Remove Your Media's takedowns pulled more than 60 videos off Nicholas Light's channel
One enforcement vendor's DMCA filings can take a 1.3 million-subscriber library offline before anyone weighs fair use. Nicholas Light got his videos back, and the question behind them stayed open.
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What happened
- On September 6, YouTuber Nicholas Light posted a 13-minute video titled "My Channel will be Deleted Today" to one of his channels.
- Remove Your Media legal representative Evan F. Stone told The Verge that Viz Media and Crunchyroll are two of the company's biggest anime clients.
- Creators say their altered, commentated footage is transformative and protected by fair use, and YouTube has still warned them their accounts could be erased.
Why it matters
- Who's exposed exposure Any channel whose library overlaps a client of Remove Your Media can lose dozens of videos on filings the company does not think require a full review of that creator's catalog.
- What it limits constraint Takedowns move at the filer's daily throughput while restoration moves at one creator's escalation speed. The remedy always lags the harm by design.
- What doesn't add up contradiction The popular reading is that noise forced YouTube's hand, but The Verge's account has the strikes already lifted when the alarm video published, so the evidence does not support a causal link.
- Who has to decide decision Creators running a free channel as a funnel into paid Patreon tiers now know an enforcement vendor treats that funnel as the argument against their fair use defence.
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The asymmetry starts with the filing rate. Remove Your Media's legal representative, Evan F. Stone, told The Verge the company "reports thousands of allegedly infringing links every day," some forwarded by the copyright owners themselves and others found through online searches [12]. The Verge reports the company does not feel it needs to extensively review all of a creator's videos to file its takedowns in good faith [16]. At the receiving end, Light said over a dozen strikes temporarily pulled more than 60 of his videos [8]. Take the floor of both numbers and each strike carried down about five videos [22]. The Verge reports a number of other creators have been hit with a similarly inordinate count of strikes [9].
Light acknowledged, at the end of the September 6 video, that YouTube had already removed the strikes and told him the channel would not be deleted [6]. The strikes were gone before the video announcing them went out. Nothing in The Verge's account places the reversal after the campaign that is being credited with it. He posted the follow-up two days later [21], thanking himself and "every single person that contributed" to the ongoing conversation about Remove Your Media [7].
Both sides make claims about what viewers do with a reaction video, and neither produces a count. "Commentary, in this context, does not make the use transformative: these videos show the copyrighted work in its entirety, and a great deal of this content sits behind a paywall," Stone said [14]. He added: "Add the fact that some viewers are watching these versions rather than the licensed versions, and the effect on the marketplace is real" [15]. The word holding that sentence up is "some". The Verge's own description is that viewers can use these videos as a less-than-ideal way to watch copyrighted material without paying [10]. Stone also said some clients are "very lenient" with certain types of content, despite their weak fair use defense [13].
A vendor's volume turns into exposure for anyone whose revenue sits in a library on somebody else's platform. Look at where the loss lands during the pending window: the filer's cost of being wrong is the time it takes to withdraw a notice; the target's cost was more than 60 videos offline [8]. Then look at whether restoration depends on having an audience. Light had 1.3 million subscribers [5] and, in his own words, "all the major channels covering this" [20]. A creator with a smaller channel gets the same queue and a fraction of the attention.
The Verge does not give the duration for Light's 60 videos [8], so the measurable quantity, days of catalog unavailable per strike, is missing. Stone's other argument names the part of a creator's funnel a vendor will aim at. He pointed out that some reaction creators use their free YouTube channels to encourage viewers to subscribe to their paid Patreon pages [17], and in Remove Your Media's view the business model "is recording someone watching full episodes and selling those recordings, episode included, behind a Patreon" [18]. Light said that "having a video taken down or struck is almost second nature" for people running reaction channels [19].
What to watch
- Whether Viz Media or Crunchyroll say which filings they forwarded to Remove Your Media and which the company found on its own.
