This post is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Japanese Boy Bands.

Those of you in #IaMP know that a while back I received two emails from YouTube of this sort:

Dear Member:

This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by 株式会社アートバンク claiming that this material is infringing:

東劇 Tohgeki Block H Game 005 松潤(Yuyuko) vs ILR(Suika): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIKZXOJGcpk

Please Note: Repeat incidents of copyright infringement will result in the deletion of your account and all videos uploaded to that account. In order to prevent this from happening, please delete any videos to which you do not own the rights, and refrain from uploading additional videos that infringe on the copyrights of others. For more information about YouTube's copyright policy, please read the Copyright Tips guide.

If you elect to send us a counter notice, please go to our Help Center to access the instructions.
Be aware that there may be adverse legal consequences in your country if you make a false or bad faith allegation of copyright infringement by using this process.

Sincerely,
YouTube, Inc.

Anyway, my first reaction, of course, was to rage.
Who the hell is 株式会社アートバンク and what the hell do my recordings of the Tohgeki IaMP tournament have to do with their IP?
I went into #東方萃夢想(jpamp) and asked Honami who these clowns were.
He had no idea either.
Why does the burden of proof fall on me against these tards to file a counterclaim that requires my real address and signature?
I filed the counterclaim immediately anyway:

Section 1
Video links in question:
東劇 Tohgeki Block H Game 010 松潤(Yuyuko) vs
さんくち(Sakuya)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFLnobNSIEY

東劇 Tohgeki Block H Game 005 松潤(Yuyuko) vs
ILR(Suika)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIKZXOJGcpk

Section 2
Lots of random personal information you could find on me pretty easily, but don't care to list here anyway.

Section 3
I will accept service of process from the person who
provided YouTube with the original copyright complaint
or an authorized agent of such persons.

Section 4
I have a good faith belief that the material was
removed or disabled as a result of a mistake or
misidentification of the material to be removed or
disabled.

Counter Notice Description
Now that the formalities are out of the way:
I do not see why the burden of proof falls on me to
prove that my videos were not infringing.
Nor do I see why this burden of proof requires me to
reveal my personal information when the accusations
are a prime example of false positives.

Anyone who did two seconds of research or who even
looked at the videos in question could see that the
two videos in question are recorded tournament footage
of the game Immaterial and Missing Power, or
東方萃夢想 in Japanese.
The tournament was called Tohgeki, or 東劇
(http://east-opera.net/tohgeki1/), and it was run by
an individual named Honami (帆波).
I received explicit permission from him to record and
put up the tournament footage.
The game itself was created by Tasogare Frontier
(www.tasofro.net/touhou) and is a fighting game based
off the Touhou Shooting Game
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touhou_Project ) series,
which was created by ZUN
(http://www16.big.or.jp/~zun/).
ZUN gave Tasogare Frontier permission to use his
characters and designs.

In no way is the company named 株式会社アートバンク
(http://www.artbank.co.jp/stockillust/) remotely
involved in this game or series of games in any way.
They seem to be a stock art seller wholly removed from
the category of material they are claiming copyright
on.
One must imagine their busy lawyers searching youtube
for random tags or keywords to send takedown notices
for.
I would like to see what listed elements of the videos
in question violate their copyright.
Attached is a Word version of this email with a scan
of my signature.

Sincerely,
Kevin O'Young

Anyway, it took till today to get a response.
Not only that, I got an apology.

Dear Kevin,


In response to your counter-notification,
株式会社アートバンク has retracted its copyright claim with respect to the following
videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFLnobNSIEY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIKZXOJGcpk

This content has been restored and your account will not be penalized.
For technical reasons, it may take a day for the videos to be
available again.

Sincerely,


The YouTube Team



Original Message Follows:
------------------------
From: （株）アートバンク
Subject: RE: [C#264237145] YouTube 異議申し立て通知
from:sibladeko to:株式会社アートバンク
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:31:44 +0900

お世話になっております。

以下のリンクがどのような動画であったか確認できませんので、間違いかどうか確かめようがありません。
タイトルに「松潤」と入っていたので、削除通知をしたと思います。
ジャニーズ事務所所属タレント　嵐の松本潤のニックネームが「松潤」ですので。

あと、先方からが記載しているアートバンクのURLは全くの別会社です。
(http://www.artbank.co.jp/stockillust/)
弊社は公式なサイトを持っていません。

ジャニーズ事務所の著作権管理及びWEB制作などを委託されている会社ですので
公には会社の所在なども公表していません。

あと、先日もメールでお問い合わせさせて頂きましたが、
現在削除通知が行なえない状況です。
その件に関して早急にご連絡頂きたいです。

よろしくお願い致します。

*********************************************
角田 悦子（Etsuko Tsunoda）
Mail：tsunoda@art-bank.co.jp
株式会社アートバンク
〒150-0001 渋谷区神宮前2-6-10 パークレーン2F
TEL：03-3423-8611　FAX：03-3423-8612
*********************************************

Anyway, a lot of things are cleared up in the apology.
First off, 株式会社アートバンク does not refer to http://www.artbank.co.jp/stockillust/.
It is, from what I can gather, one of those outsourced monkey firms for a rather famous company.
That's right, the real source of the takedown notices was from Johnny & Associates.
That's right, Tohgeki was taken down for using pirated SMAP music.
Ok no really, the vids targetted were because of one Jun Matsumoto, whose nickname gets shortened to 松潤.
Obviously he did not want his terrible Yuyuko play to be shown online and so he filed the...well no, obviously the monkey firm just googled the shit out of 松潤 and mass filed takedowns on every damn video that matched.
Spray and pray.
So anyway, my vids are restored, and I learned that to get a video taken down on youtube as a company all you have to do is google tags and fire off a notice.