Five Copyright Fights That Show Who Really Enforces Ownership

SESAC stands for the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers. It has existed since 1930 and, according to its own website, licenses the public performance of more than 1.5 million songs for over 15,000 affiliated songwriters, composers and publishers. It is smaller than BMI and ASCAP. Blackstone, the private equity firm, bought it in 2017.

That is the organisation whose expired deal briefly muted some of the most played music on YouTube and YouTube Music. The outage began on a Saturday. Adele's "Rolling in the Deep" and tracks by Kendrick Lamar, Britney Spears, Green Day, Kanye West and Burna Boy were replaced with a notice reading: "This video contains content from SESAC. It is not available in your country." YouTube told The Verge it had negotiated in good faith but could not reach an equitable agreement before the deadline.

We take copyright very seriously and as a result, content represented by SESAC is no longer available on YouTube in the US.

Mariana de Felice, a YouTube spokesperson, said the company was in active conversations with SESAC and hoped to reach a new deal as soon as possible. It did, on the Monday afternoon, and said the missing music would be restored "over the next day or two." Variety, citing an unnamed source, reported that the previous deal did not expire until the following week. That would make the takedown a negotiating tactic rather than an accident.

When the rights holder blinks

Four months earlier, the Anne Frank Stichting had been blocked from publishing the author's manuscripts for Dutch readers. The Swiss Anne Frank Fonds, established by Otto Frank in 1963 as his sole heir, owns the copyrights and has refused permission for worldwide publication. Early versions may be in the public domain in several countries, but the original manuscripts remain protected in the Netherlands until 2037, and parts were first published in 1986. The Fonds argued that geo-blocking is not enough because a VPN can defeat it, so the manuscripts should not be online at all.

Two Dutch courts dismissed that argument. The case then reached the Dutch Supreme Court, which referred three questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union, as TorrentFreak reported on 24 September 2024. The questions concern Article 3(1) of the Copyright Directive. Does a communication to the public require the site to be directed at that country? Is state-of-the-art geo-blocking sufficient when a VPN can bypass it? And who is liable if it is not? The answer matters far beyond one archive. If geo-blocking does not count, geographical licensing becomes close to unenforceable. That is the mechanism behind Netflix libraries and the BBC iPlayer.

Not every dispute needs a court. On 3 February 2026, the Guardian reported that the Spanish figure skater Tomàs-Llorenç Guarino Sabaté had been told his Olympic short program, built around music from the Minions films, would not be cleared for the Milano Cortina Winter Games. He had submitted the music through the International Skating Union's recommended clearance process months earlier and had skated it all season, including at the European championships in Sheffield.

Then Universal granted 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," he wrote on Instagram. Two other pieces of music in the program were still unresolved, he added. The ISU director-general, Colin Smith, told the Guardian last year that the sport faces a structural problem: "the music industry has no common clearance platform." Smith said the ISU is working with the IOC and the music industry on what he called a multi-pronged approach.

The Canadian ice dancers Marie-Jade Lauriault and Romain Le Gac lost two Prince songs for the same reason. At Beijing 2022, Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier were sued over a cover of House of the Rising Sun; the case settled privately for a sum the Guardian understood to be around $1.4m.

Two cases where the fight moved

In Canada, the non-profit CanLII sued the Vancouver AI startup Caseway in the British Columbia Supreme Court in November 2024. It alleged a bulk and systemic download of its legal database without permission or compensation. Caseway launched in late 2024 with an AI legal research assistant. On Friday the two announced they had resolved all matters. Terms are confidential.

CanLII's blog post said it continues providing broad public access to primary legal information, while Caseway continues developing technology for document-heavy organisations. Caseway's own release called it "a clear shift away from attempting to slow technological progress through litigation." Canadian news publishers have sued OpenAI, and Cohere faces a separate publishers' suit.

The most direct test of ownership is in guitars. In March 2026 the Regional Court of Dusseldorf granted Fender enforceable rights against guitars using the Stratocaster body shape in the EU, following a default ruling. In May, Fender sent cease-and-desist letters to firms it believed were producing copies, among them LsL Instruments and PRS Guitars. Thomann, the world's largest music retailer, was founded in 1954, the same year the Stratocaster launched. It is now suing Fender in response. Its in-house brand Harley Benton had received a cease-and-desist of its own.

Thomann says it is acting for other brands, naming Tyler, Tom Anderson, Suhr, LsL, Maybach, Pensa, FGN and PRS as at risk. Its argument follows industry lawyer Ronald Bienstock: that the Stratocaster is not a copyrightable work of art and that its success comes from ergonomics. "Many of those affected do not have the financial and legal means to conduct such a legal dispute," CEO Hans Thomann said. The retailer has asked Fender to stop issuing demands and return to what it calls a fair, cooperative partnership.

Read together, the pattern is not about who wrote the song, designed the dome or shaped the guitar. It is about who can afford to wait. YouTube restored its catalogue in two days. A skater got a reprieve after his fans made noise. A Canadian glass artist, Victoria Balva, spent four months on a Huawei headquarters dispute that her own account says is not fully resolved.

The law sets the terms; power sets the timetable.