YouTube creators asking for money is nothing new, be it through the site's built-in membership features or third-party services such as Patreon. But trying to profit off someone else's intellectual property isn't the same as asking for support on an original video they've created. The person who runs the Kitchen Nightmares Hotel Hell and Hell's Kitchen channel did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Engadget, but their Patreon page (named YoIUploadShows) isn't coy.

"Hey! It's not as easy as you might think to make my content, I have to look for the best quality episodes I can find, download them, convert them, edit them, render them and upload them," YoIUploadShows' Patreon page reads. "This can sometimes take at least a few hours. Especially because the downloads are usually slow and the rendering itself can take a couple hours, because I started making all my uploads in HD instead of 480p to give them a little extra clarity." It's not easy, folks, so for that he or she "would really appreciate the extra support if you have any money to spare :)"

YoIUploadShows' Patreon goes as far as to offer different tiers to potential fans of their work. A $15 or more donation gets you a "shoutout in every video," while $30 or more per month means you can have "an episode of any show you want," according to the page. Interestingly, despite the Kitchen Nightmares Hotel Hell and Hell's Kitchen channel having nearly 60 million total views since 2016, the owner's Patreon account has never received a donation.

"Hey! It's not as easy as you might think to make my content, I have to look for the best quality episodes I can find, download them, convert them, edit them, render them and upload them."

Not surprisingly, this isn't the only YouTube account doing this. There are others like "Dvr Night" that are uploading other Kitchen Nightmares episodes and asking for donations via PayPal as well as Patreon. That said, while companies like PayPal and Patreon don't encourage this behavior, they don't have any legal liability unless they get a complaint from the content owner. "Creators uploading copyrighted content is against our terms of use," a Patreon spokesperson told Engadget. "We take action against this content when rights holders send us a copyright notice."

As of this writing, YouIUploadShows' Patreon is still up and running, likely because Fox hasn't made any takedown requests. There is an official "Kitchen Nightmares" YouTube, meanwhile, but it uploads only short clips, not full episodes. YouTube says it does not mediate copyright claims: That's something that has to be handled between the parties involved, which in this case would be Fox and the person behind YoIUploadShows.