Our biggest story of the week has concerned the recent wave of ContentID claims against gaming YouTube channels. We initially reported that the changes would be tied to a new monetization review system for multi-channel networks that was set to debut in January. The story changed on December 10th, however, when thousands of videos across the site were flagged by ContentID.

The result has been chaos. Twitter has exploded, response videos are popping up en masse, and some creators are halting production on their videos as they try to figure out which claims are legitimate and which ones come from patent trolls or unrelated third parties.

In the latest development, YouTube has released an official statement that helps clear up the situation a little bit. The site has confirmed that the recent explosion of copyright claims is indeed related to a new system that will subject affiliate partners of MCNs to ContentID scanning. Here is the unedited statement, in full:

“We recently enabled Content ID scanning on channels identified as affiliates of MCNs. This has resulted in new copyright claims for some users, based on policies set by the relevant content owners. As ever, channel owners can easily dispute Content ID claims if they believe those claims are invalid.”