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reported: “Little surprise interest was so high; Megaupload is described as a rogue site by the RIAA and here are some of their key labels’ artists promoting the service in the most powerful way possible — through a song.”

The reaction to the song was blunt and, in hindsight, almost hysterical. Universal Music Group (UMG) used YouTube’s own “direct delete” access to remove the video. Where it once appeared on YouTube, there was a notice saying it had been removed because it included copyrighted material. Dotcom was furious and told Torrent Freak: “Mega owns everything in this video. And we have signed agreements with every featured artist for this campaign. Those UMG criminals. They are sending illegitimate takedown notices for content they don’t own. Dirty tricks in an effort to stop our massively successful viral campaign.”

Megaupload contacted YouTube. The video went back up again. UMG complained again. The video came down. The second infringement notice saw Megaupload warned it would have its account blocked if it continued to flout the rules.

Dotcom said he was particularly upset the dead link to the music video was flagged as a copyright breach. “They had no rights to any second of that video or song. . . . We produced the song. Everything in there was original, shot by us, created by us and still they went to YouTube and took it down.”

“They took it down in a way where the message would be displayed saying this is copyright infringement. And here they are, yelling out loud that we are the copyright infringers of the world, (but) taking down our legitimate video, which by that time had been embedded in over 500 news stories. Now, every single time someone would go to read about Megaupload and read about that campaign, the video would show ‘taken down for copyright infringement’.”

“I filed a law suit. I was really upset about it. We did everything by the book. We didn’t do anything wrong. They just totally ignored the law and broke the law, hurting us, wanting to portray us as someone who is stealing their stuff to create this video. That was outrageous. That really hurt us.”

With the lawsuit filed, UMG faced a restraining order on further action against the Megaupload song — but the damage had already been done. The takedowns had interrupted the viral flow and reduced the potential audience for the music video. It had also branded the company with a copyright violation.

“The press that wrote about this, about why it was taken down . . . saying, ‘Look at these guys, they pirated stuff in their own music videos, these artists were used.’ That was very painful to have to go through that.”

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