Dotcom says German authors' society canned Mega launch vid

When GEMA met MEGA

Another day, another controversy: storage locker launcher Kim Dotcom says a video of the all-singing, all-dancing party at which the ON switch was flicked for his new Mega service was taken down from YouTube on suspicion of copyright naughtiness after a request from German authors' society GEMA.

Dotcom made his allegation in three Tweets, embedded below:

Incredible: The GEMA in Germany took down our #Mega launch press conference video from Youtube for copyright claims.

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) January 23, 2013

Dear GEMA, all songs in the #Mega press conference are my content. And the artist who performed LIVE gave us permission. WTF?

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) January 23, 2013

I filed a counter claim with Youtube and the video is back online. GEMA can expect mail from our legal team. Copyright madness.

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) January 23, 2013

The video in question certainly displays some odd qualities: despite having just over 300 views at the time of writing, it has received over 500 thumbs' ups. But comments on the video start at the same time as Dotcom's tweet announcing it is live, and there appears to be no break in the comment stream.

At the time of writing, GEMA was silent on the matter. Its Facebook and Twitter feeds made no mention of the incident. The organisation is, however, negotiating with YouTube over payments to its members and is not shy of pointing out infringing video to the Google offshoot.

It's hard to know if GEMA really pointed out the video to YouTube. It's less difficult to imagine Dotcom stirring up additional interest in his new service by pushing his – to describe it very generously – “enthusiasm” for copyright reform. ®