Three Unnamed Guitar Heroes v. Ojala [1]

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 [2], Guitar Player magazine [3], 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 [4], 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 [5].

Wired.com, which has covered the situation in a number of articles and blog posts, now hosts some of the videos [6].