YouTube suspending users for “cover” songs?

News: I’ve seen some indications that YouTube may be suspending some user accounts for performances of covers of copyrighted songs–I’m guessing after receiving a DMCA complaint from the copyright holder b/c there are many cover songs still up that probably haven’t been complained about. Anafree’s account was temporarily suspended, but she’s back up. AngelicaV1 has been suspended. Please write in a comment if you know of any more.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007 at 1:28 am and is filed under copyright, music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “YouTube suspending users for “cover” songs?”

johngeo Says:
May 23, 2007 at 1:53 am | Reply
Well… I made a very bad reptilia cover but PLZ watch
mmcs122 Says:
August 14, 2007 at 11:49 pm | Reply
Just rec’d email from yt notifying me that a cover song I’d posted was removed due to copyright infringement complaint filed by the music publisher. Other covers of the same song are still on yt. Very frustrating, as it was my most viewed vid, with roughly 6,000 hits. I’d assume the publisher would have looked for every cover version of the same song on yt and filed complaint against every one, but there are still at least 4 others that remain.
tree Says:
May 21, 2008 at 3:46 pm | Reply
I tried to upload 2 covers to my new MySpace account but it seems that they didnt accept them. However, as for YouTube, see the following article:

“Closet pop idols [in Japan] breathed a little easier Thursday after the announcement of a deal between video site YouTube and a large [Japanese] recording rights body, allowing punters to record and post their own versions of songs… without fear of legal reprisal.
Japan Rights Clearance Inc. (JRC) announced that it had made a comprehensive contract with YouTube’s parent Google over the use of about 5,000 recordings that JRC manages…
Under the contract, Google will pay an undisclosed royalty to JRC on behalf of YouTube users. In turn, JRC will no longer ask Google to delete videos of users’ cover versions of songs by JRC artists, except where they defame the artist.”