Prince DMCAs YouTube To Block Radiohead Song

Enigma2175 writes "CNN is reporting that videos from the Coachella music festival showing Prince covering Radiohead's 'Creep' have been removed by Prince's label, NPG records. Thom Yorke of Radiohead, when told of Prince's action, said 'Well, tell him to unblock it. It's our... song.' No comment from YouTube or Prince yet. Under the DMCA, YouTube is not required to verify the entity making a request is actually the copyright holder and this seems to be just another example of DMCA abuse." As the article points out, Prince seems to have a love-hate relationship with the Interwebs.

Comments

Re:There are 3 copyright claims in play

[Tacvek]

There are some problems with this. Since Prince did have the work recorded, (production of a phono-record) he needed license to the actual work itself. If he used the compulsory license to the work, then he would need explicit permission from the copyright holder to claim a derivative copyright. Otherwise he needs a license from the copyright holder. Radiohead probably does not own any relevant copyrights to that work seeing as they made it while part of a large label, who usually require transfer of all relevant copyrights. Please keep in mind that the compulsory license does bypass any other licensing scheme used by the copyright holder, including Copyleft. (This whole post assumes the compulsory license of US Copyright law is applicable to nondramatic musical works of Britian, but it probably does.)