Universal Music Takes Down Maroon 5's Own Video With A Copyright Claim

from the nice-work,-geniuses dept

Thu, Jun 4th 2015 3:08pm — Mike Masnick

This seems to happen every few months or so, but once again, a record label is causing a big name musical act to have its own video blocked from showing up on YouTube. As you may have heard, Maroon 5 recently released a new single, entitled "This Summer's Gonna Hurt Like A Motherfucker" -- and with it, a video that has been getting lots of attention. So, you might want to go check it out on YouTube, but if you do that right now, you'll be presented with this (ht: @RomanOnARiver):

Ooops. Yes, that's Maroon 5's official YouTube channel and the official video for their new single which has been getting lots of press attention and already had nearly 1.5 million views. But now it's getting none, because the band's own label has yanked the video via a copyright claim (most likely via a braindead use of YouTube's Content ID system). The band is signed to Interscope, which is a subsidiary of Universal Music. Gotta wonder how that's working out for them, if their own label is yanking down their own official video just as it's getting lots of attention. Isn't copyright great?

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: content id, copyright, maroon 5, promotions, takedowns
Companies: interscope, universal music, youtube

45 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

That One Guy (profile), 4 Jun 2015 @ 3:10pm

Ready, fire, aim!
With absolutely no penalty for bogus claims(automated or not), it would be surprising if this didn't happen so often. Why care about checking whether or not you own the rights to something, or whether you're going to be shooting your 'employees' in the foot before sending out the takedown demand if there's no penalty(for the one sending the demands) for getting it wrong?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
RR, 4 Jun 2015 @ 3:16pm

Re: Ready, fire, aim!
Personally I'm surprised there aren't constant nonstop forged takedown requests against everyone important.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Jun 2015 @ 3:20pm

Re: Ready, fire, aim!
Except the penalty in this case is loss of sales due to incompetent label idiocy.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
James Burkhardt (profile), 4 Jun 2015 @ 3:20pm

Re: Re: Ready, fire, aim!
Now there's a thought. Set up a script, target at youtube and let fly. Just keep adding names until google is forced to reconsider.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Jun 2015 @ 3:25pm

Nothing wrong
UMG owns the rights to the song, they didn't want it on Youtube and took it down. So what's the problem again?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Jun 2015 @ 3:25pm

I wonder if a good contract lawyer hired by Maroon 5 could get this turned into a 'breach of contract' incident and get out from under Universal's thumb.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Morgan Wick, 4 Jun 2015 @ 3:26pm

Re: Re: Re: Ready, fire, aim!
And depending on how automated it is, maybe have the name of the claiming party be the URL of a site that explains what's broken about copyright claims and the copyright system in general. Use the Content ID system to educate people about why the Content ID system sucks.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Jun 2015 @ 3:29pm

Abolish Copyright
The sooner the better.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
That One Guy (profile), 4 Jun 2015 @ 3:39pm

Re: Nothing wrong
Other than the incredible stupidity of the move? Or the idea that the band had their own music, taken down from their own channel, yet again showing that when one of the major labels claim that they care about anything more than their own profits they're lying through their teeth?

Other than those two things, not much.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Dirk Belligerent (profile), 4 Jun 2015 @ 3:41pm

UMG's robots dealt me a copyright strike last weekend. F*ckers!
I woke up Saturday to a notice from YouTube that I had a video taken down due to a claim by UMG and I had a strike on my account. Huh?

What had happened was waaaaaaaaaaaay back in 2008, I'd bought a Flip camera and shot footage in Toronto of dogs playing in a park. I cut a single 3-minute shot into a minute-long video called "Puppies Play In Toronto" on my new Dell laptop. It was the first video I'd ever made.

To have some music, I just grabbed a track that came with the computer. I think I even credited the artist, Karsh Kale (whoever that was), on my video. Uploaded it and forgot about it.

Jump ahead six months and I get a message through YT from Karsh Kale complaining that I'd used his music and take it down and wah wah wah. I apologized, explained where I'd gotten the music and (I thought) hid the video. I then recorded an original piece of EDM and laid it on the video, reuploading it as "Puppies Play In Toronto (F.U.K.K. Version)" So AFAIK the offending track is down, my music is up, life is good.

Many, many, MANY videos that use music are matched and tagged in the credits, but for some reason after all these years, UMG has dinged my account because gawd forbid the music they gave away with every fraking computer in 2008 ended up in a video, credited.

I was going to get the video by my YouTube page had a giant WARNING page I had to acknowledge and now I have to watch a video called Copyright School and take a quiz before I can watch anything. I can't post long videos and do annotations for six months, too. Jerks.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Jun 2015 @ 3:50pm

Re: Nothing wrong
I agree. Streisanders have failed to use the proper channels (the Delete button in this case) to have things removed, so why should this be any different?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Jun 2015 @ 4:16pm

Re: UMG's robots dealt me a copyright strike last weekend. F*ckers!
The solution is simple: your next very short video has a link to your vimeo account in the description :)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Jun 2015 @ 4:38pm

Re: Re: Nothing wrong
The band might have a channel but iirc they signed over the rights to their songs to the labels. If the band uploaded it themselves it is completly ok to take it down because they do not have the right to do so like any other pirate that uploads music to youtube without owning the rights.

