YouTube Takes Down Ariana Grande’s One Love Manchester Benefit Concert On Copyright Grounds

The streaming of Ariana Grande's One Love Manchester concert on the singer's YouTube page was shut down by Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment for copyright infringement, despite the event being a benefit for victims of the recent deadly terrorist attack.By Mike Masnick of TechdirtAt a time when Europe is pushing for much greater filtering and takedowns, it's worth a reminder that these kinds of systems pretty regularly takedown perfectly legitimate content – either content that is fair use or that is licensed. Case in point: this past Sunday, Ariana Grande held a huge benefit concert in Manchester called One Love Manchester. As you no doubt know, a few weeks back there was a bombing at Grande's concert in Manchester, and her decision to put on a massive benefit concert right back in Manchester just a couple weeks later is impressive.Except, for at least some period of time, the copyright gods didn't want you to see it. Grande streamed the whole thing via her YouTube account. And… the concert was then promptly shut down by by Warner Music and Sony Music, saying that the stream violated their copyrights.

Ariana Grande lived streamed her #OneLoveManchester concert on @YouTube and WMG and SME filed a copyright takedown notice against her pic.twitter.com/DZjxx8yzNm

— Gabriel Bordeaux (@gabrielbordeaux) June 4, 2017

Now, chances are these were simply ContentID matches that were automated — rather than direct takedown notices as suggested in the tweet. And the video is now back, so some might argue this is no big deal. However, with the record labels demanding stronger and stronger filters, along with demands that content not just be taken down but then "stay down", stories like this would only get worse and worse, and more and more perfectly legitimate content would get blocked.