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Animemusicvideos.org, the premier site for fan-created anime music videos (AMVs), has been forced to remove all links to videos featuring the music of Evenescence, Creed, and Seether. Here's their initial announcement and followup.
The site admin says he thinks they got off lucky, and I'm inclined to agree. However, I don't agree with his statement that the lawyers were only doing the minimum necessary to protect their clients' copyrights, because copyrights are NOT like trademarks and do NOT have a "you must defend" condition. They would have been perfectly able to turn a blind eye to the AMVs without losing the right to attack other copyright infringements in the future, so "Oh, they were being nice to us" does not ring true. At best it can be said "Oh, they weren't being as evil as the law would permit".
The admin also says "Please do not write to the record label, band, or anyone else in the music industry about AMVs for any reason. Thank you." and considering the number of users he has, the visibility of his project, and the proven corporate personality of the RIAA, well... good luck, buddy. He's depending on classic "security through obscurity", hoping that he can continue to operate as long as the RIAA doesn't realise what his site actually is, and although of course I hope his site will continue to operate as long as possible, I think it's only a matter of time before Really Bad Things happen. As I've said before, I believe the fanfic community operates in a similar status with respect to the child pornography laws, and that one's going to be really ugly when it inevitably goes pear-shaped.
Previous Lebwog coverage of the AMV scene: an individual creator claimed to have been threatened back in January, and Lawrence Lessig used AMVs as an example of the good things that come from having a vibrant creative commons. Also of interest: AMVWiki.