I suppose in the same way that if you write you’re a writer, if you make YouTube videos you’re a YouTuber. I know my nieces think I’m a YouTuber, and I have made quite a few videos, but I’ve never felt that the cap fits well. However, yesterday I reached a new milestone: I had a video banned from YouTube!
The story behind this is that a friend persuaded me to watch an episode of The Crown called Alma Mater, because it was set in St Andrews, and not only was it nauseatingly terrible, it was (predictably) full of inaccuracies. So I made a reaction video of it (where you can see me talking about the episode and the episode playing at the same time) and YouTube immediately took it down because it contained copyrighted content from Netflix. Well, duh.
The thing is that reaction videos are supposed to be covered by “fair use” policies, because they are a form of artistic criticism (I mean, we’re stretching the definition of “artistic”, but you know what I mean). It’s the same provision that allows me to use a publicity image from the show on this post, because I’m talking about the show.
I’ve appealed against YouTube’s decision and I’ll wait and see what they/Netflix say. In the meantime, my 14 YouTube subscribers are deprived of my first ever reaction video. But not you, dear readers! The video is still available on Vidyard, the site I used to make it, and you can watch it there. There’s a shorter video of edited highlights (more like lowlights) below, or you can even see the full version if you are a glutton for punishment. Or you could go on to Netflix and just watch The Crown for yourself. But I wouldn’t recommend it.
K C Murdarasi 
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