The major labels are companies and they have to make a profit. Publishing a song for free might decrease that profit (in their opinion according to the studies published). Taking it down is just good business.

( I guess I should add some /s or something but not sure which one. )
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Jun 2015 @ 4:42pm

Re: UMG's robots dealt me a copyright strike last weekend. F*ckers!
now I have to watch a video called Copyright School and take a quiz before I can watch anything.

That's a joke right? Please tell me this a joke!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
yep, 4 Jun 2015 @ 5:00pm

I once had my site shut down by the RIAA because a DJ on the site dared to remix Beatles songs. It was about 20 songs. Each song had a separate download link.

I changed all of those links from links to the files, to links to the "Larry Lessig: Laws that choke creativity" video so people would know why I had to remove the links.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Jun 2015 @ 5:13pm

Remember Hollywood, you brought this on yourself!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
CK20XX (profile), 4 Jun 2015 @ 5:15pm

Re: Re: Re: Nothing wrong
Actually it's bad business. It's like locking your children up in the basement out of fear that they might get hurt out in the world. You're only robbing your IP of value when you remove it from circulation and keep people from learning about it. People will just find their entertainment elsewhere and ultimately forget about the content you previously tried to offer. They're even likely to find far better deals on similar products elsewhere.

Obscurity is always a far greater threat than poverty because the former directly leads to the latter. You can either keep your content available with the chance that you might not be making money from some people, or you can take it down and definitely not make any money off of it whatsoever.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
avideogameplayer, 4 Jun 2015 @ 5:19pm

We're supposed to care because...?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Jun 2015 @ 5:23pm

Sounds like a problem with YouTube, not UMG, as the same song and video are still up at YouTube by different uploaders.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Jun 2015 @ 5:27pm

Re: Re: Re: Nothing wrong
You're as brainwashed as they want you to be.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
That One Guy (profile), 4 Jun 2015 @ 5:30pm

Re:
That's even worse, is so that would seem to suggest that this wasn't an automated takedown, but something they did deliberately.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Jun 2015 @ 5:36pm

Re: Re: UMG's robots dealt me a copyright strike last weekend. F*ckers!
Actually, no. Techdirt's already covered this before.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Jun 2015 @ 7:41pm

Sigh....
When are artists going to learn that having a 'lable' does nothing for their progression?

Zero fucks given!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
RD, 4 Jun 2015 @ 7:42pm

Not a bug.
Everyone here is going on and on about how this shows all the flaws of copyright and Youtube's content ID system. You people aren't getting it. They are operating EXACTLY as designed and desired. Unlimited, unchallenged, zero-penalty takedowns of any content Big Media doesn't like. That can be anything, from music to movies, to your own personal videos and *especially* any speech that is deemed to be squashed.

It's a feature, not a bug.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Jun 2015 @ 11:02pm

Re: Re: Ready, fire, aim!
There are.
Universal has a bunch of 12 people whose sole job is to fire 'automated' takedowns (Spoiler: they're generated by real human beings).

The aim is to take down rival movie trailers, music videos etc just as their own releases are coming out.

They fake 100% the automated takedown so they can say 'ooh software error' rather than 'hey we're abusing the law fuckers, and because we're rich there is NOTHING you or the politicians we own can do about it'.
Someone still complains...they get the Heath Ledger / David Carradine treatment.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
PaulT (profile), 4 Jun 2015 @ 11:37pm

Re: Nothing wrong
They uploaded it. if they didn't want it up, they could have removed it from their account.

But, that's not what happened, no matter how you try to spin it. They screwed themselves with their own anti-piracy measures. Yet, they expect us to believe that everyone caught by this system is a pirate, not an innocent or independent artist screwed in the same way.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
PaulT (profile), 4 Jun 2015 @ 11:42pm

Re:
No... that suggests that it was taken down by a DMCA notice and not by ContentID, as the ContentID system should have picked up the other videos first (IIRC, YouTube exempt certain accounts from automated takedowns).

UMG and other labels are well known to farm their DMCA activity out to 3rd parties with poor quality control, and this would not be the first time a major corporation has had a DMCA notice sent against its own content. Documenting them here helps show how flawed the system is, despite the labels' insistence that it's easy to perfectly identify and remove infringing content.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
PaulT (profile), 4 Jun 2015 @ 11:43pm

Re: Not a bug.
"They are operating EXACTLY as designed and desired. Unlimited, unchallenged, zero-penalty takedowns of any content Big Media doesn't like"

So, you're saying that Big Media doesn't like its own content?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 5 Jun 2015 @ 12:47am

Re: Re: Not a bug.
So, you're saying that Big Media doesn't like its own content?

Altough I'm sure it's not the case here, have you ever heard of whitewashing ?
It's not like it's never happened in the past before...

