Doki Doki Literature Club creator Dan Salvato is being demonetized for his own music on YouTube because the platform claims the soundtrack included in his videos - which he himself composed - is "someone else's content."
Salvato took to Twitter in order to share his grievances. Apparently, his videos have been subjected to demonetization for several months due to purported copyright infringement for the music he used in them - however, Salvato himself composed all of said music, meaning that YouTube is claiming that he is essentially stealing his own intellectual property.
You can check out Salvato's tweet below, in which he offers a breakdown of what exactly is happening here.
As you can see, Salvato isn't just concerned about financial loss here - he's also worried about the impact these claims could potentially have on protecting his intellectual property under copyright law in the long run. If he's getting demonetized for his using his own material in his personal content, then clearly YouTube's algorithm for tracking original content in videos isn't quite doing its job right.
The exact demonetization message Salvato received surmises that he is actively "repurposing someone else's content without adding significant original commentary or educational value." But it's his music! How much more original could you get?
YouTube responded shortly after Salvato openly discussed the situation on Twitter, asking for his channel's URL in order to investigate the issue. Salvato responded with a link to his channel and thanked them, but has yet to post any update confirming that the matter has been resolved.
As it stands, it appears that the issues remains unsolved. Given the fact that Doki Doki Literature Club is expected to get new content at some point in 2020, Salvato is probably keen to get to the bottom of the matter as quickly as possible in order to ensure that the problem doesn't resurface when Team Salvato brings out new music for the game in the near future.