Warner Music Group apparently had nothing (directly) to do with the removal of videos of the Led Zeppelin reunion concert from YouTube, despite several notes on the site stating that the label had removed the videos due to copyright infringement.
The anti-piracy firm Grayzone apparently had the videos taken down without specific authorization from Warner, which retains the company to remove its music from the popular video site.
Grayzone president Dorothy Sherman said the false attribution was caused by automation:
She also said that the takedown team at Grayzone assumed that Zeppelin's videos needed to be pulled because the band is signed to WMG. Their system must have been designed to look for videoswith the words "Led Zeppelin" in them, or maybe it was the song titlesthat tripped the alarms, because they almost certainly couldn't use an audioor video fingerprint; this was a live show.
As Google continues implementing filtering solutions to solve its billion-dollar legal problem,
we can expect this cycle of false takedown notices and lost promotionalopportunities to continue, until labels realize that it might be intheir best interest to let millions of people see a free, low-qualityversion of a concert – especially if, like Led Zeppelin, the band is rumored to be about to embark on their first worldwide tour in nearly 3 decades.
(The videos appear to be back online; here's the re-formed Zeppelin playing the first song of their set – "Good Times, Bad Times," with intro.)
(billboard; via music ally; image from loopkin)
