Okay guys, gals and zes... it's about that time. LET ME SEE YOUR WAR FACE! In case you haven't yet heard, we've found ourselves embroiled in a battle with authoritarian jackasses at ABC/Disney, as they opted to selectively HARD STRIKE our YouTube channel with a bogus copyright claim last night for our annual Oscars Livestream party. The LwC team and I need your support in turning this into a rallying cry to fight back against these kinds of practices, which are designed to silence alternative voices into oblivion. The video below should provide most of what you need to know, but I've included some helpful context below.

Some other important notes here, just so that we aren't lumped in the with "the little conservatives who cried censorship":

Here's the thing, our stream was well within the realm of fair use. Of that, there is no doubt.

Secondly, there were and still are other Oscars stream parties freely available on YouTube. Ones that aren't even in the realm of qualifying as the "transformative content" ours provided. We had sketches, guests, original photoshops, parodies, as well as fresh commentary not even Trevor Noah's 27 writers could think up on a budget of millions. This application is "selective enforcement of the law," but it's a scam claim as it is, considering our stream was entirely transformative.

Thirdly, the Oscars live stream is part of Louder with Crowder tradition. We performed this same stream last year in its entirety without issue, just as we've done for all presidential debates and major news events.

Our stream was rocketing passed 40,000 live viewers at any given moment, and toward 50,000 very quickly, allegedly several TIMES the viewership of ABC's own YouTube stream, which is worth noting as well, because as far as we understand it right now (meaning this could change), a person had to MANUALLY attack our channel. Our current understanding is that this was not a mere algorithm. Which likely rivaled the actual Oscars' viewership. ABC couldn't handle the competition, so they aborted our live stream.

So here's the plan:

We'll be siccing our half-Asian lawyer Bill Richmond on ABC Disney for the strike. They cannot go after content creators like us without suffering the legal consequences. And considering that there have been two landmark "fair use" lawsuits that have definitely set a precedent protecting creators with "transformative" content (see Matt Hosseinzadeh vs. Ethan Klein and Hila Klein and Equals Three vs. Junkin Media) you can bet that ABC Disney is in for a rough ride.

Mug Club: copyright strikes like this, and others before it, are why we have Mug Club and are so thankful to every single member of it. Mug Club allows us a "safe space" (see what I did there) to deliver the content we want to create, without limits, to the people who want to consume it: you! So if you've not yet joined Mug Club, consider doing so by clicking here and use promocode THISISWAR for $20 off until Wednesday at midnight.

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