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 Techdirt
At 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.
If only they were that prompt to take down the thousands of full albums that users upload in HD quality with users putting a simple “I don’t own the rights”, “I just want to share”, etc… but then why would they do that? They encourage users to do it, it’s their bread and butter.
Are you sure that’s the right video? That one is called ‘#OneLoveManchester (Live)’, looks like the main one is ‘One Love Manchester (Live)’.
YouTube needs YouTube concerts. A sister company. Can I suggest YouTube indie???
I am really looking for the stream video. Can you please provide link? Thank you very much. I want to watch it.
Update: I just found it while typing this comment.
What? Really? If this is true they should be ashamed… Taking down video of concert showing respect & raising money for people’s families etc… shame on you youtube