The CopyKat - The Pirate Bay on new Swedish advertising blacklist

The Pirate Bay and several other locally significant 'pirate' sites have been placed on an advertising blacklist. The initiative is the result if a collaboration between anti-piracy group Rights Alliance and the national association of Swedish advertisers which has  more than 600 member companies. As Torrent Freak says, this “follow the money” approach is gaining momentum worldwide and is largely centered on the companies financing pirate sites with their advertising spend.

Acording to daya presented by the Motion Picture Association at a conference focused on online law enforcement in Southampton last week, 504 web blocking injunctions have been issued in Europe: Italy tops the list of orders against  internet service providers requiring them to block consumers access to copyright infringing websites, with 238 injunctions now issued. The UK comes second with 135 web-blocks now in place. More here.

Aurous, which MBW likened to the new Grooveshark last week and which was also called the 'Popcorn Time for music', and which we highlighted in the last CopyKat, has pulled its attempted crowdfunding on IndieGogo citing "unwanted attention"

Raanan Katz , the real estate mogul and owner of the Miami Heat basketball team, has learned about copyright law the hard (and expensive) way. Irina Chevaldina,an unhappy former tenant of Katz’s company, copied a rather unflattering photograph of Katz taken by photographer Seffi Magriso onto her blog which was highly critical of Katz. Unhappy about this, Katz acquired the photo’s copyright, and then claimed Chevaldina had infringed his newly acquired copyright. The District Court gave the claim short shrift - and applying the standard tests they found fair use, and in particular found: The nature of the use was non-commercial - Chevaldina used the photo to criticise, ridiule and satirize Katz; and because Katz acquired the photo to block any publication, Chevaldina's use could not have any effect on the marketplace:  "Due to Katz’s attempt to utilize copyright as an instrument of censorship against unwanted criticism, there is no potential market for his work", concluding "“every reasonable factfinder would conclude the inclusion of the Photo in her blog posts constituted fair use.” Chevaldina was awarded her attorney's fees. 

Shares of in Pandora Media, the Internet radio company have jumped by 5.3% after the firm received good news in an ongoing fight over royalties. The company said it "was pleased that the U.S. Registrar of Copyrights agreed that the company's pact with Merlin Network, a global rights agency for independent musicians, was admissible as a benchmark in royalty proceedings before the Copyright Royalty Board  according to a Reuters report. In May The Federal Communications Commission gave Pandora Media permission to buy a small radio station in South Dakota in a move to obtain lower royalty rates. ASCAP's objection to the acquisition of the terrestrial radio station was finally put to rest by the FCC last week .The agency rejected the performance rights organization's request for reconsideration of its original ruling.

The cabinet reshuffle in Canberra has seen the Australian Attorney-General George Brandis not only lose his position as the Minister of Arts, but his responsibilities for copyright and content classification - which have been moved from his office to that of newly appointed Communication Minister Mitch Fifield.

And finally, the he much delayed extradition hearing of the former management team of MegaUpload has begin in New Zealand, despite lawyers for MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom and his former colleagues again trying to get their clients' extradition case pushed back, not least as court imposed restrictions on funds mean Dotcom and his colleagues cannot hire U.S based experts in U.S. copyright and criminal law. 

The CopyKat - eagles, trolls and honeypots

The provision in the Polish Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act that gives the injured party an option to claim what are in effect punitive and triple damages based on a market rate licence fee multiplied times three has been held unconstitutional by the Polish Constitutional Tribunal.  The decision was made upon a request filed by UPC – one of largest digital cable television providers in Poland after UPC faced a court decision awarding punitive damages against UPC in favour of the Association of Polish Film Makers for rebroadcasting of TV programs without paying a license fee. More here .

What looks like an interesting looking book called It’s One for the Money: The Song Snatchers Who Carved Up a Century of Pop & Sparked a Musical Revolution by Clinton Heylin is out on Constable, its £20 and the  ISBN is 9781472111906. The Spectator describes it thus: "Clinton Heylin’s book is packed with examples ... of what strange things can happen when popular music and copyright law collide. Throughout the 20th century, he argues, songwriters happily borrowed, were influenced by or just nicked other songwriters’ ideas. (One of the book’s more unexpected snippets is that the Sex Pistols stole the introduction to ‘Pretty Vacant’ from Abba’s ‘SOS’.) But, because the serious money has always been in song publishing, this has not only created some great music. It’s also given record company types endless opportunities for unscrupulous profit."

