Copyright Claims and Takedowns
Hi All
Most of the time the Live and Loud! Shows website ticks along without incident. Occasionally, I get hassle - abuse and people trying to make trouble. In fact I had a set to with someone who disagreed with what I was doing just the other day.
And today, the cloud service I use - US based Mediafire - received an official looking takedown request for several shows by New Order (yes, the latest show), Madness, Pulp and all the Gary Numan shows. Mediafire have informed me they have suspended the files for the time being - however the New Order and a few of the Numan shows were still active when I checked just now (this may, of course, change at some point). Anyone trying to download those MP3s will get a webpage saying they’re unavailable and why.
The request has (apparently) come from SJM Concerts Ltd, who operate as gigsandtours.com - the biggest live music events promoter in the UK. Not only that but it was allegedly written by Simon Moran himself - the boss of that company, a multi millionaire who owns/is involved with quite a few companies. To me it seems HIGHLY unlikely someone that big and wealthy would be taking the time to notice my site and then personally write a takedown request. And then claim they own the copyright on the recordings (the original recordings having been circulated since pre-internet days in most cases). To me, it’s someone trying to make trouble and get the site taken down. And coming a day or 2 after I put some trolling idiot in his place, this seems more than a coincidence. But Mediafire will obviously take it seriously.
I have counter-claimed on the basis that nobody owns copyright on these recordings and a few other things mentioned in the claim I believe to be wrong.
Best case scenario - Mediafire see through this, dismiss it and I carry on.
Worst case - Mediafire don’t want to take the risk and will believe anything this idiot says and the files stay offline (this seems the most likely). However, he then makes other claims in the future with a view to taking more gigs down - he already asks in the claim they take down the files AND the site as a whole (the site is nothing to do with Mediafire, I just store the restorations there so nothing they can do about the site itself). If (by some very small chance) this really was SJM Concerts, there is no way the site will continue. But I am highly sceptical it is (why on Earth would a multi millionaire be “doing his own dirty work” and for bands he doesn’t manage - although the company does stage their gigs).
I just spent most of the afternoon and early evening dealing with this and writing my counter claims, and I figure it’s worth letting you all know what’s going on, just in case you went to download a file and couldn’t; I do try to make the files available 24 hours a day, every day.
The files are safe, of course - I have them all backed up here, not just stored on Mediafire.
Once this is resolved (or not) I’ll update you all.
Cheers
Phil
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