That's How It Happened

Viacom recently had 100,000 clips removed from Youtube, which understandably made a lot of headlines. But it turns out they're not the only copyright holders defending their work.
Searching Google for the phrase "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by" reveals only 1,120 hits from youtube.com. But they come from a lot of different sources:

BBC, NHK, Disney, Comedy Central, Warner, FIFA, IWC, Sony, Paramount, the Emmies, the RIAA, Discovery, National Film Board of Canada, ESPN, Fox, Universal, Apple, the NFL, Equity, MLB, Marvel, NBA, CBS, Lucasfilm, C-SPAN, Turner, Lion's Gate, HBO, Atlantic, MTV, Pixar, NHL, Bruce Lee, WWE, New Line, Scientology, the Oscars, Vincent Gallo, the Raelians, and the Rolling Stones

Most worryingly for the big GOOG, even eeepybird.com have had their Diet Coke 'n' Mentos videos taken down. If all these corporations and individuals continue to disallow their work to appear on Youtube, there will be nothing left to watch, except videos of kittens and lonelygirl15. Admittedly some of these are just keen litigants, like Gallo, the Raelians, and L Ron Hubbard, but the MSM broadcasters are clearly serious about preventing their work appearing for free.

Labels: google, youtube