Last month, YouTuber Colleen Ballinger — also known as Miranda Sings — was accused of misconduct and inappropriate behavior by her former fans.
The fans in question alleged to The Huffington Post that Colleen, now 36, used to repeatedly talk about sex in a group chat called “weenies” that consisted of her and her viewers. One of these former fans, Adam McIntyre, claimed that Colleen would often ask him inappropriate questions about his sex life when he was a teenager.
Shortly after the HuffPost report was published, several old clips from live shows Colleen did as her alter ego Miranda Sings resurfaced across social media as fans called out their alleged inappropriate nature.
Colleen eventually decided to address the controversy in a now-infamous song she uploaded to her YouTube page, which has since come to be known as “Toxic Gossip Train.”
In the 10-minute track, Colleen admitted that she did used to talk to her fans in group chats, though denied that it was ever “creepy.” She later accused her former viewers of making up “lies and rumors” for clout and monetizing her demise, while likening one of the most controversial resurfaced clips from her past live show to nothing but a “joke.”
Unsurprisingly, Colleen’s ukulele song — which is now available to stream on Apple Music as well as YouTube, and is marked as copyrighted — was met with widespread backlash, as several viewers questioned why she was trivializing such serious allegations in the form of a song.
At the time, some people speculated that Colleen had purposefully chosen to address the allegations with a song so that she’d be able to claim copyright on people who featured clips of it in other videos, such as inevitable reaction videos and drama round-ups. This falls in line with YouTube’s copyright rules, which state that creators on the site should not use content in their videos “that someone else owns the copyright to, such as music tracks.”
“I swear the Colleen Ballinger (Miranda Sings) apology song (where she's responding to *grooming accusations*) is a pretty evil way to abuse YT video rules: Just over 10 mins so it can be monetised, a song so YT videos using the clips to criticize can be copyright claimed,” one tweet read.
“Is Colleen’s apology a song so that she can copyright strike people using clips?? What the heck is this,” said another.
Well now, it’s been suggested that Colleen is actively claiming copyright against YouTube creators who have featured the song in their videos.
Ethan Klein of popular YouTube channel H3H3Productions tweeted this week, “Colleen Ballinger uploaded Toxic Gossip Train to CD Baby and is claiming us,” alongside two screenshots seemingly corroborating this. CD Baby is a website that allows people to monetize their music by independently uploading their songs to platforms like YouTube, Apple Music, Spotify, and more.
According to the screenshots, one of Ethan’s YouTube videos received a Content ID claim over less than a minute of Colleen’s song that was featured, meaning that Colleen would be able to split Ethan’s revenue.
Reacting to Ethan’s tweet, several users expressed their outrage at Colleen. “It’s funny to me that she accuses Adam of trying to monetize this whole thing when she monetized her ‘apology’ video and is now copywrite claiming people to ad share,” one person tweeted, while another user wrote, “No way colleen is THIS out of touch. Girly you're making it worse for yourself with every single move.”
In turn, this wound up bolstering fans’ theories that Colleen’s controversial way of addressing the allegations wasn’t actually genuine.
“And this is the real reason she sang her video instead of speaking it. She knew she could copyright anyone who reacts to the video or uses clips from it,” one person theorized.
