![\"Iain](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Iain-Treloar-150x150.jpg\")
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The UCI Congress, an annual celebration of bicycle bureaucracy, is a big calendar highlight of a very small subset of individuals. That includes the delegates from all of the UCI member federations who made the trek to Rwanda, of course;\u00a0in exchange for their time they get a lovely vacay at a five-star Radisson Blu conference hotel in Kigali. But even if you\u2019re not deep in the minutiae of sporting governance, the day-long annual meeting that is the week\u2019s centrepiece is worth keeping at least half an eye on.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Helpfully, the UCI whacks the whole shebang on YouTube (this year, a punishing 10 hours, including breaks) so that pesky journalists and absent cycling federation members can follow along.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Unhelpfully, this year the video has been blocked due to copyright infringement issues. Go to the YouTube video in question<\/a> and you\u2019ll be met with a blacked-out window and the message \u201cThis video contains content from SME, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds\u201d.\u00a0Here, have a look: <\/p>\n Just my country? Oh, if only. A spirited round of VPN globehopping confirmed that this issue was much broader than just Australia. As far as I can ascertain, the UCI Congress is no longer available, pretty much anywhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n Whichever Small-to-Medium Enterprise that had pulled the plug on the UCI\u2019s big day proved a little elusive. I finally deciphered the acronym by Googling the copyright message to learn that it stands for \u2018Sony Music Entertainment\u2019. A little further down the rabbit hole, I discovered that this is not an isolated incident: through YouTube\u2019s Content ID system, an army of bots scrape the platform all day long like an industrial complex of Shazam apps, just waiting to take down any videos with uncleared music from Sony artists via a copyright claim.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n That explains in broad strokes why the UCI\u2019s marathon Congress video is unavailable, but it also (obviously) invites deeper scrutiny into what the offending tunes were.\u00a0<\/p>\n This post is for paying subscribers only Already have an account? Sign in<\/a><\/p>\n Did we do a good job with this story?<\/p>\n \n \ud83d\udc4dYep
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