When three recording artists apparently complained about the hilarious "shreds" parody videos, Google's YouTube removed the videos – despite the fact that as parodies, they qualify as fair use, and therefore did not infringe on copyright.
But at least one label wants YouTube to put a "shreds" video featuring one of their artists back online.
"We can't speak for the other artists, but lots ofpeople in the Roadrunner Records offices found these videos to be hilarious andwe'd gladly put [Santeri Ojala's] videos featuring Roadrunner bands back up on our own YouTubepage," wrote Jeremy-Joseph Rosen, Roadrunner's new media director, who mentioned that the label's artist DragonForce was the subject of one of the parodies.
Roadrunner wants the video back up on YouTube, but that mightnot be enough to make it so. YouTube canceled Ojala's accountdue to three complaints being received:
"I'm definitely reaching out to a couple of my contacts at YouTube andwill see if asking can help get his account reinstated. Unfortunately,
it's Ojala's account that's been suspended, not just the videos. Eventhough we and many others haven't filed any complaints against him, the'three complaints you're out' rule at YouTube has effectively taken worksbased on our content offline as well. Having suffered through anaccidental takedown of one of our artist's videos, I can tell you thewhole reinstatement process is sometimes Kafkaesque and alwaysByzantine."
There you have it. Three copyright complaints, regardless of their merit, can be enough to make a YouTube account disappear. Google apparently can't weigh copyright-related complaints against well-documented standards of fair use, so for now, labels, artists, and anyone else with a bone to pick can have content and accounts deleted from YouTube. Even if a content owner steps forward and asks for a video to be reinstated, as is happening with Roadrunner, the user has to create a whole new identity, losing subscribers and name recognition (not to mention time and effort).
