Well... It Finally Happened (Part 2)

this time its uhhhh much worse though

In preparation for Novembers first entry, I was planning on briefly mentioning some sad news. After receiving another copyright strike, my intention was to slow down the media uploads in order to let the strike lapse after 90 days. Unfortunately, that will no longer be necessary, as my YouTube channel was hit with two additional copy strikes within 24 hours this weekend. As far as I know this is irreversible, and my channel will remain permanently disabled, unless one of the entities who issued the strikes chooses to remove it.

I knew this was always possible, but I was as careful as I could be. YouTube has an automatic copyright database, and ran checks on each video I uploaded, however, each strike my channel received was something not already in their database, and therefore was a manual strike issued by someone who was involved with the creation or distribution of the media. Usually months later, and often after a video got picked up by the algorithm, which made it difficult for me to predict if or when a strike would come in

As I was aware this was a possibility, I did prepare myself somewhat for this. YouTube was never the perfect platform for what I do, and the choice to use it was purely out of the desire to have everything I digitize accessible to the most people possible.

I have roughly 30% of the videos I’ve uploaded backed up to a hard drive, and the rest I still have ALL the tapes for. My goal is to have each video mentioned in every article on this blog re-uploaded to Archive.org with new thumbnails, and I will be starting in backwards order (newest stuff first), and editing all the previous articles as I go. I’d love to have all of this sorted out by the new year, but I can’t make promises.

In a year and a half I was able to digitize over 100 tapes that I personally purchased or found and uploaded to YouTube, and I’m sad to see my channel go. I collect media because I love to watch it, and I want to share it with others. It’s interesting to watch types of media that just do not exist anymore. I don’t have any interest in stopping.

This is a great lesson on foundations. I built a big portion of what this blog encapsulates on sand instead of rock. It’s going to take some time to get things back to normal around here, but I will keep y’all update on the status of the reuploads as time goes on.

Moving forward, I will be using both the new video features here on Substack, as well as Archive.org for any digitized content. For audio content, I will use the built-in audio player. I know that this will limit the exposure of this blog, but after everything goes back to normal here, I plan to start a new YouTube channel that will be used more deliberately, instead of a huge archive of videos, and will also serve as a platform for my music / videography, and pull people over to the blog, if they are interested.

I’ve already started work on getting everything reuploaded. The bottleneck will likely be upload speed to Archive.org, as it is much slower than uploading to YouTube. I have already re-uploaded the video for one of my previous articles, Diptych #27 // Flight Simulator '89, to Archive.org and created the new thumbnail for it in the style I will use going forward.

Hopefully, at some point, Archive.org and Substack will become more compatible. The main feature I find missing is embedded videos. When I post a Youtube link into a Substack article, it automatically embeds the YouTube Player right into the line of text. Unfortunately, Archive.org links don’t currently work that way. I hope there’s an update one day that allows for this, but until then you can check the article I linked above to see the new format.

I have a master list of all the videos I need to re-upload, which I will publish once everything is available to view again, and going forward, I will keep this list updated with links to each individual piece of media I upload.

As for new content and articles, I will stay on top of those as well. My goal for this month is to still have 3 posts, including at least one article showcasing the new digitized media format, as well as a photography post and a music post.

I hope this isn’t too much of a downer for you! I’m feeling optimistic! I felt like I absolutely needed to inform my readers about this, and I hope this clears any questions up.

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Lastly, I will need to re-work the sign-offs at the end of each article. Once I have full and continuously updated list of media, I will begin to link that below each post. I will also probably take this time to shift from using my personal email to one provided to me by Substack. And finally, once everything has been re-uploaded, and I’ve taken the time to write up my new sign-offs, I will need to go back and edit it into each previous article.

So I guess until then, thank you SO much for reading. I’m sorry if this is a slight bummer, but I will sort everything out very soon, and the blog will be better for it. For now, though, please enjoy these recommendations from other creators and archivers!

Nickelodeon (April 1999)

KENAN & KEL Two Heads Are Better Than None