However back when the internet wasn't a thing it was easier to "erase" old offensive or racist content and only archivists and journalists would know that any such "sordid" works a media company ever existed.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 5 Jun 2015 @ 1:53am

...you trail off into nonsense. Nice...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
PaulT (profile), 5 Jun 2015 @ 2:02am

Re: Re: Re: Not a bug.
Yes, but like you said, that was before the internet where things are far less easy to get rid of. This also isn't a comment, it's a commercial product that they're trying to advertise and sell, a track on the band's current album. They also had the tools to make it disappear from their account if they wanted to - few would have noticed and nobody would have cared if it had quietly been removed rather than the public announcement issued as above.

Nope, this is a simple case of the attack tools they demanded coming back and biting them on the ass.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 5 Jun 2015 @ 6:13am

They really are Marooned , I wonder how they're enjoying that Island they helped build (Copyright Island) , hope to see them with a picture of wilson the soccer ball soon.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Dirk Belligerent (profile), 5 Jun 2015 @ 7:32am

Re: Re: UMG's robots dealt me a copyright strike last weekend. F*ckers!
Nope and it stars Happy Tree Friends!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
kog999, 5 Jun 2015 @ 12:15pm

Re: Re: Re: Ready, fire, aim!
best case they limit request to "Trusted Partners"
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Noah, 5 Jun 2015 @ 2:30pm

I think this was a mistake
The video is up on Maroon5VEVO and when I looked up Maroon 5's channel it's all a bunch of concert footage and remixes. I'm fairly sure the video was simply uploaded to the wrong site. While this is incredibly stupid, I don't think it's evil.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
CK20XX (profile), 5 Jun 2015 @ 3:04pm

Re: I think this was a mistake
You can remove videos without issuing take downs though, so why was that method used? That's like swatting a house fly with a bazooka.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 5 Jun 2015 @ 3:25pm

Re: Nothing wrong
"they didn't want it on Youtube"

But they did want it on Youtube, that's why they put it up on Maroon5's official Youtube channel in the first place.

Or are you saying that Interscope/Universal does not control their band's official channel?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 5 Jun 2015 @ 3:33pm

YouTube is dead.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 5 Jun 2015 @ 5:28pm

Re: I think this was a mistake
Universal is both malicious and stupid, though...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
PaulT (profile), 6 Jun 2015 @ 12:16am

Re: I think this was a mistake
No, if you look at most major artists they will have a VEVO channel for their music videos, and sometimes (but not always) another channel for everything else. The reason? VEVO is a service owned and operated by Universal (among others, including Google) for the express purpose of streaming music videos. It was up there because they intended it to be there.

Even if they did need to take it down, they has the tools in their own account that would just remove it from their offered videos, without such an error message being seen.

We are still talking stupidity here, it's just stupidity of the entire system rather than a simple clerical error.

How about we all stop trying to come up with excuses, and accept that this is yet another sign of a hopelessly broken system with unacceptable collateral damage.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
PaulT (profile), 6 Jun 2015 @ 12:20am

Re: I think this was a mistake
Ah, OK I might have misread your comment, yeah maybe they did want it on the VEVO channel instead.

But... if that is the case it's still idiotic. Not only did they use completely the wrong tool to remove it, but they waited until it had been seen well over a million times before correcting the error. If the normal Maroon5 channel was serving ads or otherwise being monetised, they've also lost themselves a revenue stream which was not causing any issues elsewhere.

It still indicates a broken system - if they can "accidentally" issue a takedown notice against their own content, and the content is removed as result, what hope is there for others whose own uninfringing content is "accidentally" targeted by them?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 7 Jun 2015 @ 5:08pm

So now it's been completely removed:

"This video has been removed by the user.

Sorry about that."
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Pragmatic, 9 Jun 2015 @ 2:51am

Re: Re: Re: Nothing wrong
But how do we incentivize the living and the dead to create content if we allow things like this to go unchallenged?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Pragmatic, 9 Jun 2015 @ 2:52am

Re: Re: Nothing wrong
It occurs to me that perhaps they knew the internet would freak out and cry "censorship!" if they pulled the video, thereby driving up interest in this song. /tinfoil
[ link to this | view in thread ]
PaulT (profile), 9 Jun 2015 @ 3:29am

Re: Re: Re: Nothing wrong
Nah, they're not that clever. Hanlon's Razor and all that.

I prefer the idea posited below - they accidentally put it on the main Maroon 5 channel instead of the band's VEVO channel, and some admin monkey tried to remove it via the DMCA tools instead of the normal account options and/or asking YouTube to move it to the correct one.

The funny thing is that the actual reason is irrelevant to the point at hand. However it happened, UMG managed to issue a copyright takedown on its own content. If a video with 1.5 million views by a world famous chart-topping band can be taken down from its own channel by a mere clerical error, what hope do other innocent victims have against intentional abuse?

In fact, if you want an actual conspiracy theory, how many potentially huge up and coming indie acts have been killed by similar actions, only not enough people know about them for their stories to get noticed? What's more likely - killing a hugely successful video to generate more publicity for a multi-platinum world famous band via stories about the label's incompetence, or blocking the ability of a talented indie artist to get ahead without signing to an RIAA label?
[ link to this | view in thread ]