Google has won a partial legal victory on over German performing rights society GEMA, which had sought to make the company's video-sharing service YouTube pay each time users streamed music videos by artists it represents. A Munich court rejected GEMA's demand that YouTube pay 0.375 euro cents ($0.004) per stream of certain videos. In its claim, GEMA had picked out a sample of 1,000 videos which it said would cost YouTube around 1.6 million euros. However the German regional court  ruled that Google's video-sharing website YouTube must prevent users from posting material that infringes copyright law once such a video has been brought to its attention. "However, if such a service provider has been made aware of a clear violation of the law, it must not only remove the content, but also must take precautions to avoid further infringements of copyrights," the court said in its ruling. GEMA may appeal the ruling. More here.

But not to assets ......

The MegaUpload case is back in the US courts after former MegaUpload executivess filed an appeal with the Fourth Circuit appellate court, arguing that the judge which originally considered the forfeiture requests which stripped them of assets  violated due process and denied Kim Dotcom and his fellow defendants their basic rights. The appeal also disputes the defining of the former MegaUpload executives as "fugitives", noting that while they are indeed fighting efforts to have them extradited to the US, they are doing so in accordance with the laws of the countries where they currently reside, which is New Zealand for Dotcom.

TorrentFreak reports that over the past months two of The Pirate Bay co-founders have been questioned by Swedish police, acting on behalf of the FBI. The officers were looking for information on Pirate Bay backups and logs as part of an investigation into the 'honeypot scheme' of the notorious Prenda copyright trolls - allegedly looking for evidence evidence that the so called copyright trolls Prenda Law uploaded their own torrents to The Pirate Bay, creating a honeypot for the people they later sued over pirated downloads. The crucial evidence to back up this allegation came from The Pirate Bay, who shared upload logs with TorrentFreak that tied a user account and uploads to Prenda and its boss John Steele. TorrentFreak says that the confirmation comes from Pirate Bay co-founders Peter Sunde and Fredrik Neij, who independently informed TF that they were questioned about Prenda during their stays in prison. More on Prenda here and here. 

A newly leaked TPP chapter "shows countries converging on anti-user copyright takedown rules". It seems the secret negotiations haven't all been US led and indeed some of the other potential signatories have resisted a carbon copy of the DMCA - mot least Canada which says it has a better takedown system, and the EFF say that notable improvem,ents include (i) the text now requires parties to provide penalties for knowingly false takedown notices (but also for false counter-notices) (ii) content that has been removed in response to a takedown notice must be restored if a valid counter-notice is received,  (iii) a failure of an intermediary to satisfy safe harbor conditions should not automatically make them liable for the user’s copyright infringement—it just means that they are no longer protected from being found liable in court and (iv) the limitations on liability that intermediaries enjoy may not be made conditional on their proactively monitoring uploads to their networks.

And finally - on Thursday (tomorrow), MEPs will make their opinions on copyright in Europe known – by voting on Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda’s review of the Information Society Directive. Its not binding - but may give Commissioner Gunther Oettinger, who is drawing up changes to copyright laws in Europe - some indication of where MEP's are on copyright reform -  on everything from geo-blocking to fair use to the Freedom of Panorama to 'Google' levies to the terms of copyrights to media pluralism. 

UPDATE: Eleonora has posted an update on the vote by the European Parliament which by 445 votes to 65 (with 32 abstentions), the Parliament adopted a non-binding resolution which assesses the implementation of the key aspects of this EU directive ahead of upcoming Commission plans to update the relevant legislative framework in the area of copyright. Eleonora's key headlines: Freedom of panorama not to be restricted - and a rejection of the German led proposal for EU-wide ancillary right over news content. More 
here http://ipkitten.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/eu-parliament-rejects-restrictions-on.html - and the EFF have their own somewhat more opinionated comment here and the Register takes an in interesting stance here.

The CopyKat - The Sky's the limit in new football deal

Sky is paying £10 million per football match in a new deal with the England's Premier League. As the market digested the £4.176bn Sky is paying over three years for 126 live matches each year it seemed that many analysts think that Sky has overpaid. Sky’s share price fell by 5%, the biggest faller in the FTSE 100. The deal is an 83% increase over the cost of the existing contract and  includes a new Friday night slot.  BT’s shares, by contrast, were up by more than 4% in early trading on Wednesday. It will pay a total of £960m compared to £738m for two packages which would include 42 games each season, which is £7.6m on a per game basis, a rise of 18%. BT will show matches on Saturday evenings and and a handful of Sunday and midweek slots. The new contract which totals £5.136 billion begins in 2016. The combined figure for the 2013-2016 seasons was £3 billion, and for the 2010-2013 seasons was £1.8 billion.

