Three humorless guitar heroes who were lampooned in a series of YouTube "shredding" videos have had the clips pulled offline after citing copyright infringement.
The three unnamed artists filed copyright infringement claims against the parody videos of Finnish media artist Santeri Ojala, causing YouTube to shut down his account over the weekend. (The account used to be here.)
"I feel disappointed," said Ojala in an email exchange on Wednesday. "I am amazed that this kind of arbitrary censorship occurs in the free internet."
Ojala’s popular videos poked harmless fun at famous guitar soloists by dubbing his own abhorrently bad strummings over rock concert footage. Ojala created nearly a dozen different parodies of world-famous ax slingers like Eric Clapton, Slash, Eddie Van Halen and Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Jake E. Lee. (See a video of Ojala performing alongside Slash after the jump. Slash is not one of the artists Ojala suspects filed a claim against his videos.) The videos often attracted hundreds of thousands of viewers.
Though a spokesperson at YouTube declined to name the artists involved, Ojala suspects Swedish guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen and solo guitarist Steve Vai. They "complained about the videos and YouTube pulled the plug," said Ojala.
At the time of this post, requests for comment from Steve Vai’s management had not been returned. Vai’s request to have the video pulled is puzzling — in an earlier profile of Ojala’s videos, the rocker said he enjoyed being featured in the parodies.
"The funny part is that Steve Vai complimented the shreds," said Ojala.
According to a spokeswoman for YouTube, who asked not to be named, the company has a standing policy to freeze the accounts of users who have multiple copyright infringement claims filed against them. The spokeswoman said to get his account up and running again, Ojala would likely have to hire a lawyer and appeal the artists’ infringement claims.
Ojala said that while he has no plans to file a lawsuit, his dubbed creations fall under Fair Use and his censorship by YouTube is unjust. "While my videos are getting banned, countless number of videos that clearly violate the copyright laws get to be left alone," said Ojala. "Just don’t look for ‘the shreds’."
See also:
