YouTuber Phillip Knight has received an attorney’s letter threatening him with legal action over the return of an electric guitar that was to feature in one of his deep-dive videos – and he says he is not alone, as many other content creators on the platform have had similar issues.
In a response video posted to his channel, McKnight reveals that lawyers representing Stephen King Harriman, the owner of the Florida-based high-end guitar brand Belltone Guitars, sent him a letter over a BC4 guitar that was sent to him in early December for a video.
McKnight explains that he has made two videos for Belltone before, claiming that both have collectively received 200,000 views – “which is 95 per cent of all the views on this brand, on the platforms”.
McKnight says that he and Harriman have spoken about the BC4 and the video, and that Harriman understood that there was a delay in posting the video – not least because it was over the holidays season.
“I’m the piece-of-crap thief, and all I was trying to do was make a video that I’ve made before, many times. By the way, this guy has told me personally that I have singlehandedly sold more of his guitars than anyone else,” alleges McKnight. “This is how I get treated for that, so you know. This is what you guys don’t see to see on the back end for these YouTubers.”
Furthermore, McKnight alleges that he had already been in contact with Harriman over the guitar, explaining why there was a delay in posting the video. Also, this guitar required further investigation; McKnight wanted to go “extra deep” into the build.
“He knows that sometimes things take longer on the videos and the deep dive process,” says McKnight. “In his particular case, I’ll just say the issue was he said a bunch of things that really caused me to really go extra deep on the dive.
“It was really confusing, and I really wanted to go into that more in depth, and that’s my whole point. It’s getting so convoluted. I’m trying to do what I always do, a very detailed, good video.”
McKnight says that other YouTubers have had similar concerns after getting into legal trouble when making video content.
“I’ve helped three other YouTube channels that were much smaller than me deal with legal problems like this,” he says. “I can tell you that this is something that I think just needs to be out there.”
McKnight alleges Harriman and Belltone are operating in bad faith.
The companies really seem to be more aggressive about me towing the line, and it’s getting tougher and tougher to work with certain companies
“My feeling on this is that he’s trying to create all these fake situations, and that’s why I want to document it very thoroughly,” says McKnight, who inadvertently has created an all-new genre of social media video content, the re-boxing video.
We leave the action with the guitar fastidiously packaged and ready to be shipped back to Belltone in Florida. But where does this leave McKnight’s channel? For one thing, he is going to be doing fewer sponsored videos in the coming year.
“My goal going into this year was to maybe do five or six, so one every two months. I think I’m looking more like maybe one a quarter, four a year – if that,” he says. “I’m just to the point where I’m not really upset about the situation, it just means you have to have more legal paperwork to do a video.
“The companies really seem to be more aggressive about me towing the line, and it’s getting tougher and tougher to work with certain companies. And there’s a bunch of companies I work with great, and I think I’m gonna stick to those.”
And McKnight will be doing his own thing, either way. His welcome video, pinned to the top of his channel? This Is Why Guitar Companies Do Not Like This Channel.
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