The Angela/HoaxGirl break-up: What happened?

Some things are as predictable as the rising of the sun: moths will fly toward a flame, Britons will complain about the weather, and Hampstead hoaxers will fall out with one another.

We’ve seen countless spats amongst the hoaxers in the past three-ish years—highlights include the break-up between Abe/Ella and Belinda/Sabine; the falling out between Belinda/Sabine and Charlotte Alton Ward….and of course, who could forget the epic bun-fight after Angela accused Ella of participating in making child sexual abuse videos?

But the one hoaxer who really outshines all the others in terms of her ability to love ’em and leave ’em is Angela Power-Disney.

That’s why we were amused but not even a tiny bit surprised when we learned from HoaxGirl last month that she and Angela were no longer on speaking terms:

(As for the WordPress takedown, we’re sorry you wasted your money, HG. Better luck next time.)

Of course, Angela has breathed not a word of this, whether out of embarrassment or simply not noticing, we do not know. Certainly she changes friends more often than most people change their underwear, so perhaps she just sees this as the natural way of things?

We were interested, though, when Butlin Bulldog posted this: 

The copyright complaints queen

An interesting take on the situation: we know that HoaxGirl has a nasty habit of enlisting her friends to help her take down any videos she doesn’t like, usually on the grounds of copyright infringement.

So if you dare to mention, for example, that the Quantum Energy Generator is a fraudulent product which claims to be able to violate the laws of physics, you can bet that HoaxGirl will be in there like a dirty shirt, reporting you and your channel with claims that you are violating her copyright.

Sometimes, we grant, she may be correct. However, the “fair dealings” exception to copyright law states,

Fair dealing for criticism, review or quotation is allowed for any type of copyright work. Fair dealing with a work for the purpose of reporting current events is allowed for any type of copyright work other than a photograph. In each of these cases, a sufficient acknowledgement will be required.

So if you choose to use a portion of text or a snippet of audio or video for the purpose of critique or reporting, so long as you credit the original author of the material, you should be fine.

HoaxGirl relies on YouTube complaints reviewers’ knee-jerk reactions to copyright complaints to do her dirty work, and if you are unfortunate enough to be her friend, at some point you will find yourself being asked to help her take down other people’s work which she doesn’t like, for whatever reason.

The problem arises when the friend loses interest in acting as HoaxGirl’s silent copyright strike partner.

This is what happened between Mel Ve and HoaxGirl: HoaxGirl wanted Mel to team up with her against her sworn enemies Dani Arnold McKenny and Lisa Harrison, and Mel had neither the time nor the stomach for fighting HoaxGirl’s battles for her.

And as anyone who has spent any time with Angela knows, “hard work” and “loyalty” aren’t really in her vocabulary. So how likely would she be to continue dropping copyright complaints about HoaxGirl’s critics? Can you say “snowball’s chance in Hell”?

Victims fight back…and win

We’ve heard from Sheva Burton recently that she’s been able to have some of her videos, which had been targeted by HoaxGirl and removed, reinstated by YouTube. And now, Butlin Bulldog is saying they’ve had similar success: One thing which some folk might not realise: if you protest a false copyright claim to YouTube, so long as you can back up your argument (for example, but using the Fair Dealing exemption), there is a good chance that you can have your video (or your channel) reinstated.

A further interesting twist, which Sheva has mentioned: if YouTube realises that their copyright complaints system is being abused—as it certainly has been in HoaxGirl’s case—they may decide to penalise the channel which made the original complaint.

And if YouTube get really annoyed (for example, with a person who continually posts fraudulent or malicious copyright complaints), they can remove that person’s channel altogether.

We have no evidence that this has happened in HoaxGirl’s case, but we do know that she is complaining loudly and bitterly about being “under attack” lately: We could say something about karma or reaping what one sows or making one’s bed and lying in it…but that would be just too predictable, don’t you think? So perhaps we’ll let Mr Tesla have the last word.

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Update 22 November 2019:

She might be quite adept at manipulating the YouTube copyright rules to her own advantage, but Hope Girl kinda sucks when it comes to figuring out why I stopped writing on this blog. She’s been claiming the blog was hacked and I lost control of it…which is clearly not the case, QED.

Care to try again, Hopey? Keeping in mind, of course, that this is not YouTube, and false copyright strikes hold no water here.