Universal Music claims it has a private deal with Google to take down YouTube videos it doesn’t own →

December 16th, 2011

This is the start of censorship, and why we have to be careful about companies and government having easy tools that can be abused for censorship. They will try!

Many of us were baffled that Universal kept telling YouTube to take down this video, even though it was clear they didn’t hold a copyright to it — a fact reinforced by artists like will.i.am, who insisted that he hadn’t authorized Universal to send the takedown notice.

Now, a court filing in the matter from Universal claims that the takedown wasn’t issued because Universal claims a copyright in the Mega Song, but rather, they claim that they have a private contract with Google giving them the power to take down videos they dislike, regardless of whether they are the rightsholder.

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