In what might be the most ridiculous example yet of YouTube’s ongoing failure to protect its content creators against false copyright claims, one user on the platform has been struck with two separate copyright claims by two separate artists because their playthrough of Silent Hill 2 featured the song “Promise” by Akira Yamaoka.
However, the truly absurd part of this story is that neither “artist” is actually Akira Yamaoka; rather, the tracks they’re claiming to have produced are AI-generated slop which clearly rips off Yamaoka’s work. Yet, as per usual, YouTube has automatically sided with the copyright claimers.
Earlier last night, content creator Nubzombie uploaded a video titled A.I. IS RUINING YOUTUBE (and my life). In the video, Nubzombie states that their latest playthrough of the original version of Silent Hill 2 was hit with a copyright strike by someone called “Agro memos.” As you can see (or rather hear), in Nubzombie’s video, the track that the Agro memos strike is protecting is a clear copy of Akira Yamaoka’s track “Promise,” but with an AI-generated voice over top.
Then, in the space of a few hours, Nubzombie uploaded a second video. As they explain in that follow-up, as soon as their first video had finished uploading to YouTube, their Silent Hill 2 playthrough was hit with a second copyright strike. This time, it was from a different artist, named “詹姆斯.K,” but the copyright claimer this time isn’t even trying to hide the fact that their track is a ripoff of Akira Yamaoka’s “Promise”…because 詹姆斯.K’s track is literally called “Promise.”
While I couldn’t find any information on the second “Promise” rip-off, I did find something odd regarding the former. Agro memos’ most recent tracks on YouTube, like this one, state in the descriptions that they were “Provided to YouTube by The Orchard Enterprises.”
Orchard Enterprises is a division of Sony Music Entertainment. Turns out Orchard’s got a bit of history of pulling this kind of stunt, dating all the way back to 2022. In this video, content creator EckhartsLadder details how he was repeatedly hit with copyright claims by Orchard Enterprises in 2024 because Orchard falsely claimed that the track “Resonance” by HOME, which EckhartsLadder used as their intro and outro song for all their videos, belonged to the Sony Music subsidiary.
Kotaku has reached out to Sony Music Entertainment and Orchard Enterprises to get to the bottom of this issue, but really, the copyright abuse in this case is only possible because of YouTube’s lax automatic strike system. This isn’t going to change any time soon unless the powers that be at YouTube do something about it, which they clearly have no interest in doing. After all, this is the same platform that let an Italian broadcaster take down Nvidia’s own DLSS 5 announcement video this week.