14 DAY TRIAL // In another case of record label screw-up, Beyonce's Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) video was blocked in the US in the artist's official YouTube channel. Users visiting the channel trying to play the video were greeted with a notice claiming the video had been blocked following a copyright complaint from her own label, Sony Music. It's unclear what the issue was, if it was Google's fault or Sony's, or if it has been cleared at this point.
Countless blogs and news sites reported over the weekend that the video in question was not accessible to US users. The irony is that the video was listed on Beyonce's official channel. What's more, it had been updated by BeyonceSME, which is a legitimate and authorized YouTube user, with SME standing for Sony Music Entertainment. So, Sony is accusing itself of copyright infringement. Priceless!
The video was available in plenty of other countries, where Sony has licensed it, and it looks like the US was the only place where it was blocked. Of course, the video is unavailable in most other countries because of licensing issues. There's no word on whether the video has been restored in the US.
This was very likely a mistake, as Sony has had a deal with YouTube for quite a while now and they are working together on the Vevo joint-venture. But it's one mistake that Google, which owns YouTube, is probably very happy about as it, once again, strengthens its case defending it against copyright-infringement claims. If content owners can't figure out which videos are legitimate and which aren't, how is YouTube supposed to know?
This is YouTube's main defense in the copyright-infringement lawsuit filed by media giant Viacom. The video site claims that plenty of the videos listed in the lawsuit as infringing were uploaded by Viacom itself, either overtly or covertly. Later, Viacom's legal representatives asked YouTube to take them down without realizing that they had been uploaded by an authorized party. [via Techdirt]