Owing to copyright infringements, a YouTube channel that archived a lot of Apple’s WWDC videos has been removed completely from the platform!
The channel contained several original videos of Apple’s WWDC event, some dating back to 2000. As it was forcibly removed, the owner of the channel is now trying to upload them to Internet Archive. We shall see how Apple tackles that, as it has countered many such publications in the past.
Taking Down Copyrighted Content
An Apple fan who archived all the WWDC event videos in his YouTube channel is slapped with a DMCA notice over copyright infringement. Citing this, Apple has YouTube disabled his channel completely!
Brendan Shanks, the uploader of the now-defunct Apple WWDC Videos channel, has shared an email with The Verge regarding this infringement. He hosted several short videos of Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conferences (WWDC), with some dating back to 2000.
Congratulations Apple, you took down my YouTube channel containing hundreds of…20-year old WWDC videos. Wouldn’t want anyone learning about Mac OS X, Darwin, Aqua, or WebObjects 🤣@tim_cook @pschiller @gruber @jsnell @ismh @mjtsai @reneritchie @reckless pic.twitter.com/w2UgVqOubF
— Brendan Shanks (@realmrpippy) November 4, 2022
Well, after receiving over three copyright strikes – the maximum number of violations a channel can incur before YouTube removes your account – he was forced to quit. Yet, he’s now determined to get all this content hosted on the Internet Archive.
This isn’t the first time Apple used its DMCA powers to take down content. In 2016, Apple forced YouTube to remove the EveryAppleVideo channel over copyright issues. This led a product designer Sam Henri Gold to preserve its videos in some form, partially storing them in an 80GB torrent file and later hosting them on Google Drive.
EveryAppleVideo YouTube channel archive of all Apple videos have shut down 🙁 from apple
With all of them targeted equally, Gold eventually created an unofficial Apple Archive in 2020. This website now contains a trove of Apple’s old ads, WWDC sessions, internal training videos, etc. – but was taken down again.
This, too, has been taken down later but is preserved in an archive form. Though all these Apple’s IPs and reasonable it taking them down, it’s not the desired way of enticing the community.
Probably, the only closest archive that Apple left without blocking is of Steve Jobs – which contains emails, videos, and voice clips highlighting snippets of Jobs’ life – made by Jobs’ friends and family.