Five copyright disputes that go far beyond music: from a Minions routine to a guitar body shape

In September 2024, some of the most watched music videos on YouTube went dark in the United States. A search for Adele's "Rolling in the Deep" returned a message: "This video contains content from SESAC. It is not available in your country." The Verge reported that the removals hit artists as varied as Kendrick Lamar, Britney Spears, Green Day, Kanye West and Burna Boy.

SESAC, the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers, dates back to 1930. Its own website says it licenses the public performance of more than 1.5 million songs for its 15,000+ affiliated songwriters, composers and music publishers. It is smaller than BMI and ASCAP, but its portfolio includes major names. In 2017 the private equity firm Blackstone bought it.

YouTube's spokesperson Mariana de Felice told The Verge the company had held "good faith negotiations" but could not reach "an equitable agreement before its expiration." The Verge also cited an unnamed source in Variety saying the previous deal did not expire until the following week. That suggests the removal may have been a negotiating tactic. On Monday afternoon YouTube announced a new deal and said the music would return "over the next day or two."

When the music has to clear an Olympic routine

A very different licensing problem hit the Spanish figure skater Tomàs-Llorenç Guarino Sabaté in early February 2026. The six-time Spanish national champion was preparing for his Olympic debut in the men's singles event at the Milano Cortina Winter Games. His short program was built around music from the Minions films.

He had submitted the music months earlier through the International Skating Union's recommended rights-clearance process. He had skated it all season, including at the European championships in Sheffield, according to The Guardian. Late last week he learned the routine would not be cleared for Olympic use.

Then Universal gave permission. "Huge THANK YOU to everyone who reposted, shared and supported. Because of you Universal Studios reconsidered and officially granted the rights for this one special occasion," Guarino Sabaté wrote on Instagram. He added that two other pieces of music in the program still needed to be tied up. He is scheduled to compete from 10 February at the Milano Ice Skating Arena.

The case is not isolated. The Guardian reported that Canadian ice dancers Marie-Jade Lauriault and Romain Le Gac learned late last year that two Prince songs planned for their rhythm dance could not be cleared for Olympic use, even though they had been approved during the rest of the season. At the Beijing Olympics in 2022, American pairs champions Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier faced a copyright lawsuit over a cover of House of the Rising Sun. The two sides later settled privately for an undisclosed sum, which the Guardian understands to be around $1.4m.

ISU director-general Colin Smith described the underlying problem bluntly: "It's a complex issue, frankly, because the music industry has no common clearance platform. There are multiple buckets of rights, and within those buckets the clearance process isn't done on a single platform."

Geo-blocking, VPNs and the diary

Copyright disputes also decide who can read a text at all. The Dutch Anne Frank Stichting publishes the scholarly edition of Anne Frank's manuscripts, but the site blocks visitors from the Netherlands. Parts of the manuscript were first published in 1986, and Dutch copyright runs until 2037. The Anne Frank Fonds, established by Otto Frank in Switzerland in 1963 and appointed his sole heir, owns the copyrights and has not given permission for worldwide publication.

The Fonds argued in Dutch courts that geo-blocking is not enough, because people can bypass it with a VPN, and that the manuscripts therefore should not be online at all. The lower court dismissed that argument, and the appeal was dismissed too. The case is now before the Dutch Supreme Court, which has referred three questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union, as TorrentFreak reported in September 2024. The answers could affect far more than one diary. If state-of-the-art geo-blocking is deemed insufficient, geographic licensing becomes hard to enforce for streaming services and publishers generally.

Scraping, Stratocasters and a monkey

Three more cases show how wide the category has become. CanLII, the non-profit Canadian legal database, sued the Vancouver AI startup Caseway AI in November 2024 in the British Columbia Supreme Court. It alleged a bulk and systemic download of its work without permission or compensation. In late March 2026 the two announced a settlement; terms are confidential, and both said they would move forward independently.

In the guitar world, the German retailer Thomann is suing Fender over its wave of cease-and-desist letters in the Stratocaster body-shape dispute. Thomann says it acts for smaller manufacturers too, and its CEO Hans Thomann said: "Many of those affected do not have the financial and legal means to conduct such a legal dispute."

And then there is the monkey selfie. Between 2011 and 2018, disputes ran over photographs taken by Celebes crested macaques using equipment belonging to the British photographer David J. Slater. Wikimedia Commons refused to remove them in 2014, on the basis that a non-human creator cannot hold copyright. PETA sued, arguing the copyright should go to the macaque; in April 2018 an appeals court ruled against PETA, stating that animals cannot legally hold copyrights.

Different subjects, different courts, one recurring question: who gets to decide what is copied, and where it can be seen.