YouTube star PewDiePie and Indian music label and movie studio T-Series have reportedly ended their months-long legal battle which resulted in two of PewDiePie’s diss track videos being blocked in India.
The videos were blocked in early April after T-Series filed a takedown order in the Delhi High Court of India against two of PewDiePie’s diss track videos.
When PewDiePie published the diss track videos, he was competing with T-Series to maintain his crown as the most subscribed channel on YouTube and both videos referenced this rivalry. However, T-Series felt that the lyrics of these diss tracks were defamatory, disparaging, insulting, and used this as grounds for filing the takedown order.
After the takedown order was filed, the Court gave PewDiePie and YouTube two weeks to comply with the order but there were doubts whether either would take the videos down because PewDiePie lives in the UK and YouTube is a US company. Currently, both videos are still online and playable outside of India.
In late April, PewDiePie addressed the takedown order by calling for an end to the “Subscribe to PewDiePie” meme and rivalry with T-Series. When commenting on the takedown order, he said: “This was all made to be fun but it’s clearly not fun anymore. It’s clearly gone too far.”
According to a report from Business Insider, PewDiePie and T-Series came to a settlement over the videos on July 15, although neither party has yet signed an agreement. The videos are currently still blocked in India and it’s unclear when they or if they will be unblocked as part of this agreement.
After PewDiePie called for an end to the rivalry, T-Series did ultimately overtake him to become the most subscribed channel on YouTube and now has over 108 million subscribers (archive link). PewDiePie currently has over 99 million YouTube subscribers (archive link).
