Word is that Konami is asking websites to remove the newly released trailer for Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes. The request is made under the pretense that Konami is having some difficulty with the rights to a song used in the trailer.

The trailer, which premiered last week at Penny Arcade Expo Prime, featured some instrumental music but primarily made use of the Ennio Morricone and Joan Baez song ‘Here’s To You’, written for the Italian film Sacco e Vanzetti.

I don’t see any reason for Konami to be lying about their reason for needing the trailer to be pulled, both they and Kojima have been hitting gamers with a whole bunch of news regarding both MGS:GZ and the future of Metal Gear in general, recently. If the problem stems from the rights to ‘Here’s To You’, though, then the situation must be indescribably messy. Fans who pay any attention to game scores should recognize ‘Here’s To You’ as being used to great effect in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, although that rendition was sung by Lisbeth Scott and arranged by longtime series composer Harry Gregson Williams. As an aside, I just want it noted that if Konami and Kojima don’t secure Williams for MGS:GZ and the referred-to MGS5 then they have well and truly screwed up. In a series of insane highlights, Williams’ scores for the MGS games are one of the more enticing reasons to come back for more craziness.

It’s entirely possible that Konami had the rights to rearrange and record the ‘Here’s To You’ track but never necassarily had the rights to use the original Morricone masterpiece, not even for advertising. If this is the case, you can probably expect Konami to release a new version of the Ground Zeroes trailer with their reworked version from MGS4 relatively soon, even though the tempo for the latter is much more somber and wouldn’t have the same effect that the original had in the GZ trailer.

Let’s face it, though. This is the internet: even if Konami get that trailer taken off of every single game site, there’s always Youtube.