DStv blocks AfriForumTV launch video on YouTube

DStv had YouTube take down the launch video of a new Afrikaans streaming service based on a suspicious copyright claim.

The target of South Africa’s biggest pay-TV broadcaster was AfriForumTV, a new Afrikaans-focused video streaming service launched by civil rights organisation AfriForum on Monday.

The streaming service offers entertainment, news, documentaries, current affairs, lifestyle and children’s programming, which can be streamed on-demand for free via the web or a mobile app.

By all accounts, the live event for AfriForumTV’s launch went smoothly.

However, on Tuesday morning, the recording of the launch’s YouTube live stream had been removed, accompanied by the following message:

“This video contains content from DStv, who has blocked it on copyright grounds.”

AfriForum told MyBroadband that YouTube’s motivation and timestamps for the copyright claim showed DStv’s complaint related to a 3-minute trailer for Tainted Heroes, shown during the live stream.

The AfriForum-produced documentary details the ANC’s rise to power during the liberation struggle, focusing on violent strategies used during and after the Soweto Uprising.

The organisation’s CEO, Kallie Kriel, explained that the documentary contained news footage purchased from the SABC’s archives.

Kriel said AfriForum followed all the correct legal channels to buy the rights to this footage from the public broadcaster, and that DStv was completely wrong in making a copyright claim on it.

AfriForum had the full right to show the trailer during the event and include it in the YouTube live stream and published video, he maintained.

Nevertheless, AfriForum cut the trailer from the recording to get its video back online. As a result, the video was available again by publication time.

According to YouTube’s Copyright Transparency Report, it receives hundreds of millions of copyright claims every year.

YouTube maintains creators rarely dispute copyright takedowns, but the company has admitted to sometimes getting things wrong.

In a recent high-profile case, video game developer Bungie was hit by a series of copyright takedowns of videos for its own Destiny video game.

On the flip side of the coin, South African filmmakers have also complained that they had to work through big companies like MultiChoice to have action taken against illegal uploads of their movies.

MyBroadband asked DStv parent company MultiChoice for comment on why it made the copyright claim but did not receive feedback by the time of publication.

DStv previously purchased “exclusive access” to the SABC’s archives in a controversial 2013 deal signed by disgraced former SABC COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng.

Motsoeneng scored a success bonus of R11.5 million for pulling the deal off, which the Johannesburg High Court has declared unlawful and ordered him to pay back.

Former communications minister Yunus Carrim testified before the Zondo Commission in 2020 that the contract between MultiChoice and the SABC amounted to “regulatory policy capture”.

This was because it purportedly involved agreements around the contentious issue of set-top-box encryption during the early years of the digital migration.

MultiChoice has maintained that there was no secrecy, wrong-doing, or kickbacks paid as part of its deal with the SABC, and that it was a completely normal negotiation between two broadcasters.

No action taken on other videos

Another curiosity about DStv flagging AfriForum’s use of the documentary’s trailer as copyright infringement, is that AfriForum has had the same three-minute clip uploaded on its YouTube channel for over six years.

In addition, the entire documentary has been available on YouTube since 21 January 2017.

The video, viewed more than 102,000 times at the time of publication, was posted by the YouTube channel Josias de Witt.

It is the only video he has posted to YouTube, and the channel shows no apparent link to MultiChoice or DStv.

If MultiChoice indeed had copyright on this content, it is strange that it has seemingly not applied for a copyright takedown on either video.

DStv parent company MultiChoice and AfriForum are not on the best terms.

In 2019, the civil rights organisation declared a dispute with MultiChoice over what it deemed “double standards” when the broadcaster refused to show any footage of Steve Hofmeyr while employing a presenter who had allegedly made racist comments on social media.

That came after Hofmeyr had made allegedly threatening and racially charged comments on Twitter aimed at former DA spokesperson Phumzile Van Damme and Zindzi Mandela.

DStv also previously refused to run two ads from AfriForum’s mother organisation, the Solidarity Movement, on Afrikaans channel kykNET.

MultiChoice never explained why it rejected the ads. It stated that its DStv Media Sales division had the “absolute discretion” to accept or reject any advert.

Now read: DStv could be forced to run fewer ads