Hatsune Miku fans everywhere are being rallied to the virtual diva’s defence – parties unknown have been waging an underhanded campaign against her on YouTube, by filing fraudulent copyright claims against her videos in an effort to get all her songs deleted.

The campaign of mass deletions has been orchestrated against Hatsune Miku and Vocaloid songs hosted on YouTube’s various international sites, targeting translated versions.

Popular Vocaloid videos which were many years old and had accumulated millions of views have been deleted as a result of the action.

The deletions have been requested by a variety of suspicious parties nobody has ever heard of – names featured include “Media Interactive Inc” (who were apparently implicated in the deletion of Lady Gaga’s YouTube account) and variations on the name of “Junichi Sasa” (笹純一, 笹金純一, 笹川純一, 笹村純一, etc.).

As the copyright for all original Hatsune Miku songs normally rests with the original creator, not with any company affiliated with Yamaha, Crypton or the record company mafia (except the minority of songs professionally published by these companies themselves), none of these deletions can be considered as anything but fraudulent.

Japanese Miku fans have already organised a counter-effort in the hopes of uncovering who is behind the deletions, including an English language missive:

Someone who doesn’t like Hatsune Miku getting popular in the world is deleting her high ranked videos with English titles on it by making fake reports that the videos are infringing a copyright.

We don’t know who is doing this.

The series of these acts may be caused by organized group(s).

It is under investigation by Miku fan volunteers.

If your video is deleted by a fake report, please submit a counter-notification here: http://p.tl/hZW6

To all Vocaloid fans, Let’s get her back. Don’t give up.

All this is possible because YouTube allows unverified third parties to issue takedown notices on any content they host, which usually results in a swift deletion of the video which can only be reversed by a counter-notification.

For takedowns based on the DMCA, providers actually have a legal obligation to restore content if the uploader files a counter-notification objecting to the takedown (for example, by pointing out that the notifier does not actually hold the copyright or have the authority to act on behalf of the owner), at which point the notifier must file a lawsuit in the US or drop the matter and leave the content alone.

Not only is filing a lawsuit expensive, in the case of fraudulent or dubious claims the notifier will have perjured themselves by lying to the court about owning the copyright, possibly a rather more serious matter than the supposed infringement itself.

Unfortunately, not only are most people unaware of this aspect of DMCA usage and easily intimidated by legalistically phrased intimidation, reliably ensuring the original uploader goes to the trouble of filing a counter-notification every time one of their works are subjected to a predatory takedown is a difficult matter, particularly with older content.

Takedowns in other countries may be subject to wildly differing legal requirements, complicating matters even further.

The suspicion online is that the takedowns are politically motivated – there has been some recent high-profile competition between Korean pop groups (the “popularity” of whom is suspected to be the result of organised promotion by Korean nationalists) and Hatsune Miku (who has the earnest support of anime-fans everywhere).

This rivalry recently crystallised in the form of a pointless ranking of groups “which should perform at the London Olympics” (in fact the ranking had no official status whatsoever, a fact which was apparently almost totally lost on both raving Korean and Japanese nationalists and fervent Miku fans).

Thanks to the competing efforts of 4chan, 2ch, and the Koreans, the ranking ended up being topped by Miku, followed by a variety of obscure Korean starlets, a point of pride for deluded right-wing Japanese and probably quite vexing to Korean nationalists who fancy their nation a pop super-power.

Although 2ch is notorious for xenophobically blaming Koreans for every ill it can think of, in this case it is hard to see why else anyone would bother trying to damage Miku’s popularity, as the fraud does not seem to be intended as a shakedown and the “posing as Japanese to do something bad” tactic has apparently often been employed in such Japan-Korea nationalist spats:

“It’s probably some dirty Korean.” “Nobody but some Korean scumbag would bother to do something this retarded.” “This will be something to do with that London Olympics stuff…” “Right – #1 was Miku, the rest were all K-POP.” “Abusing copyright is a typical Korean ploy. All they can do is copy things and claim them as their own.” “This is probably more theatrics orchestrated by the net-uyo!” “Somebody was doing the same thing to AKB videos…” “They are really going to turn the world against them when this comes out!” “More of those peninsulars squandering their taxes on promoting K-POOP!” “It could be a 2ch board – some of them are packed with Miku-haters.” “YouTube should at least publicise the IP of people who request scores of deletions.” “Just report all the K-POOP on there using the same name.” “But all the Koreans loeve Miku just like we do! Believe in them, please.” “Try searching for ‘VANK’ – you’ll see.” “This stuff is the shame of Japan, thank god it is being deleted!” “This is obviously their way of getting back against Miku after she beat all their stupid K-POP groups on that Olympic ranking.” “As usual, one of their ‘fake Japanese’ tricks.” “Ahhh – they deleted Crucify by Megurine Luka as well!” “If they get reported 3 times the user loses their whole account and all their uploads get deleted… this is dreadful.” “I think this is just haters.” “The only ones who benefit from all this are Koreans. If you don’t say this, North Americans will never get what is behind all this. They’ll just think it is Miku-ota vs some annoying copyright body. They won’t care.” “As there is no actual proof of this, constantly saying it will only call your position into doubt.” “This is a mistake. The videos are being deleted, and they are uploading copies with their own rip-off Vocaloid and pretending they were Korean to start with. They are scrupulously disguising their nationality by using other languages. Tell people what is going on and let them make up their own minds as to who is behind this.” “You shouldn’t keep mentioning that country. You have to ignore them and avoid making this into another big issue.” “Somebody tell the guys at 4chan about what those Korean bastards are up to! Can’t anyone here write English properly!?” “Forget 4chan – don’t expect anything from them, they prefer just to watch.” “Leave them out of this! You don’t know what they’ll do!” “4chan never helped with that ranking – that’s just lies. They have no interest in Vocaloids over there.” “Don’t involve them – it’s a big mistake to think they like the Japanese. And involving them is just like the tactics a certain country uses. If they decide to help, fine, but don’t try and drag them in.” “Try using Facebook, forums and YouTube to raise awareness of this instead.” “Don’t forget to complain to Google and YouTube about their system being abused like this.” “Are you people morons? 4chan came in and ruined their efforts to stack that ranking with Koreans. This issue will not be resolved by avoiding any mention of who is responsible.” “They know how Koreans do things, and came in and helped with the ranking. Trying to avoid any mention of ‘that country’ will only make it look like a copyright issue.”