The campy song above is quite possibly the most controversial song to be released all year. Last Friday, the Hong Kong-based Megaupload released the music video featuring some of the most famous faces in American pop music today. Among those featured are Black Eyed Peas front-man, will.i.am, Puff Daddy Puffy P. Diddy Diddy Swag(?), Alicia Keys, Kanye West, among others (literally) singing the praises of the file sharing service.
In an effort to censor the promotional video, label execs at Universal Music Group successfully petitioned YouTube to pull down the video citing a yet to be released copyright claim. As you can expect, news travels quickly whenever the RIAA or one of its members invokes a DMCA takedown and a portion of the video was featured in an episode of Tech News Today. Not one to be dissuaded by bad publicity, UMG then invoked another DMCA take down, this time aimed at Tech News Today for playing it in their report.
UMG has taken the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and twisted it into their own personal vehicle for censorship. It is a wanton misapplication of the law used to silence a competitor and journalists. On Monday, citing their own copyright violation, Megaupload filed a restraining order against the music giant saying their actions were “abusing the DMCA takedown mechanism to chill free speech they do not like.”
Megaupload further petitioned the court on Wednesday for an expedited ruling, which Judge Claudia Wilken deferred only to give UMG 24 hours to explain their overzealous use of the DMCA. I can’t possibly think of a good enough reason in this case. Hopefully Tech News Today also plans on suing UMG.
Source: ArsTechnica
Maybe there is still hope for humanity… Nope, my cynical side just smacked me upside the head.
Just wait a damn minute…who the hell taught Kim Kardashian how to use a computer?
“It’s like a big twitterer”
I just watched it. I don’t even recognize half of those people. Is this what it’s like to get old?
Yep. Next step is making legislation over it.
Am i missing something here? I don’t see any copyright violations, it seems to be all original work to me. Unless the tune is from another song?
We discussed it on the podcast. Turns out UMG claims they had a special agreement with YouTube, which allowed them to somehow request removal of things they did not own. Google denies all of that, and of course, there will be recourse from it.
Apparently the removal claim was made outside the DMCA. If they had made it via the DMCA, there’d be legal recourse against UMG for abuse of the system. I have no idea what they hell they were thinking.