Hmmmm - maybe ..........

Andrus Nomm, a 36 year old Estonian who lives in the Netherlands, and one of a small group of ex MegaUpload staffers who are facing extradition to the US for involvement in the running of the controversial file-transfer company, has pleaded guilty to criminal copyright infringement charges and has been sentenced to a year and a day in a U.S. prison. Nomm pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to conspiracy to commit felony copyright infringement. District Judge Liam O’Grady accepted the guilty plea and imposed the sentence. Nomm is the first defendant to face charges in the U.S. in the Department of Justice’s long-running copyright infringement case against Megaupload, and Nomm voluntarily waived his right to fight extradition. The plea is “a significant step forward in the largest criminal copyright case in U.S. history,” Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell said in a statement.  Speculation remains that he had done a deal with prosecutors, and will agree to testify against his former colleagues, including Kim Dotcom. Prosecutors agreed to a light sentence for his guilty plea, the DOJ said in a press release.The DOJ has accused the operators of Megaupload of running websites that wilfully reproduced and distributed movies and other products protected by copyright. In court papers, Nomm agreed with prosecutor estimates that the cost of Megaupload’s infringement was more than $400 million. The final indictment charged the defendants with conspiracy to commit racketeering, conspiracy to commit copyright infringement and conspiracy to commit money laundering. In addition, the defendants are charged with five counts of criminal copyright infringement and five counts of wire fraud. More on PCWorld here.

A New York federal judge has agreed to certify an interlocutory appeal by SiriusXM against the ruling that gave state copyright law protection to pre-1972 sound recordings.  As a result, the 2nd Circuit will now address the legal issue that copyrights in pre-1972 sound recordings didn't cover the right to exclusive public performance - a position successfully challenged by Turtle's musicians Flo & Eddie of The Turtles who filed filed 2013 lawsuits in California, Florida and New York.

And the latest skirmish in who pays what for streaming music in the U.S. has kicked of in a court in New York. Its a legal battle over what royalties the Pandora streaming service should pay American collecting society BMI. Against the backfrop of the major publishers seeking to withdraw their rights from BMI (And ASCAP) so they can licence streaming services direct, this case concerns the terms of BMI's current licence - Pandora wants to pay 1.75% of its revenue to BMI, while the collecting society wants 2.5%. Whilst Pandora wants to maintain the status quo, somewhat oddly given the background, BMI will argue that it should be able to increase the rate from 1.75% to approach the rates the majors have achieved.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a decision in a copyright lawsuit against two members of the Four Seasons and developers of the group’s Tony Award winning biographical musical “Jersey Boys.” Donna Corbello sued Frankie Valli and fellow Four Seasons band member Robert Gaudio in 2011 for copyright infringement, claiming the musical was based in part on an unpublished autobiography of Four Seasons band member Thomas DeVito that her late husband Rex Woodard ghost-wrote. Although initially registered in DeVito's sole name, Corbello amended the US copyright registration so Woodard and Devito were co-owners. She said she deserved to share in the profits from the musical's success.  The appellate court said there was contradictory evidence about whether Valli and Gaudio executed an agreement with DeVito to produce the play in time to avoid termination of their ownership rights but that “a co-owner of a copyright must account to other co-owners for any profits he earns from licensing or use of the copyright.” The case will now be sent back to Nevada federal court to determine if the musical infringes the autobiography, and Corbello is entitled to royalties from the theatre show which has run since 2005 and the Clint Eastwood film of 2014. More here and in the Hollywood Reporter here.

Mega revelations may make uncomfortable reading for the Dotcom team

The defence team for Megaupload boss Kim 'Dotcom' Schmitz seem to have suffered a bit of a set back against moves extradite Dotcom to the USA to face criminal charges - as alleged new details have emerged about how the Mega system actually worked - and how those behind the platform went about their business.There again, they are only set backs if these allegations are actually true, and that has certainly not been tested or proven as yet. 

