Apple kills long-time event archive on YouTube

Apple Park

An Apple archivist has had his YouTube account disabled after Apple filed multiple takedown requests against his account.

Brendan Shanks, owner of the Apple WWDC Videos channel on YouTube, tweeted that Apple had filed a series of copyright removal requests against his channel.

Congratulations Apple, you took down my YouTube channel containing hundreds of20-year old WWDC videos. Wouldn't want anyone learning about Mac OS X, Darwin, Aqua, or WebObjects @tim_cook @pschiller @gruber @jsnell @ismh @mjtsai @reneritchie @reckless pic.twitter.com/w2UgVqOubF
— Brendan Shanks (@realmrpippy) November 4, 2022

The videos in question were decades-old recordings of WWDC events.

Due to the multiple violations, not only were the videos removed, but Shanks' YouTube channel has been disabled.

In addition to losing the archive, Shanks also lost his personal YouTube account, as well as his YouTube TV, which he'd just paid for.

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35 Comments

mfryd 228 comments · 16 Years

About 2 years ago

The bottom line is that the videos were the intellectual property of Apple. As the copyright owner, Apple has the right to decide where, and if, the videos will be available.

Whether or not they should be available, is a separate and very different question from whether or not is it legal to post the videos against Apple's wishes.

thinkman100000000 87 comments · 3 Years

About 2 years ago

The videos in question were decades-old recordings of WWDC events.
Due to the multiple violations, not only were the videos removed, but Shanks' YouTube channel has been disabled.
In addition to losing the archive, Shanks also lost his personal YouTube account, as well as his YouTube TV, which he'd just paid for.

I wonder what prompted Apple to take this action. They certainly had every right to do so, just not clear on why, after so many years, they did this. As for the actions of YouTube, that's on them……not Apple, so I'd imagine the issues violated Google's terms of service.

entropys 4316 comments · 13 Years

About 2 years ago

Amazing punishment to a fan site though.

If Apple was presenting them in parallel fair enough, but it is not. It isn’t as though Apple could monetise this archive material. Perhaps a better approach would have been for Apple to pay him to maintain it, then the site is technically their property.

mfryd 228 comments · 16 Years

About 2 years ago

It is not in Apple's best interest to have the videos available online. Apple wants to people to use the latest hardware and software. It does not help Apple to make it easy for people to make old computers more useful.

It is also in Apple's best interest to maintain a reputation that they aggressively protect their intellectual property rights.

Apple also has an image to maintain. If they wanted to make the videos available, they would certainly want it to be on a site designed to their aesthetic standards, and their human interface guidelines. Of course, Apple would also want to have complete control of the server, so they could control and track viewing of the videos.Apple is far better off with the videos offline, than to have them on someone's personal site.

j238 10 comments · 7 Years

About 2 years ago