YouTube has been forced to apologise after removing two videos from the popular account Lofi Girl over false copyright claims.
Lofi Girl's videos have kept many a student or office worker company through long days. The series features a young woman usually pictured wearing clunky headphones as she works.
However on July 10, the official Twitter for Lofi Girl revealed that two videos were removed from her profile "because of false copyright strikes."
Some videos total over 100 million views, with thousands of comments praising the creator - which is why users were so frustrated with the video streaming site.
"Hopefully @YouTubeCreators @YouTube will sort this quickly," said the account.
"Confirmed the takedown requests were abusive & terminated the claimants account," wrote YouTube's official Twitter account in reply to Lofi Girl's tweet. The two videos in question were “lofi hip hop radio - beats to relax/study to” and “beats to sleep/chill to” and had a combined viewer total of 797,341,998.
YouTube added: "We've resolved the strikes + reinstated your vids – it can sometimes take 24-48 hours for everything to be back to normal! so sorry this happened & thx for your patience as we sorted it out."
This is the not the first time that Lofi Girl has been hit with copyright claims, with the most recent happening in 2020. YouTube removed the entire channel from its platform for allegedly violating the terms of service before later admitting that it was an error.
Back in 2015, after the channel was created by French mononymous musician Dmitri under the name "ChilledCow", the account used a looping gif of Shizuku Tsukishima from the 2015 Studio Ghibli anime Whisper of the Heart - however Ghibli soon filed a copyright infringement in 2017, which led to YouTube removing the channel.
After the cover image was replaced by the bespoke illustration we know and love today, the site reinstated the channel.
While fans are celebrating the news online, a lot have slammed YouTube for its inaccurate copyright system.
"This isn't a fix! it shouldn't have happened in the first place, FIX YOUR SYSTEM!" wrote one Twitter user. "WHY CAN A VIDEO BE TAKEN DOWN BEFORE YOU EVEN COMMUNICATE WITH THE CHANNEL?"
They added: "You do NOT need to pull a video the second you get a notice, you have time to confirm and you're obligated to do so!"
