Taking Down the Shred

Wired: Humorless Metalheads Shut Down Popular YouTuber: “The three unnamed artists filed copyright infringement claims against the parody videos of Finnish media artist Santeri Ojala, causing YouTube to shut down his account over the weekend.… Ojala’s popular videos poked harmless fun at famous guitar soloists by dubbing his own abhorrently bad strummings over rock concert footage.”
The “shreds” videos live again on at MySpace (until they receive a takedown notice) and at Wired.
Eric Clapton shreds
Since the videos comment on the seriousness of virtuostic guitar wanking, there is a non-trivial argument that these could be considered a parody fair use. Of course, there is also a non-trvial argument that these videos are defamatory and damaging to the guitarists’ reputations, even though they are public figures. But from that perspective, striking these videos down off one video hosting service may perpetuate them across the web becoming more powerful than imaginable.