Can YouTube Evict Led Zeppelin?

Band Photo: Led Zeppelin (?)

This is the question that PC World poses. An excerpt from the article follows:

The company recently implemented digital fingerprinting technology to identify videos that the company has been asked by the copyright owner not to post on the site.

The technology compares posted clips with reference videos supplied to YouTube for analysis.

It relies on identifying consistent qualities in a video, said Struan Robertson, senior associate with Pinsent Masons and editor of the legal Web site Out-law.com.

But the technology doesn't work as well with batches of different clips with different characteristics, even if the clips are all from the same event.

"That's more difficult when you are dealing with a live performance because the sound quality is poor and the image quality is similarly poor and probably very varied according to who was filming and where they were in the crowd," Robertson said.

Video clips of legendary rock band Led Zeppelin's reunion show in London on Monday are reappearing hourly on YouTube despite efforts to remove the material due to alleged copyright infringement. YouTube warns users in its "help center" that they may not own the rights to upload concert footage to its site.

Some links to videos of the band's performance lead to a red warning that says the video has been removed "due to a copyright claim by Warner Music Group."

According to a reliable southern Ontario-based BW&BK news source, the band's management "has requested the removal of any clips of the event", even though the Warner Music Group has a licensing agreement with YouTube that would technically allow fans to upload material, because Led Zeppelin own the rights to the footage.

Note that despite some of these links being shut down the day of the posting, they are ALL working now.

Read the full article at PC World.