Firstly it has been argued that the Megaupload 'takedown' system, which was meant to allow owners of infringing content have their material removed, was not only ineffective - it was allegedly designed to be ineffective. The 'Abuse Tool'  was made available to U.S. copyright holders, and would purportedly remove copyright-infringing material from Mega-controlled servers. All very good and very DMCA compliant, The Abuse Tool allowed copyright holders to enter specific URL links to copyright-infringing content of which they were aware, and they were told by MegaUpload that that the Mega Conspiracy’s systems would then remove, or disable access to, the offending material. However - the Abuse Tool "did not actually function as the copyright owners were led to believe .... because the Abuse Tool only disabled the specific URL link identified, and the Abuse Tool failed to disable access to the underlying copyright-infringing material or remove the file from the server" and indeed would not disable other URL's linking to the same infringing content, even though Mega would have a list of all links to that content. So it was still there - still linked to - and still available.

Secondly,  files released by the U.S. Department of Justice,  to comply with a November order by Judge Liam O'Grady in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, show multiple conversations about the scope of copyright infringement on the site. The DOJ seized Megaupload in January 2012 and charged owner Dotcom and other defendants with criminal copyright infringement and other crimes. Here's just a few examples of alleged conversations from what has been released:

- In a May 2007 Skype conversation, Megaupload CTO Mathias Ortmann told head software developer Andrus Nomm: "I have a feeling that Kim tolerates a certain amount of copyright violation." Nomm responded "Yep, but not too obvious ones" .... "Since it helps initial growth," to which Ortmann added. "But we must not overdo it."

September 2007, via Skype: "We're modern pirates" said Bram van der Kolk, Metaupload network engineer; Ortmann responded : "We're pretty evil, unfortunately, but Google is also evil, and their claim is "don't be evil." '. To that Van der Kola added : "The world is changing, this is the internet, people will always share files and download their stuff for free, with or without Megaupload."

And finally in March 2009: "We do have legit users" Ortmann said. Van der Kolk responded "Yes, but that's not what we make $ with."

At the end of August Kim Dotcom has resigned as managing director of the cloud hosting company to channel his energies into fighting extradition to the United States, as well as launching a music service, MegaBox, and political party. The party will be launched at a "big event" on 20 January 2014, although John Key, New Zealand's prime minister, said that the new party should be called the "No Hope Party".

Background on the 1709 blog here and here and here.

New research says that music piracy should not be a “concern for copyright holders”

New research by two European Commission researchers finds that “digital music piracy should not be viewed as a growing concern for copyright holders in the digital era" and that the results "indicate that new music consumption channels such as online streaming positively affect copyrights owners.” The results fly in the face of a recent report that said  the closure of online platform MegaUpload almost certainly directly led to a decrease in online film piracy and an increase in legal digital sales of movies. Brett Danaher and Michael D. Smith, professors at Wellesley College and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) said that “the closing of a major online piracy site can increase digital media sales, and by extension [we] provide evidence that Internet movie piracy displaces digital film sales.”

The two authors of the new report, Luis Aguiar and Bertin Martens, from the EU's Information Society Unit, now say "Although there is trespassing of private property rights (copyrights), there is unlikely to be much harm done on digital music revenues" adding "This result, however, must be interpreted in the context of a still evolving music industry. It is in particular important to note that music consumption in physical format has until recently accounted for the lion’s share of total music revenues. If piracy leads to substantial sales displacement of music in physical format, then its effect on the overall music industry revenues may well still be negative."

The authors highlight the differences in the five countries investigated commenting: “The most striking differences appear when looking at the determinants of download. Compared to Germany, Spain show 230% more clicks on illegal downloading websites. Italy presents an important difference of 134% while the UK and France have 43% and 35% more clicks respectively. France stands out when it comes to streaming, with 150% more clicks than Germany. Spaniards have 20% more clicks than the Germans, while Italians have 25% less. The UK presents a small difference with Germany in terms of streaming, with only 9% more clicks.

The authors also suggest that the lack of a legal alternative for a given piece of content may have a lot to do with whether or not its pirated. The authors also note that while music revenues have fallen steadily since 1999, last month the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) reported its 2012 global recorded music revenue is up for the first time in 14 years. It rose 0.3% during 2011, to reach $16.5 billion. 

The authors conclude: “After using several approaches to deal with the endogeneity of downloading and streaming, our results show no evidence of sales displacement (emphasis added) Overall, our different estimates show relatively stable, positive, and low elasticities of legal purchases with respect to both illegal downloading and legal streaming" adding "All of these results suggest that the vast majority of the music that is consumed illegally by the individuals in our sample would not have been legally purchased if illegal downloading websites were not available to them.”

