I thought you could see just about anything on YouTube, but now that Google’s deep pockets are behind it, the site has to be more careful about little things like copyright infringement and other complaints. Suing Google could be very lucrative. Wired reported the story, “Humorless Metalheads Shut Down Popular YouTuber.”
Three humorless guitar heroes who were lampooned in a series of YouTube “shredding” videos have had the clips pulled offline after citing copyright infringement.
Here’s a clip that is still on YouTube, from the Jimmy Kimmel show.
But, some websites are bolder, and Wired is one of them. They followed up their report with another one, “The Parody Guitar Videos Banned By YouTube,” complete with the embedded videos themselves, allowing you to enjoy an entire set of bad guitar playing skillfully dubbed over videos of actual guitar stars’ solos.
I don’t actually find the videos all that funny or great, so I’m not sure what I am missing. But, a lot of YouTube humor seems to go over my head, or perhaps a better way to describe it is under my feet, since it’s low rather than highbrow entertainment. What I enjoyed most about the whole fuss are the issues of (a) rock stars being unable to take a joke, (b) a hugely popular website that grew based on an “anything goes” vibe turning corporate, and (c) the end-around by Wired, a still-edgy magazine, to get the videos back up on the web.
