Takedown request rejected for lacking required information.
YouTube intervened in the case of a copyright claim issued on behalf of Konami against a video by Super Bunnyhop. “Kojima vs. Konami: An Investigation,” which provided an overview of recent changes at the company and internal rumors from an anonymous source, was removed from YouTube on May 11, prompting some to accuse Konami of abusing the system to stifle criticism. Within 11 hours, the video had been reinstated by YouTube on the basis that the claim was missing required information.
Details on the story come by way of a follow-up video released today, in which Super Bunnyhop’s George Weidman gives an account of events following the claim and its current state.
Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, YouTube is required to comply with requests to remove content which infringes on a copyright. Copyright holders must provide a description of the content being used without permission and assert that the use of that content infringes on their copyright. Once a claim is issued, the creator of the claimed video can attempt to contact the copyright holder and ask that they revoke the claim or dispute it with YouTube in a process which can take as long as ten business days, during which the video remains unavailable.
According to Weidman, while he did contact Konami about the claim, he was unable to get them to agree to revoke it. Instead, he received an e-mail from YouTube’s legal support team notifying him that YouTube itself had lifted the claim, pending more specific information from Konami to justify removal of the video.
What we do know of Konami’s claim is that it was issued on the basis that the Super Bunnyhop video used content from Metal Gear Rising. Footage of Rising appears for about 27 seconds of the nearly 9 minute video, with its accompanying audio at a barely audible level, at a point in which Weidman is speaking about the game and its status as a spin-off of the Metal Gear Solid franchise.
As gaming-related content has continued to grow in popularity on YouTube, so has the number of claims of game publishers taking advantage of the system to remove videos that criticize them or their products in ways they disapprove of. If nothing else, this incident demonstrates that YouTube isn’t completely turning a blind eye to the problem.
Source: YouTube
