Belarus state TV seeks to destroy independent blogger NEXTA using dubious methods
Stsyapan Svyatlou, better known as the NEXTA blogger, faces a Youtube ban.
The 19-year-old Stsyapan Svyatlou [Svyatlou is an alias] has been vlogging about social and political life in Belarus on NEXTA Youtube channel, which has over 100,000 subscribers.
As Stepan tells in his last video, which was viewed 14 thousand times within the next two hours, at first they wanted to ban him for the trademark. Then, using fake accounts, the BT, ONT, STV began to send complaints for allegedly illegally used content and copyright infringement.
“This was done fraudulently, deceiving the Youtube staff. I had allegedly downloaded their videos and uploaded them to the channel. But this is a blatant lie, since the amount of their content in my videos did not exceed 20% and fully complied with the principle of fair use. That is, I did not just download them, but this was a search for the background information, writing of many pages of text, lengthy editing process, sleepless nights,” said Stsyapan.
The blogger also explained that the state-owned media are monopolists of information about Lukashenka and his staff, therefore there is no other source for that information.
Interestingly, Belteleradiocompany has repeatedly used other people’s videos, including Belsat’s, in its stories.
They even filed a complaint that Belsat had used a part of the BT video for a quote. The channel tried several times to resolve the conflict, but instead of getting a reply, we received the second strike for the old videos. There was a threat of liquidation of our main youtube-channel. As a result, we deleted all the videos where BT footage were used in any way.
“Double standards of the BT are clear here — they can take someone else’s video, but we can’t. My subscribers repeatedly complained that BT used their videos without consent, changing the context,” the journalist notes.
The blogger has created a backup account. He can also be found in the Telegram.
Stsyapan doubts that he will reopen all the videos that are temporarily hidden. If necessary, he said he would go to court.
