In July 2026, the renowned Georgian independent investigative media outlet Studio Monitor received an email in its inbox from YouTube that said they were cut off from their audience.
The automated message stated that their account had been terminated for 鈥渞epeated claims of copyright infringement鈥�. Along with the takedown order, all YouTube videos published by the award-winning news outlet, which contained almost 20 years of investigative reporting, in an instant.
“For a few hours, we were thinking that we lost our coverage,鈥� Studio Monitor journalist Marika Dudunia told the International Press Institute (IPI) in an interview.
The complaints came after Studio Monitor announced that it planned to publish an investigation into alleged call centre scams. The claims specifically targeted the thumbnails of three videos, all of which belong to the outlet. They were filed from three different email addresses and under two different names that, according to Dudunia, appeared fabricated.
“So we were aware that it was a campaign against us and it had nothing to do with real copyright,” she said.
Studio Monitor鈥檚 case is one of many. Around the world, false copyright claims are being used as a low-cost and deniable tool to censor public interest journalism, and they follow a pattern: bad actors file takedown demands against reporting they dislike, and online platforms, fearing liability and relying on automated review systems, remove or de-index the content before assessing whether the claim has any merit. Where a defamation suit means a lengthy public trial, a copyright complaint is a cheap and fast alternative form of lawfare against the press that requires no court at all.
A takedown can occur in minutes, but restoring an article, video, or an account can take weeks. This often requires cumbersome appeals and legal support, which leaves small, local, and exile media outlets with fewer resources at their disposal facing the biggest challenges. In many cases, this means that credible investigative journalism, often critical of powerful actors, is disappearing from search engines and social media platforms without a court ever identifying an infringement.
But targeted outlets are also pushing back. In the seemingly automated termination email, YouTube suggested reaching out to the complainant directly to resolve the issue. After weighing the unusual suggestion, Dudunia decided .
Using an email account under an alias that she has for investigative work, Dudunia contacted one of the complainants that had targeted Studio Monitor and said that she wanted to order the takedown of a YouTube channel. She quickly received a reply and the conversation moved to WhatsApp, where she revealed her identity. Dudunia said the complainant was unaware of what Studio Monitor is, because he was, in his words, “blocking channels every day”. He admitted to filing the claim, which he said he was commissioned to do, and offered to withdraw it for $380. Dudunia refused.
Three days later, Studio Monitor’s YouTube channel was recovered after Dudunia sent screenshots of the conversation with the complainant to Google’s press team. However, just a few days after that, Studio Monitor’s Facebook page was also due to false copyright claims. While its recovery only took one day, it required help from multiple organisations and reaching out directly to employees at Meta.
Azerbaijan: Attacks on media outlets bear uncanny resemblance
Almost exactly a month after the attack on Studio Monitor, Gunel Safarova, the editor-in-chief of exiled Azerbaijani media outlet Abzas Media, woke up to find out that the outlet鈥檚 Instagram account had been taken down due to copyright claims. They were filed between August 22 and 25, 2026, and three out of the four complaints were sent from the same email address. The one with a different address was filed under the same name as one of the other complaints.
Safarova told IPI the content flagged for copyright issues appeared targeted at “random,” with videos ranging over the years that included original reports and footage from other Azerbaijani media outlets published through content sharing agreements.聽
During the three days that Abzas Media’s Instagram page was down, Safarova reached out to other Azerbaijani media, asking whether they had also received false copyright claims. At least four media outlets including Hamam Times, Meydan TV, Toplum TV, and Azadliq Qazetithey had. Safarova says many of the complaints were filed using the same or similar names and emails as those that targeted Abzas Media.
“We are calling these attacks a coordinated attack because the same people, the same emails are complaining about the main exiled media outlets,鈥� Safarova said.
This coordinated approach appears to be growing. Incidents where multiple media outlets in the same country are attacked with false copyright claims simultaneously have also taken place this year in, , and . In Cyprus, seven media outlets were attacked at the same time.
Abzas Media’s account was restored only after Safarova contacted the digital rights organisation Access Now, which appealed directly to Meta. Safarova points out that her colleagues at Toplum TV had to wait 14 days, while the Facebook page of Azadliq Qazeti was down for months.
Somalia: most of the affected accounts are yet to be restored
Hindering journalistic work by abusing the review systems of Big Tech platforms is not new to Somali journalists.
According to Abdalle Mumin, the secretary general of the Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS), there was a wave of attacks in late 2024 and early 2025 where AI-generated fake death certificates of journalists were submitted to Meta, with requests to memorialise their accounts. Once an account is memorialised, no one 鈥� dead or alive 鈥� can log into it again.
Mumin says that false copyright claims are now an emerging tactic, with nine media outlets and eight independent journalists, both in Somalia and in exile, targeted from January to September 2026, with the frequency of attacks increasing.
“The commonality is that almost all of the journalists and the media houses targeted are those who are critical of the government in Somalia,鈥� he told IPI.
SJS has been pushing for account restoration, but most of the targeted journalists鈥� and outlets鈥� accounts were still down at the time of IPI鈥檚 interview with Mumin in September.
