YouTube removes Satriani/Coldplay videos

It’s been a rough year for Coldplay. Sure they’ve managed a hit number one album but they’ve also encountered two separate accusations of plagiarism. First up was Andrew Hoepfner, lead singer and songwriter of the Creaky Boards, who accused Chris Martin of stealing elements of their song 'The Songs I Didn't Write'. The case was shaky and was quickly put to rest. Unfortunately it didn’t stop there. Next came Joe Satriani. He accused Coldplay of plagiarism for lifting elements of his song "If I Could Fly" for its hit song "Viva La Vida". The Satriani case is still pending resolution.

What’s interesting is that it has emerged that the many videos, which show the similarities between the songs have started disappearing from YouTube. All this is apparently the work of Coldplay's label, EMI, who claim the videos infringe on its copyright. That would all sound very plausible except that you can still hear Coldplay songs elsewhere on YouTube, including in user-generated videos. So is it one rule for one and another for the other?

It therefore looks most likely that EMI is removing these videos due to their embarrassing nature to Coldplay. It’s not hard to think that a court would think if it saw one of these videos.

Luckily, here’s one that is still live (for the time being):


The even more shocking is that all three bands, Coldplay included, may owe something to this guy, Günther:


All this aside, what is most interesting here is that EMI are using copyright as a way to remove certain videos that it doesn’t want to be seen, while allowing other versions to remain online.