Apple’s copyright claims ripped down a fan’s archival WWDC YouTube channel

YouTube removed an archive channel that contained hundreds of videos from decades past Apple Worldwide Developer Conferences. Brendan Shanks, the owner of the Apple WWDC Videos channel, says his account’s been permanently disabled after receiving well over three copyright strikes — the Maximum number of violationsYouTube can charge you for any damages that may occur before they remove your account.

Shanks sent screenshots of his emails to show that Apple issued several takedown orders against his videos. Some of them were from the early 2000s. Shanks claims he still has the original files and descriptions and is trying to get them over to the Internet Archive. Apple didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment.

The website, now gone, contained an enormous collection of Apple ads, WWDC session recordings, training videos, and many other items. Gold was quickly flooded in DMCA notices after the site’s launch, resulting in its content and the videos uploaded to Vimeo getting taken down. (You can still access an archived copy of the website. Here.)

And yes, while this archived content is Apple’s intellectual property, the company doesn’t exactly do the best job of making its history readily available to fans. It seems like the closest thing we’ll get to an official archive related to the company The small but growing Steve Jobs Archive, which contains emails, videos, and voice clips highlighting snippets of Jobs’ life. The site was launched in September by Jobs’ friends and family — not by Apple.