Similar to Dudunia for Studio Monitor, SJS one of the complainants claiming to be working with the Somali government. The complainant directed the request to their leader who, for the charge of $5,000, offered to take down a Facebook page of any journalist or media outlet.
Mumin also reached out to the director of the Social Media Department of the Ministry of Information about the false copyright claim attacks. To Mumin’s surprise, he replied. While denying being responsible or even aware of such attacks, according to Mumin, he did admit that his department is engaging with Meta.聽
The director general of the Ministry of Information also stated in a speech in September that 82,000 accounts have been taken down in Somalia in 2026 because they are operated by “terrorist groups” that spread extremist propaganda. The director of the Social Media Department refused to provide the list of suspended accounts to SJS.
Censorship, made quick and cost-effective
So far this year, false copyright claim incidents have been monitored on the (MapMF) platform, which records press freedom violations in the European Union and candidate countries.聽
Franco Giandana Gigena, a policy analyst at Access Now, the digital rights group that assisted Safarova, told IPI that the organisation’s Digital Security Helpline has seen a surge in the number of requests related to false copyright claims in 2026.
While it is not clear why this tactic is gaining popularity, one reason could simply be its efficiency. Giandana Gigena describes false copyright claims as a quick, easy, and cheap way to create chilling effects on independent journalism and says they are especially disruptive when filed during sensitive events such as elections.聽
While easy to file, the claims have proven difficult to counter once accepted. Safarova, Dudunia, and Mumin all mention that their counter-claims and demands to restore disabled accounts have been denied at least once, even when they have offered evidence on the ownership of the flagged content.
Giandana Gigena says that this mix of simplicity of filing and complexity of countering the complaints comes down to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a U.S. copyright law adopted in 1998 that updates traditional copyright law for the digital and internet age.
Under Section 512 of the act, U.S.-based platforms, such as Google and Meta, must comply with copyright-related takedown requests quickly. This has resulted in the current policies prioritising speed over accuracy, relying on automated systems and bots to process the takedown requests, and allowing counter-notice processes only after the content or account has been taken down, Giandana Gigena says.聽
Because U.S.-based platforms are used globally by billions of people, the DMCA, despite being a national law, has gained considerable power to impact the boundaries of freedom of expression all over the world.
“In my opinion, the DMCA鈥檚 notice and take down mechanism remains the easiest and cheapest way to censor content and voices online,” Giandana Gigena said.聽
A booming underground business and a call for accountability
According to Access Now, the requests received from its helpline show that companies are often hired as third parties to carry out these attacks, but it’s unclear who exactly is hiring them.
Multiple targeted media outlets have been able to prove that the false copyright claims against them have been commissioned. In April, the Turkish Cypriot newspaper Yeni D眉zen complaints filed against it to an India-based company Aiplex Software Private Ltd. The complainant that Dudunia messaged also claimed to be based in India.
Dudunia asked him who commissioned the takedown of Studio Monitor’s YouTube channel and how much he was paid by them. He told her that he didn鈥檛 know because he was hired through a middleman who offered him the equivalent of almost $5,000 to file the claims.聽
According to Tamara Yesmin Toma, Jose Luis Pe帽arredonda, and Raya Sharbain, filing false copyright claims has become its own business, operated by individual actors, Telegram-based networks, or that claim to specialise in protecting digital assets. This work offers high payouts and anonymity that makes pursuing legal action against the perpetrators difficult.聽聽
But what should the platforms do to change this?聽
Giandana Gigena suggests that Big Tech platforms should rely on human reviewers when checking copyright complaints against media outlets and also notify them about the complaints in advance, allowing them to respond before possible takedowns. Stronger identity verification measures could also reduce false copyright attacks and improve upon the current system that enables the creation of fake profiles and filing unfounded claims without any form of accountability for those submitting them.聽
“We need to look again at the basis of these problems, which is how the DMCA was designed in the first place and how the digital ecosystem has evolved since its inception,鈥� Giandana Gigena said.聽聽聽
In the meantime, the surge of false copyright claims adds to an already hostile environment for journalists and independent reporting critical of the government in countries like Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Somalia.
The same outlets hit with false copyright claims have also been targeted with, , unfounded privacy or community standard violation, physical and verbal, unjust detentions, and even prison sentences. They also have few options to diversify away from social media, with the platforms still representing one of the most crucial ways to distribute their content, engage with their audience, and even contact sources.聽
Dudunia, Safarova, and Mumin all share a similar frustration with what they see as a passive response from tech giants in the face of a problem that is eroding press freedom.聽
Targeted have also for platform accountability and urged Big Tech platforms to investigate the abuses of copyright claim mechanisms against media outlets and to treat them as potentially coordinated attacks instead of individual complaints.
Doing so would require the platforms to shift how they view and engage with journalists, especially smaller-scale media outlets that are less known in the West.
鈥淚t鈥檚 so easy to ban or restrict media, but it shouldn’t be this easy,鈥� Safarova said. 鈥淚 think Meta should review the deactivated media accounts, restore the pages, and believe us.鈥