Privacy Digest

YouTube Yanks Videos Of Beyonce's Fall - News Story | Music, Celebrity, Artist News | MTV News: Given Beyoncé's plea, it should come as no surprise that on Thursday morning, those clips began disappearing from YouTube at an alarming rate, removed "due to terms of use violations."

But just what terms of use were the clips violating? The ever-nebulous area of copyright infringement, of course.

According to YouTube, users posting their footage of Beyoncé's fall were guilty of infringement because "even if [they] took the video [themselves], the performer controls the right to use his/her image in a video, the songwriter owns the rights to the song being performed and sometimes the venue prohibits filming without permission."

Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, all it takes to have offending videos removed is for the owner of the copyright — in this case, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, the parent company of Beyoncé's label, Columbia Records — to notify YouTube's copyright agent, and the clips are yanked. So is that the case here?

Well, a spokesperson for YouTube — who asked not to be identified — wouldn't comment on the Beyoncé clips or who requested they be removed, because the site "[does] not comment on individual videos." But the spokesperson said that the site relies mostly on users to alert them of questionable material.

(Read Original Article - Via - News Story | Music, Celebrity, Artist News | MTV News .)