On Monday, BPI Chairman and former EMI UK chief Tony Wadsworth told the Radiodays Europe conference in Berlin that he is very optimistic about the future of the music business. Predicting that the UK recorded music industry will pass the 50/50 point in terms of digital versus physical revenues this year, Wadsworth pointed to the growth of the mobile and in-car internet as providing even bigger digital opportunities for music services, and their music right owning partners, and the start of a new sustainable period of growth.

http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/03/new-research-music-piracy-should-not-be-a-concern-for-copyright-holders/

More on Radiodays Berlin here http://www.radiodayseurope.com/

and for the 'MegaUpload' research the see 

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/researchers-movie-studios-made-more-after-megaupload-was-shut-down/

Re-digi to launch in Europe, Mega II online!

Re-digi, the controversial online service that allows consumers to sell their unwanted digital music files, is going to launch in Europe. Despite many fearing the service would run out of funding after EMI's Capitol Records launched a legal challenge to the service in the USA, it seems Re-digi's CEO John Ossenmacher is not only fully convinced of the legality of the service in the US under the 'first sale' doctrine, but no doubt cheered up by the European Court of Justice's ruling in Oracle v Usedsoft, is confident the service will be found to be legal in European jurisdictions. ReDigi asks users to download proprietary software, which verifies if a file was bought legally. If the song checks out, it is then erased from the seller's hard drive and uploaded to ReDigi's computer servers for onward sale as a 'used' second hand file.

Also launching is Kim Dotcom's new MEGA cloud locker service. The big innovation with Mega  V2 is that files uploaded to the storage platform are automatically encrypted 'on-the-fly', with only the customer receiving the unlock code with the stated purpose of giving users privacy with Dotcom saying "this means when you transfer data anyone sitting on that line will get nothing as it is all scrambled and impossible to decrypt without your key. This is going to take encryption to the mainstream" although the encryption regime is expected to be used as a defence against any claims against the Mega service for user's copyright violations - as the service will be blind to any infringements.

Doubts creep up in MegaUpload case

With MegaUpload boss Kim "Dotcom" Schmitz having been refused bail for the second time, there is a never ending stream of comments on the rights and wrongs of the case online. But one of the more intersting article (kindly passed on to the 1709 Blog by our friend Andy Johnstone) is on the Register and says that "The Stanford Law Schools Center for Internet and Society has added a voice to the growing number of lawyers that expect America’s charges against Kim Dotcom and the “Megaupload conspiracy” to collapse in court" suggesting that there may be some confusion between the appropriate civil and criminal law codes - and standards of proof and 'guilt' that might apply to Schmitz and his fellow defendants. Anyway, you can take a look yourself here and its an interesting read.

In potentially related news, it seems that the BitTorrent search engine BTjunkie has shut down voluntarily in the wake of the MegaUpload takedown and arrests, and the confirmation of the Pirate Bay convictions by the Supreme Court of Sweden, with the sites operators saying "This is the end of the line my friends. The decision does not come easy, but we've decided to voluntarily shut down. We've been fighting for years for your right to communicate, but it's time to move on. It's been an experience of a lifetime, we wish you all the best!".

http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/6795

MegaBoss stays inside

MagaUpload boss Kim (Dotcom) Schmitz has been denied bail by a court in New Zealand after prosecutors said there would be a real risk that he would flee New Zealand and evade extradition to the United States to face criminal charges. Schmitz's defence lawyers had argued that his passport had been seized, bank accounts frozen and his size (he is VERY large) made it unlikely he would be able to evade immigration officials. But prosecutors argued that the MegaBoss may well have other passports and other bank accounts, and that he had a history of evading criminal charges. Judge David McNaughton agreed with the prosecution, saying that "with sufficient determination and financial resources, flight risk remains a real and significant possibility which I cannot discount and bail is declined" adding that the unlicensed shotguns which were found at Schmitz rented mansion (he was apparently located by New Zealand Police locked in the mansion's panic room with a shotgun) suggested criminal connections, who could possibly aid an escape from the country. Schmitz holds joint Finnish and German nationality and it was feared he would escape to Germany, who perhaps might be less to hand over one of their own citizens to the US authorities. The bail decision will be appealed.

