Lady Gaga’s official YouTube account was suspended

On July 5, 2011, Lady Gaga’s official YouTube account was suspended for a copyright violation. The official version is “YouTube account ladygagaofficial has been terminated because we received multiple third-party notifications of copyright infringement from claimants including: Air Production…” But this blog post is not about Lady Gaga; this blog post is about YOU. Imagine you’ve spent countless hours posting all your videos on YouTube, creating playlists, adding descriptions and tags, and connecting with the community to amass hundreds of views and comments – and then you wake up one morning and all of it is gone. You have no one to call. YouTube is owned by Google, which means there’s no way to hear a friendly voice on the other side of the phone when you’ve got a problem with one of their products or services.

Here are a few basic rules to follow to keep your YouTube account from being shut down:

1. Do not violate copyrights.
Don’t assume you will never get caught; just follow copyright rules. As history shows, YouTube does not care if you are Lady Gaga or Joe Shmo. If you are caught infringing on a copyright, you will be punished.

2. Don’t post sexually explicit content to YouTube.
Yes, these videos surely drive traffic to your website, but YouTube is not the place for this type of content. In fact, it’s a violation of the Community Guidelines. Repeated violation of the guidelines will get your account suspended or permanently disabled.

3. Avoid spam words…and don’t spam.
If you put phrases like “make money online,” “get rich quick,” etc. in your descriptions or tags, the chances are quite high that your account will be suspended. Furthermore, don’t create misleading descriptions, tags, titles, or thumbnails in order to increase views, and don’t bombard all your contacts with ten messages every time you post a new video.

4. Remember the Golden Rule when commenting.
Stalking, threats, harassment, intimidation, and revealing other people’s personal information are not welcome on YouTube (or anywhere, really). Anyone who is caught doing these things may be permanently banned from YouTube. Constructive criticism is fine, but personal attacks are unacceptable.

5. Don’t post content that provokes violence.
Videos including animal abuse, drug abuse, underage drinking and smoking, or bomb-making violate YouTube’s Community Guidelines (and the guidelines of good taste). You cannot post videos showing someone getting physically hurt or attacked.

Unfortunately, while some of the above rules are quite obvious and easy to obey, there are some grey areas, like words that trigger spam – YouTube hasn’t published an official list of such words. There is no 100% guarantee that your account will not be shut down one day without warning and without recourse.

Our advice is to have a back up of all the videos you publish on YouTube and any information related to them. To help our customers, here at Pixability, we have a feature on our software that gives an automated back-up of all your YouTube videos, descriptions, and tags.

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