- Whether any struck creator takes the dispute to court, which would produce an actual fair use ruling on blurred reaction footage.
- Whether YouTube limits how much of one channel's library a single filer can pull down at once.
Clarity's read
What the record supports and how the coverage leans. The claims behind it follow.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+25
- Incentives70
- Confidence60
Claim ledger
Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.
- [1]
Remove Your Media legal representative Evan F. Stone told The Verge that Viz Media and Crunchyroll are two of the company's "biggest anime clients".
- [2]
On September 6th, YouTuber Nicholas Light posted a video to one of his channels titled "My Channel will be Deleted Today".
- [3]
In the 13-minute video, Light alleges he was on the receiving end of some of the "thousands upon thousands of false copyright strikes" recently initiated by a company called Remove Your Media.
- [4]
Light accuses Remove Your Media CEO Eric Green of being a troll who systematically targets creators whose content mentions or features clips of popular anime series like Bleach and One Piece.
- [5]
Nicholas Light has 1.3 million subscribers.
- [6]
At the end of the September 6 video, Light admits that YouTube already removed the copyright strikes against his account and informed him that his channel would not be deleted.
- [7]
In a follow-up video titled "My Channel will NOT be deleted", posted on September 8th, Light thanked himself and "every single person that contributed" to the ongoing conversation about Remove Your Media unfairly threatening creators' livelihoods.
- [8]
Light told The Verge via email that over 60 of his videos had been temporarily taken down after he was hit with over a dozen copyright strikes stemming from Remove Your Media's DMCA takedown requests.
- [9]
The Verge reports that a number of other content creators have similarly been hit with an inordinate amount of copyright strikes, many of them specialising in anime and gaming reaction videos featuring blurred-out or otherwise altered copyrighted footage.
- [10]
The Verge reports that viewers can use reaction videos as a less-than-ideal way to watch copyrighted material without having to pay for it.
- [11]
Creators insist their content is fundamentally transformative and protected by fair use, but that has not kept YouTube from sending them warnings about their accounts potentially being erased.
- [12]
Stone said Remove Your Media "reports thousands of allegedly infringing links every day", some of which are "forwarded by the copyright owners themselves" while others are discovered through online searches.
- [13]
Stone noted that some clients are "very lenient" with certain types of content, despite their weak fair use defense.
- [14]
"Commentary, in this context, does not make the use transformative: these videos show the copyrighted work in its entirety, and a great deal of this content sits behind a paywall," Stone said.
- [15]
"Add the fact that some viewers are watching these versions rather than the licensed versions, and the effect on the marketplace is real," Stone said.
- [16]
Per The Verge, Remove Your Media feels it does not need to extensively review all of a creator's videos to file DMCA takedowns in good faith.
- [17]
Stone pointed out that some reaction video creators use their free YouTube channels as a way to encourage viewers to subscribe to their paid Patreon pages.
- [18]
In Remove Your Media's view, a reaction creator's business model "is recording someone watching full episodes and selling those recordings, episode included, behind a Patreon".
- [19]
Light said that "having a video taken down or struck is almost second nature" for people running reaction channels.
- [20]
"I think [Remove Your Media is] trying to get the attention of these companies, to hopefully get hired by them," Light said. "But because they're so sloppy, they're damaging themselves. With all the major channels covering this, they're doomed."
- [21]
Light's follow-up video came two days after the first one.
- [22]
Using the floor of both figures Light gave, over 60 videos and over a dozen strikes, each strike accounted for about five videos taken down.
Sources
2 independent publishers whose own reporting we read for this story.
- dexerto.comAnime YouTuber says channel faced deletion after copyright strikes removed 60 videos
1 article · September 12, 2026
- theverge.comAnime reaction YouTubers are at war with copyright enforcers
1 article · September 11, 2026
Topics and entities
Topics
- YouTube copyright enforcement
- Fair Use
Entities
- Digital Millennium Copyright Act
- YouTube
- Remove Your Media