YouTube Contacted Over “Sonic’s Channel” Legality

16 June, 2009 19 September, 2021

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What was originally rumour stemming from a YouTube page claiming to be official has now spun off into almost two different stories: The question of whether a third major Sonic compilation is in the works, and the future of the popular but now proven to be unofficial source that still claims it to be so.

The former, at least, now appears set in stone. Upon being reached by TSSZ News for further clarification, ArchangelUK, speaking in his capacities as a SEGA Europe employee, officially and clearly denied such a compilation was underway.

“No ‘Sonic Mega Collection 3’ has been announced or is currently planned,” AAUK told TSSZ News. “The only games involving Sonic that have been announced are: Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing, Mario & Sonic At The Olympic Winter Games (DS and Wii versions), and to a lesser extent the mobile version of Sonic Unleashed.”

That now leaves the other question of what will happen to “SonicsChannel” and its network of Sonic the Hedgehog related YouTube entities. The pages remain and still largely claim themselves to be official entities, though that designation has been debunked for some time now. Not helping matters was the channel’s announcement of an art competition early today.

That may leave the last resort of legal action as the only option, according to AAUK.

“After some consultation within SEGA, I have contacted YouTube with regard to this network of channels and are awaiting response from them in regard to action on the matter,” he told TSSZ News. “As stated previously the channels are not official and are not made by SEGA Japan, SEGA America or SEGA Europe neither are they made or run by Sonic Team. I’d like to reiterate at this time that you cannot under any circumstances claim you are ‘official’ anything for any company/intellectual properly of said company unless you ARE official. Comments made as a company for instance could be considered libellous under law if in any way defamatory.”

If the network of Sonic related channels is hurried offline, it will displace thousands of the channel’s friends and subscribers, many of whom may still believe the channel has an official designation.

If an update is received on the matter, we’ll be sure to pass it along.

This was originally posted on TSSZ News.

13 Comments

okay…

Guys just lose the official status! It’s great what you’ve done with the pages, but this is illegal! I don’t want to see you guys shut down, so get moving! Just apologise and lose the status, we all love to flaunt our allegiance to the blue hedgehog but crossing the line like this is going to lead to some ugly consequences…

You actually DID hassle AAUK for confirmation of the wether the game is real or not? AAUK confirmed the channels to be fake, thats enough. AAUK has better things to do than reply to questions where the answers should be common sense. Alot of the article is stuff that’s already been said and you plan on following this up further?
SEGA already said its fake, which means the game listed isn’t real and we knew they were taking action, End of story.

To quote Zelda CD-i….
“This is Illegal, you know.”

Wow, I looked at Sonic’s site and I didn’t see the word “official” on it. Evidently the person is doing the right thing and have already removed it. It would be a shame to shut down such a fun, wholesome site over the blow up of a word. There’s so much junk out there to be seen on the internet that should be attacked & taken off that’s polluting the minds of our young people. Why must you go on and on about this?

Now it says SMC3 is “canceled”. =P

I find it odd that the “LightGaiaChip” channel was closed and that the “WerehogsChannel” was hidden from view soon after its unofficial “official” status became widely known. What’s that all about?

It says nowhere on the channel that it’s official.

@TimmiT
They seem to have removed the word offical but they still have this under the SEGA trademark stuff –
SonicsChanneI are either registered trademarks or trademarks of SEGA Corporation.
They claim their fake channel is a trademark of SEGA.
XD

I commented on the channel saying the site was fake and this is what I got:
Thanks for the comment, bud! You should enter my art competition!
Take care!
【SONIC】
WTF

Come on guys, don’t you have anything better to do than complain about someone’s fan channel on youtube? The “official” part has been removed, isn’t that enough? Get on with your lives.