Meet The Company That’s Trying To Make YouTube A No “Stairway” Zone

After much speculation over who, exactly, was trying to get clips from Led Zeppelin’s Monday show at the O2 arena removed from YouTube, the culprit has come forth. And it’s not anyone at Warner Music Group, or even Jimmy Page himself. Instead, it’s the Brooklyn-based outfit GrayZone, which calls itself “the ‘bootbusters’ of the entertainment industry.” (Yes, really.) And it turns out that the mass removal being attributed to WMG was the result of a glitch, or at least what the company claimed as it explained itself to Silicon Alley Insider:

Grayzone regrets that it erroneously issued takedown notices to YouTube regarding footage of Led Zeppelin’s December 10th concert. The error is ours alone. We acted without authorization from the band or Warner Music Group. Unfortunately, an automated system mistakenly attributed the removal of the content to a copyright claim by Warner Music Group. That was inaccurate. We have informed YouTube of the error and we regret any inconvenience this may have caused.

“Inconvenience”? Hey, guys, you helped news-thirsty bloggers like me get a bunch of posts out of this “mystery” during one of the slowest times of the year! I’m actually kind of grateful, even if I’m a little hurt that I didn’t get an explanatory e-mail as well. Maybe next time?

Led Zeppelin YouTube Culprit: Overeager “Bootbusters” [Silicon Alley Insider] GrayZone [Official site]