included Ubur, Xaebor, Svdden Death, Wooli, and Mastadon, among countless others.
After receiving floods of e-mails stating the platform had removed their works, a chaotic period ensued.
Most artists received the following message.
“Hello there,
Thanks for getting in touch, I’d be happy to get you some further information here. We received the copyright infringement report from Jamie Madsen. You would need to get in touch with them directly to resolve the situation. Their email address is [email protected].
In their report, they stated: “Using the moonboy vocal copyright to franchinco inc.”
Thanks for understanding that we have to act and take down tracks that are reported to us for copyright infringement in order to remain in compliance with copyright law. If you are able to settle this situation amicably amongst yourselves or in a court of law, we would be happy to review the situation again and reinstate the track if everything checks out.”
This prompted an immediate backlash. Svdden Death blasted back:
“Someone just false copyright striked ALL of my songs that are 100% me and now they are gone on my pro account I’ve spent 100’s of dollars on for several years and has 50k followers on. Bye @soundcloud you are a f—–g trash service.”
Subtrawnikz added,
“So basically all my songs were just deleted off SoundCloud UHHHHHHH yeah it’s happened to basically everyone I know at this point and SoundCloud is essentially dead so I’m not really even shook tbh.”
A day after the report, SoundCloud issued a statement over the controversy, ending the 24 hours (give or take) of chaos.
Not exactly the funnest day (or night) at SoundCloud, with both both DMCA hacks and some pretty brutal criticism from artists. Here’s the statement the company issued to affected artists.
“Our takedown notification process is designed to respect copyright, and it is our policy to review all infringement claims per the guidelines outlined in our Help Center. Upon review, we have determined these copyright claims are not valid, and are happy to report we’ve reinstated all affected content.”