Maybe this will help ease your mind.

Also this.

TheDonF has been up in arms about this. Super lame.

You think that's lame, check this out: Damn stupid copyright morans.

It's unbelievable, the stupidity.

I subscribe to a number of women drummers on Youtube, whose drum covers I watch now and then to get ideas and observe technique.

The number of drum covers getting pulled lately is insane. I fail to see how a girl playing drums along to a stunningly low-quality version of a song harms an artist in ANY WAY. In fact, typically someone who covers a song is doing so because they're a fan of the artist. I mean, duh. It's so frustrating. A few of the people I check up on have added these disclaimers just so they can try to placate RecordCorp^tm.

It reminds me of a few years back when RecordCorp^tm was up in arms about fans writing out guitar tabs. The idiocy is stunning. It's a real failure of logic to PUNISH THE PEOPLE WHO ARE MAKING YOU MONEY.

Exactly. And, let's not forget that the video was designed to help promote sales - let people put stuff up there and you'll make more money. Monty Python has just proven this with a 23,000% increase in DVD sales after putting their stuff up on YouTube for free!

And then there's Avril Lavigne who earned over $1m in revenue from YouTube.

Record labels and publishers need to - very quickly - get up to speed with the web. People can and will pay; promo items like videos can earn you money; poorly recorded, scratchy, background music won't lose you money. If anything, it'll make some for you. Stop alienating people and try to act like adults.

Dolts.

Wow, that's super dumb. On the upside, that video is pretty cool once you download a copy of the song from the internet, and sync it up. (Well I didn't really, I sync'ed with the copy I made from my CD and all, but it WAS tempting to steal some content, just on principle)

I don't get how pulling the audio is supposed to work. I mean, isn't the video also copyrighted? Are they just openly admitting that they don't care about the video part of the work, just the music?

It seems like a ridiculous double standard, and one they're not even trying to hide.

No Eideteker the video is not copyrighted by WMG: if you click the link you'll see that it's some kid who liked the song and so created a funny little home made clip for it; it's sad that warner wastes time going after a fan who created a little tribute to a (yes, copyirighted) song that moved her. Not just stupid, it's really sad. They're at war against the fans.

The blog FourFour often puts up musical montages of clips and he (the writer) has been given a choice of pre-approved music to switch his videos to, with sometimes hilarious results. Here's a note from him about it in that windbag Sasha Frere-Jones' blog.