Infamous Rebecca Black YouTube Video 'Friday' Taken Down Over Copyright Issue?

from the grab-some-popcorn dept

If you haven't yet come across the phenomenon of Rebecca Black and the song Friday, I'll just assume you've been in a coma for the past couple of months. Back in April, we noted that there appeared to be a copyright fight brewing around the video, and whether or not the rights were owned by Ark Music Factory or Black herself. Even the founders of Ark Music Factory didn't seem to agree. The whole thing was a mess waiting to happen...

So it's interesting to see that the video, which had well over 100 million views, appears to have been taken off of YouTube due to a copyright claim. The message on the video says the claim was from Rebecca herself: YouTube apparently gave TechCrunch a not-particularly-informative answer when it asked YouTube if Black had filed a takedown notice, so it's still a little unclear what happened here. On top of that, there were some oddities earlier in the week where the video had temporarily switched from being free to being a $2.99 YouTube rental. So there could just be something weird going on... or there could be some sort of fight behind the scenes. Either way, I sense that the legal side of this is about to get a lot more interesting.

Filed Under: copyright, friday, rebecca black
Companies: ark music factory, youtube