Technology 5 min read By Mason Emerson
‘This Is Horosho’ Is Closing After Years of Viral-Video Copyright Fights
Host Stas Davydov says the Russian-language YouTube institution is ending after years of disputes over rights, monetization and a shrinking archive of old episodes.
One of the defining shows of early Russian-language YouTube is heading toward its end. Stas Davydov, the longtime host of “This Is Horosho,” says the channel is closing and warns that many of its old review episodes will likely disappear from YouTube over time.
Davydov points to a problem built into the format that made the show famous. “This Is Horosho” reviewed viral clips, cutting short excerpts into a host-led comedy program. Years later, some of those clips became part of a professional licensing market, with companies acquiring rights and then asserting claims against videos that had used the material.
According to Davydov, the channel had to remove more than 200 videos in early August following claims connected to ViralHog. In his latest video, he said the total number of affected or effectively captured episodes was well above 400.
He is not presenting ViralHog as the single reason for the shutdown. Instead, he describes it as another pressure point after years of friction. His summary is simpler: the team is tired of fighting for the channel’s continued existence.
That history stretches back well before the current announcement. In 2021, Russian technology publication documented complaints involving ViralHog and other viral-video licensing businesses. Davydov said at the time that claims from rights-management companies had already taken monetization away from a large share of “This Is Horosho” videos. The economics were especially awkward for a compilation-based comedy show because a single episode could contain clips controlled by several different parties.
The situation illustrates how much YouTube culture has changed since the show launched in 2010. Early viral-video programs thrived on circulation: a strange home video would spread from one site to another, then become material for reaction, commentary and parody. The attention often mattered more than a formal licensing chain.
Today, viral footage can be a managed asset. Specialized companies acquire rights, license clips to publishers and broadcasters, and use platform tools to identify copies or uses elsewhere. For creators whose catalogs were built under an older set of internet norms, that means yesterday’s harmless-looking excerpt can become tomorrow’s monetization dispute.
YouTube’s own copyright guidance acknowledges that the process is not automatic in a legal sense. The platform says copyright removal requests are legal requests and that claimants should consider exceptions such as fair use, public domain status or comparable doctrines before filing. But the existence of an exception does not eliminate the cost of defending it, especially across hundreds of videos created over many years.
“This Is Horosho” became popular by turning found internet clips into a recognizable authored show. Davydov’s delivery, editing and recurring jokes gave the program an identity far beyond the source videos themselves. That model helped define an era of YouTube when reaction and remix formats were becoming mainstream entertainment.
The irony is that the same archive now carries the accumulated risk of that era. Davydov says old episodes may vanish gradually rather than disappear in one dramatic purge. That makes the shutdown less like flipping a switch and more like watching a piece of web history erode clip by clip.
The channel has changed direction before, including previous attempts to move away from the classic viral-review format. This time, however, Davydov’s language is about exhaustion rather than reinvention. The next chapter will depend on which videos can remain online and whether the team decides to preserve any part of the archive elsewhere. For viewers who grew up with the show, the ending is also a reminder that internet history is only as permanent as the rights, platforms and business systems that keep it accessible.
