Danny Stewart

Just as I thought the “theft of Whomix remixes” situation was drawing to a close, it seems that things are not so simple. An anonymous commenter left me the following message on my original post:

Youtube hasn’t taken the channel down. DRWHOremixer has just hidden it.

Without even digging any deeper, this rang true. After making no progress for over a week, I was not expecting a resolution to this. The way it finally came about seemed odd to me. The timing, the silence. I’m not sure it would have played out differently even if it were legitimate, but it all just felt off. Like it was too easy.

Another comment followed a few hours later:

Hi Danny,

My name is Matthew Haines, of YouTube Legal Support. I was notified of this theft of music from the Whomix website, and I thought that I would personally announce that DRWHOremixer’s videos have been removed and their account has been terminated and permanently blocked from using YouTube.

Kind Regards.

After receiving this comment, the situation got even stranger in my mind. Someone from YouTube reaching out to me via a public comment on my website? That seemed like a highly unusual development. Surely the people at YouTube have better things to do than take part in public discussion like this. They probably aren’t even allowed to do so, let alone having the time or inclination.

However, the poster had a seemingly legitimate @youtube.com email address. So I decided to do a test. I sent an email to the address thanking him for his help in the matter. The email immediately bounced back:

Recipient address rejected: User unknown in local recipient table

So much for that. I then dug a little deeper and found that both of the comments came from the same IP address, which I am going to share here to disclose as much information as possible.

• The IP address is 115.187.254.253.
• This IP address is from New South Wales, Australia. (DRWHOremixer’s profile listed Australia as his location.)
• The first comment came from email address 12345@hotmail.com (obviously fake).
• The second came from email address matthaines.legalsupport@youtube.com (also confirmed fake).

So this situation has not been resolved as cleanly as I’d hoped. I haven’t had time to go any further with this yet, but I would be willing to bet that the above commenter is either DRWHOremixer themselves or an associate of theirs, trying to clear their name.I’m not sure the situation warrants any further digging, as long as the account and videos stay down. But if this is DRWHOremixer, surely there is a better way of going about doing this than all the deception and lies. I’m not sure what the goal of this deception is. Playing for sympathy? I doubt that will work considering the theft in the first place.

My advice to DRWHOremixer is simple. Just own up and take responsibility. Same outcome, but with a clearer conscience and having been a better person for it. I and others will respect you more for admitting that you made a mistake and owning up to it than just lurking quietly and pretending YouTube took you down.