Evidence of an increasingly paranoid copyright culture has emerged this week when several high profile music videos uploaded by Vevo, all with full copyright permissions, were taken down via false copyright claims.
YouTube user iLCreation filed takedown notices against several Justin Bieber music videos, as well as videos for Lady Gaga. Vevo, a joint venture by music industry giants Sony and Universal, had to step in and force YouTube to reinstate the videos. The irony that the music industry had to step in to curb YouTube's heavy handed copyright regime has not been lost on the wider Net community.
Much rumour surrounds this incident and questions will be asked of YouTube's copyright regime, which often comes under criticism for being too harsh, and too easy to manipulate, often used to silence critics, attack competitors, and file erroneous copyright claims on videos that fall under fair use (for example, the Hitler Downfall parodies).
One rumour, coming from the Twitterverse, says iLCreation is none other than a 13-year old Pakistani, and if true, this could spur on others to attempt to do the same, and force the removal of other copyright-safe videos.
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