On August 14 2011, I received an email from youtube stating that two videos were removed from my channel due to a copyright claim made by Manuel Barrueco. They were the two clips from a concert taped from Turkish TV a long time ago where he played Chick Korea's children's songs 6 and 18. I had another clip on my channel from the same concert of him playing Rodrigo's Invocacion and Danza and somehow that one was still there. Had he missed it? Anyway, it was now too risky to keep it online so I deleted it right away, along with everything else on my channel that was not mine. That is, all the stuff I taped from TV in the nineties. About 40 videos of various guitarists including Jorge Cardoso, John Williams, Paco Pena, etc. Later on throughout the day I realized that several other videos of Manuel Barrueco were also taken down from youtube either by Barrueco via a copyright claim or users who became aware of the operation and got scared. I watched Barrueco videos disappear from youtube over the next couple of days. Most of the Barrueco stuff on youtube is gone now with the exception of the official clips that promote his DVD and the brief videos that showcase the Cordoba Guitar Festival. Some accounts were actually terminated due to repeated copyright offences to Mr. Barrueco and there was one clip that was taken down again via a copyright claim that seems to have featured a player who performed a piece 'arranged' by Barrueco. I cannot be 100% sure as the video is gone but the description which still remains leads me to believe that is the case.
Having your youtube account terminated is a pretty awful thing to happen. First of all, everything you have there, along with all of the non-offending stuff, is gone forever. Besides, you lose your subscribers, view counts, friends list, connections, statistics you name it… And you are pretty much banned from youtube, that is, you cannot open a new account, at least not with the same email address. That is what youtube tells you anyway.
I wonder what at this point in time prompted Mr. Barrueco to take action and eradicate his unofficial presence from youtube. I do understand that the videos were instances of copyright infringement in that he could make money selling them on DVDs. The sad thing though is that the youtube users who got punished/hurt by this by either getting a strike on their channels or having their accounts terminated are probably the people who loved and admired Barrueco the most. The videos were very popular too. The Invocacion and Danza video that I deleted was the most popular video on my channel with over 10,000 views. Again, I wonder, if Manuel Barrueco will benefit or suffer from this in the long run.
Once I started getting over the sadness of Barrueco's disappearance from youtube I immediately started to worry about the videos of Julian Bream and Andres Segovia masterclasses posted by various users. I say watch them before the are taken down :)
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