Schmitz will now be held in custody until February 22nd. The other three MegaUpload team members arrested in New Zealand last week were also remanded in custody, with each requesting separate hearings to present arguments to attempt to secure bail. Mystery remains about the role Swiss Beatz, Alicia Key's rapper and producer husband, played in the whole Mega business where it was thought he was CEO. US authorities have not named Beatz as a suspect, and cyber commentators claim the title was a 'courtesy' title.

In the wake of the arrests, a number of websites have taken steps to block unlicensed and infringing content with two, Filesonic and Fileserver, putting blocks in place so users can now only download content they themselves uploaded.

http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240114316/Megaupload-boss-denied-bail

and http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/jan/23/swizz-beatz-megaupload?newsfeed=true

Megaupload team arrested in New Zealand

Reuters report that Kim Dotcom (Kim Schmitz, a 37 year old German national), the Megaupload boss, has been arrested by police in New Zealand and that the US Government has shut down the content sharing website which recently featured on this Blog. It can hardly have escaped anyone’s notice that the actions come against the background of heated debate over the proposed SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) legislation in the USA but Reuters report that a US Justice Department official said the timing of the arrests was not related to the battle inside and outside Congress. Schmitz lives in new Zealand and it appears that some 70 police officers raided 10 properties and also arrested the website's chief marketing officer, Finn Batato, 38, chief technical officer and co-founder Mathias Ortmann, 40 (both German nationals) and Dutch national Bram van der Kolk, 29, who is also a New Zealand resident. Alongside these arrests, NZ police seized several million dollars worth of assets and NZ$10 million from financial institutions. The Organised & Financial Crime Agency New Zealand said they would work with US Authorities to enable extradition proceedings to proceed. Those arrested have been remanded in custody after a court hearing in Auckland.

The indictment accuses seven individuals and two corporations – Hong Kong based Megaupload Limited and Vestor Limited -- of costing copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue from pirated films and other content. Megaupload has boasted of having more than 150 million registered users and 50 million daily visitors, according to the indictment. At one point, it was estimated to be the 13th most frequently visited website on the Internet.

And critics of the quickly showed their opposition to the shutdown of Megaupload.com, with hackers attacking the public websites of the Justice Department, the world's largest music company Universal Music, and the two big trade groups that represent the music and film industries, the RIAA and the MPA.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/20/usa-crime-piracy-idUSL1E8CJC1Q20120120 and http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/01/19/feds-shut-down-file-sharing-website/

Mega Row over MegaVideo

This story has been rumbling for a few days now but the ‘Mega Song’ dispute is taking all sorts of twists and turns. Let’s start at the beginning: MegaUpload is a file sharing platform that produced a video for what we will call the ‘Mega Song’ featuring numerous big name artistes such as Will.i.am, Chris Brown and Macy Gray all, well, ‘bigging up’ MegaUpload. This was posted up on YouTube. So far, so good. But it didn’t stay on YouTube for long as Universal Music Group (UMG) took umbrage and had it taken down under YouTube's takedown procedures (or so we thought). MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom (ermmm, that’s actually not his real name, its Schmitz, but wouldn’t it be great if it was) responded insisting his company had permission from all of the artists involved and owned all copyright in the track. He then said he was launching an action against UMG for improper use of the USA’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Universal firstly (and seemingly) said that their actions were correct as they were acting on behalf of one of their recording artistes featured in the MegaSong who had not given their consent to be featured in the manner in which their contribution was used. Further reports then followed that said other artists who featured in the video had also raised concerns, though only Will.i.am was named and it seemed he had apparently issued his own takedown notice to YouTube in relation to his appearance in the MegaSong video. Kim Dotcom then said he'd personally spoken to Will.i.am who said he had no knowledge of any takedown notice being issued in his name.

But then in a rather alarming twist, UMG apparently said that they actually didn’t use the DCMA to remove the video – but used an agreement UMG have with YouTube which allows the music major to have any video it doesn't like removed. One sort of wonders why anyone or any company would publicly say they had this right which sounds remarkably like censorship - as it is almost certainly going to be incredibly damaging for UMG – and no doubt for Google and YouTube too. But I for one would love to know if such an agreement exists – and exactly what it says – and hopefully UMG can now provide an explanation. If not, This Megaspat could end up being fascinating!

The song (and it really is awful) is back online subject to some sort of YouTube view count' limit. I know no more than that! You can see it here ... if you must

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9caPFPQUNs