Five Copyright Fights of the Past Two Years, From YouTube to a Glass Dome in Shenzhen

The Verge reported on 29 September 2024 that Adele's "Rolling in the Deep" and tracks by Kendrick Lamar, Britney Spears, Green Day, Kanye West and Burna Boy had vanished from YouTube and YouTube Music in the United States. Viewers saw a short message instead: "This video contains content from SESAC. It is not available in your country." The cause was a licensing deadlock between the platform and the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers, the performing rights organization founded in 1930 and acquired by the private equity firm Blackstone in 2017.

SESAC's own site, cited by The Verge, says it licenses the public performance of more than 1.5 million songs on behalf of its 15,000+ affiliated songwriters, composers and music publishers. The organization has not commented publicly on the standoff.

YouTube did respond to The Verge, through spokesperson Mariana de Felice: "We have held good faith negotiations with SESAC to renew our existing deal. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we were unable to reach an equitable agreement before its expiration. We take copyright very seriously and as a result, content represented by SESAC is no longer available on YouTube in the US. We are in active conversations with SESAC and are hoping to reach a new deal as soon as possible."

Variety, citing an unnamed source, suggested the takedown might be a negotiating tactic, since "the previous deal actually does not expire until next week." By Monday afternoon YouTube said a new deal was in place and the missing music would return "over the next day or two." The Verge noted one oddity in the blackout: a listing for Kanye West's "Power" was blocked while the music video kept streaming. SESAC's searchable repertory, including a 44,267-page PDF, did not map cleanly onto what disappeared.

A skater, a Minion and a last-minute call

Two years later the same mechanism hit an Olympic programme. The Guardian reported on 3 February 2026 that Spanish figure skater Tomàs-Llorenç Guarino Sabaté learned late the previous week that his short programme, built around music from the Minions franchise, would not be cleared for the Milano Cortina Winter Games. He said he had submitted the music through the International Skating Union's recommended rights-clearance process months earlier and had skated to it all season, including at the European championships in Sheffield.

Then Universal changed its position. "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," the six-time Spanish national champion wrote on Instagram. He added that "there are still a couple things to be tied up with the other 2 musics of the programme."

The near-miss 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 1990s-themed rhythm dance could not be cleared for Olympic use, despite being approved for 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; it was settled privately for an undisclosed sum understood by the Guardian to be around $1.4m (£1.02m).

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

Smith said he had held direct talks with major rights-holders and that the ISU was pursuing a "multi-pronged approach," including work with an existing platform that handles rights across other sports.

A dome in Shenzhen and a database in British Columbia

Copyright fights do not need a stadium. Canadian glass artist Victoria Balva wrote on her site that a contact in Asia alerted her to a large stained and leaded glass skylight being built for Huawei's headquarters in Shenzhen, and that the rendering resembled her own domes and ceilings in structure and detail. She wrote to the Japanese architectural and interior design firm Nikken; after an internal investigation, according to Balva, Nikken accepted that an employee had looked at her designs and appointed a Toronto lawyer to handle the case. She later engaged Yuri Chumak of Chumack and Company, arguing that under Canadian copyright law Nikken's design was a substantial copy. A new proposed design was eventually sent for her approval; Balva said it still contained a couple of minor elements from her work but no longer looked similar overall. She wrote that the case has not been fully resolved and that four months of her professional life were lost. The Globe and Mail's architecture critic Alex Bozikovic covered the story, for subscribers.

Elsewhere, the fight has moved to AI. BetaKit reported on 26 March 2026 that the Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII) and Vancouver-based Caseway AI had settled a copyright dispute. CanLII sued in the British Columbia Supreme Court in November 2024, alleging Caseway built a business by taking CanLII's work through a bulk and systemic download without permission or compensation. Settlement terms are confidential. CanLII said in a blog post that it "continues its work providing broad public access to primary legal information," while Caseway "continues developing technology solutions for organizations that operate in complex, document-heavy environments." Caseway framed the outcome as a shift "away from attempting to slow technological progress through litigation."

And in June 2026, Guitar World reported that Thomann, which calls itself the world's largest music retailer, is suing Fender over its wave of cease-and-desists in the Stratocaster body-shape dispute, following a default ruling at the Regional Court of Dusseldorf in March. Thomann says it is acting for smaller manufacturers too; Fender has said it is "working directly with companies to find practical paths forward."