Vanishing Led Zeppelin mystery solved

 

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By Simon Aughton

Posted on 14 Dec 2007 at 13:31

The mystery of Led Zeppelin video clips vanishing from YouTube has been solved.

No sooner has the rock giants' comeback gigs at London's O2 Arena, aka The Dome, ended this week than the clips started appearing.

But just as quickly YouTube's owner Google started removing them and displaying their well-known red takedown boxes.

That is not unusual. Except in this case none of the copyright holders who might have requested this action actually had done so. Google said Warner Music Group was responsible, which would make sense as it owns the rights to the band's songs. But Warner had not sent the takedown requests, nor it seemed had the band, nor any of the other miscellaneous parties with a stake in the concerts, such as the venue's owner, O2 or the promoter.

Finally a New York company confessed. GrayZone monitors copyright violations on behalf of media companies, but on this occasion it had been a little over zealous.

"Grayzone regrets that it erroneously issued takedown notices to YouTube regarding footage of Led Zeppelin's December 10th concert," the company said in a statement. "We acted without authorisation from the band or Warner Music Group."

Grayzone's Dorothy Sherman said that the company had removed around 300 clips before it realised its mistake. An easy one to make, it would seem, as the company currently has a list of 17,000 songs to be on the look out for.