On March 5, 2008, a lawyer for the U.S. Air Force sent a DMCA takedown notice to YouTube, requesting that it remove a thirty-second Air Force promotional video posted to the site by Wired's Kevin Poulsen in connection with a February 27, 2008 article. The article described the Air Force's new recruitment drive as embodied in the promotional video:

The Air Force is going large with a new tech-themed recruitment drive sporting the tagline: "A Changing World." In this 30-second TV spot, cool headed airmen in the service's fledgling Cyber Command are seen combating one of the "three million" hacker attacks that target the Pentagon building every day.

YouTube removed the clip in response to the notice. According to Poulsen's post about the takedown, the Air Force originally sent the clip to him and thanked him for agreeing to run it. Wired is now hosting a copy of the video clip on its own servers.

The takedown notice is interesting given that U.S. government works generally are not copyrightable, but an indepdendent contractor may have created the promotional video and assigned its right to the government. How the law applies in those circumstances is less clear.

Finnish media artist Santeri Ojala created a series of popular YouTube videos that parody legendary guitarists such as Steve Vai, Carlos Santana, and Eric Clapton. In the videos, Ojala overdubbed the guitarists' performances with his own (intentionally) bad guitar playing. The combination of the guitarists' rock-star stage antics and Ojala's amateurish noodling was humorous and well-executed enough to warrant attention from Wired, Guitar Player magazine, and the Jimmy Kimmel Live! television show, among others. Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash, who was a guest on the same episode of Jimmy Kimmel's show, jammed with Ojala after Ojala performed a live parody of a Slash concert video on the show.

In early 2008, YouTube recieved three complaints regarding the videos, which appear to have come from artists that Ojala had parodied. YouTube disabled Ojala's account in response. According to Listening Post, a Wired.com blog, YouTube parent company Google has a policy of disabling accounts that have "multiple copyright infringement claims filed against them." At this point Ojala has not taken action to reinstate his account; the Listening Post quotes Google as saying that this would require that Ojala "hire a lawyer and appeal the artists' infringement claims."

It remains to be seen whether YouTube will reactivate Ojala's account or whether the videos will result in liability.

Update:

Ojala still is producing shred videos, as can be seen at his website.

Wired.com, which has covered the situation in a number of articles and blog posts, now hosts some of the videos.

Brian Sapient, a member of the "Rational Response Squad," a group which seeks to debunk what it considers irrational beliefs, posted a video on YouTube from the NOVA television program "Secrets of the Psychics," in which magician James Randi challenges the performance techniques of famous spoon-bender Uri Geller. The clip allegedly incorporated images from a film of Geller performing at a charity event in England, the copyrights to which were assigned by the film-maker to Geller's company, Explorologist. According to Sapient, this portion of the NOVA clip lasts only eight seconds.

MoveOn.org, a progressive political organization, and Brave New Films, LLC, a politically oriented film company, created a video parodying Comedy Central's Colbert Report. The video, entitled "Stop the Falsiness," shows clips of the Colbert Report interspersed with tounge-in-cheek "commentary" from MoveOn activists and other political personalities, including liberal pundit Al Franken and Democratic sentator Russ Fiengold. MoveOn and Brave New Films uploaded the video to YouTube in August 2006. They also published it on a separate website, Stop the Falsiness.

On or about March 13, 2007, Viacom, the corporate parent of Comedy Central, delivered a takedown notice to YouTube pursuant to section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, apparentl asserting that "Stop the Falsiness" violated its copyright and requesting that it be taken down. (Although Viacom later disputed sending the takedown demand, a notice appeared on YouTube on March 13, 2007 indicating that the video had been removed due to a copyright claim by Viacom, and Viacom ultimately relented.)

MoveOn and Brave New Films responded by suing Viacom under section 512(f) of the DMCA for knowing, material misrepresentation of its claim of copyright infringement with regard to the video. The suit was based on the argument that the video was so clearly a fair use that Viacom could not have asserted in good faith that the clip infringed its copyright. Viacom responded with a letter to the lawyers for MoveOn and Brave New Films, indicating that Viacom could not confirm sending the takedown notice and stating that Viacom had "no problem with your client's continued use of [the video] on its website or on YouTube."

That did not completely satisfy MoveOn and Brave New Films, and further negotiations took place between the lawyers. Eventually, Viacom agreed to adopt new policies enabling YouTube users to complain directly to Viacom about mistaken takedown notices and affirming the company's respect for fair use of its copyrighted materials. MoveOn and Brave New Films then dismissed the suit.

Lawyers for the musician formerly known, and now currently known, as Prince have sent cease-and-desist letters and at least one DMCA takedown notice to the three largest Prince fansites, Prince.org, Princefams.com, and Housequake.com, demanding that they remove all photographs, images, lyrics, album covers, and anything linked to Prince's likeness.

The fan sites were also requested to provide Prince's lawyers with "substantive details of the means by which you propose to compensate our clients [Paisley Park Enterprises, NPG Records and Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG)] for damages."

The fansites formed a coalition, Prince Fans United (PFU), which has issued a press release saying that the letter campaign goes too far, effectively stifling critical commentary and impinging on freedom of speech. It does not appear that a lawsuit been initiated.

Update:

3/13/2008 - Prince Fans United reported that negotiations between the coalition and Prince were at a standstill for unknown reasons.

On October 31, 2007, Doug Clark of the Greensboro News-Record wrote a blog post about a campaign speech made by Douglas McCullough, a North Carolina Court of Appeals judge, to a group of Republican supporters. During the speech, McCullough made statements implying that voting for a fellow Republican candiate, N.C. Supreme Court Justice Bob Edmunds, would help Republicans fair better in redistricting litigation that would come before the N.C. Supreme Court in the future. In the post, Clark originally linked to a video of the speech posted on McCullough's campaign website. When the video was removed from the campaign website, he provided a link to the video on YouTube.

Blogger and law professor Eugene Volokh noticed that Clark's YouTube link led to a notice that the video had been removed due to a third-party copyright claim. Volokh surmised that McCullough or someone connected with him had filed a DMCA takedown claim to remove the video. Volokh commented on the potential fair use defense available to whomever actually posted the video:

This takedown strikes me as quite troublesome: The posting of the video seems very likely to be fair use, because it was for purposes of news reporting and political commentary, and because it was highly unlikely to at all affect the market for the video (since the market likely didn't exist). More broadly, the judge is hiding important information from the public, information that he shouldn't be trying to conceal even if copyright law allowed such concealment. If anyone has a copy of the video and can point me to it, or e-mail it to me, I'd love to see it, and post it if it strikes me as newsworthy.

The page with the takedown notice still exists, but the video has been re-posted to YouTube and remains available at the new URL.

Sometime in early 2003, an unknown person or persons obtained and reproduced on the Internet copies of an archive of email messages exchanged between employees of Diebold, a manufacturer of electronic voting machines. According to court documents, some emails in the archive acknowledged problems associated with Diebold's machines. Two Swarthmore students obtained copies of the leaked email messages and posted them on their server at Swarthmore. An anonymous poster described these documents on IndyMedia, an independent news site, and linked to their location at Swarthmore. Subsequently, commenters and other posters on IndyMedia linked to other places where the documents were hosted as well.

On October 10, 2003, Diebold sent a DMCA takedown notice to Online Policy Group (OPG), a nonprofit web hosting company providing services to IndyMedia. The letter asserted that IndyMedia was infringing Diebold's copyrights by providing links to webpages containing the leaked email correspondence and demanded that OPG remove or disable access to the links in question. OPG refused, responding in an October 22 letter that neither OPG or IndyMedia was hosting the alleged infringing material, that linking was not among the exclusive rights granted by copyright law, and that the postings on IndyMedia were fair use.

OPG and the two college students then sued Diebold in federal court in November 2004, claiming that the company had violated section 512(f) of the DMCA, which creates a cause of action for damages, including costs and attorneys fees, for "knowingly materially misrepresent[ing]" in a takedown notice "that material or activity is infringing." The court granted summary judgment to OPG on its section 512(f) claim, finding that portions of the email archive were so clearly subject to the fair use defense that "[n]o reasonable copyright holder could have believed that [they] were protected by copyright." According to the EFF, Diebold subsequently agreed to pay $125,000 in damages and fees to settle the lawsuit.

(Note: the "Verdict/Settlement Amount" field refers to amount that the party receiving the legal threat (in this case, the original DMCA takedown notice) paid to resolve the threat. Because Diebold, not OPG, paid to settle the lawsuit, we are not including the $125,000 in that field.)

In July 2007, Stephanie Lenz sued Universal Music in federal district court in California for claims arising out Universal's sending a DMCA takedown notice to YouTube regarding a video posted by Lenz.

According to Lenz's complaint, she posted a video of her toddler son to YouTube in February 2007. In the 29-second video, Lenz's son dances to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy," which is playing in the background. In June 2007, counsel for Universal Music sent YouTube a DMCA takedown notice pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 512(c), claiming that the video infringed its copyright in the Prince song and requested that YouTube remove it from the website. YouTube complied and notified Lenz about the takedown. Lenz sent a counter-notification pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 512(g), and the site put the video back up about six weeks later.

Lenz claims that her video does not infringe Universal's copyright because it is fair use. Her federal complaint against Universal alleges that the company violated 17 U.S.C. § 512(f) by knowingly materially misrepresenting its copyright claim in the DMCA takedown notice and requests damages and attorneys fees. The complaint also requests a declaratory judgment that her video did not constitute copyright infringement and injunctive relief to prevent Universal from bringing further copyright claims in connection with the video.

On April 8, 2008, the federal district court granted Universal Music's motion to dismiss the complaint, but granted Lenz permission to amend. She filed her second amended complaint on April 18. 

Update: 

05/23/2008- Universal moved to dismiss Lenz's second amended complaint.

08/20/2008 - The district court denied Universal's motion to dismiss the second amended complaint, holding that copyright owners must consider fair use before sending a DMCA takedown notice.

02/25/2010- The district court granted Lenz's motion for partial summary judgment on various defenses asserted by Universal, but did not resolve the merits.