LucasFilm Rescues Darth Vader Fan Film From YouTube Copyright Fight (newsweek.com) 60
A Star Wars fan named "Toos" told Newsweek he'd spent $150,000 of his own money on a fan film about Darth Vader -- and what happened next:
Before the camera started rolling Toos said he contacted an employee at Lucasfilm [and] claims Lucasfilm gave him permission on two conditions: he couldn't crowdfund and he couldn't monetize the fan film on YouTube. Toos agreed to those conditions and shot for three full days in September. They ran post-production up until the release of "Vader Episode 1: Shards of the Past" on December 20. Star Wars fans, a notoriously tough group to please, had overwhelming praise for the video, which gathered more than six million views in one month and 40,000 likes.
On January 14, music group and corporate collective Warner/Chappell filed a copyright claim against the video. After filing the claim, the company (publisher for the Walt Disney Music Company) began to collect ad revenue for Toos' video by claiming that one of the songs used a rendition of "The Imperial March"... If Toos attempts to appeal and Warner/Chappell refutes his claim, he could get a copyright strike on his channel and lose complete ownership of the video...
Fan response on Reddit has been massive, with the post about Star Wars Theory and the strike reaching over 90,000 upvotes... In a new video on the StarWarsTheory channel, Toos told his fans that the claim on his video had been lifted due in part to the intervention of LucasFilm."They stepped up and told Disney or the other company that this wasn't okay, that this wasn't going to stand."
Newsweek points out that Disney doesn't own Warner/Chappell. "The music group merely licenses their music" -- and has been accused of making erroneous claims before.
They're the same group that claimed they owned the music rights on a YouTube clip from Star Wars with all the original music removed.
On January 14, music group and corporate collective Warner/Chappell filed a copyright claim against the video. After filing the claim, the company (publisher for the Walt Disney Music Company) began to collect ad revenue for Toos' video by claiming that one of the songs used a rendition of "The Imperial March"... If Toos attempts to appeal and Warner/Chappell refutes his claim, he could get a copyright strike on his channel and lose complete ownership of the video...
Fan response on Reddit has been massive, with the post about Star Wars Theory and the strike reaching over 90,000 upvotes... In a new video on the StarWarsTheory channel, Toos told his fans that the claim on his video had been lifted due in part to the intervention of LucasFilm."They stepped up and told Disney or the other company that this wasn't okay, that this wasn't going to stand."
Newsweek points out that Disney doesn't own Warner/Chappell. "The music group merely licenses their music" -- and has been accused of making erroneous claims before.
They're the same group that claimed they owned the music rights on a YouTube clip from Star Wars with all the original music removed.
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or it fails. Free them to worship, with all visual and audible alacrity, Most High!
To the Moon!
I know you are making a bit of a joke, but there are actually fair use rules for this.
You are free to claim "fair use" for copyrighted music performed DURING a worship service in a specific location, i.e. during a "live" service. However, you may not broadcast radio or TV, webcast, or even record and distribute copies of such music without permission (a license). Also, you may NOT print or project lyrics from copyrighted music or text from copyrighted books without a first getting written permission from
6 milliom views and 40,000 likrd? (Score:2, Interesting)
so less than 1% liked it?
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No, less than 1% clicked a button.
Re: 6 milliom views and 40,000 likrd? (Score:1)
Oh geez, the I imperial march is only one of many such ditties that are very well recognized and used for similar scenes. Obviously they were unhappy that the film was better than most professionally produced footage. Only a fool would object to the imperial march
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Re:6 milliom views and 40,000 likrd? (Score:5, Informative)
It's a sign that more viewers are not logged into YouTube, of which is required in order to Like or Dislike videos. Most likely means majority of them are mobile device using viewers. While others, like myself, are possibly those who view videos via Private/Incognito mode so it makes it more difficult for tracking who's watching.
Just something to give you some perspective as to why Like/Dislike sum is so disproportionate to view count.
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Re: 6 milliom views and 40,000 likrd? (Score:2)
Most people do not take the time to log in and click the like button
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They're the same group that... (Score:2)
After all, I'm paid to protect property rights and collect fees. So if you use notes in a song, MINE. If you DON'T use notes in a song, that's MIIIIIN... wait, that's J Cage. [wikipedia.org] But it SHOULD be mine though, I'm working on that.
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So, they're seagulls from Finding Nemo and Dory? :P
It was too good. (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem for the studio was that it was too good. They were getting upstaged. Fire the studio execs and let good directors do their work.
We need a Creative Commons sci/fi universe that people can create from instead of using some copyrighted story. We need a pallet to paint from.
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-1, offtopic
The studio made no claim against the video. The article mentioned that the studio in fact intervened on behalf of Toos.
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We need a Creative Commons sci/fi universe that people can create from instead of using some copyrighted story.
Fuck's sake; stop being a lemming and come up with your own goddamned story. Bonus: now you're free to work with something that doesn't suck...
Licensing can grant needed freedoms (Score:2)
Most Creative Commons licenses mean that licensors retain their copyright on the work. The issue isn't whether the work is copyrighted, the issue is in what rights licensees get. But there are more works being elevated to the public domain[1], so one is free to draw on those if one desires an already-written story.
[1] I say "elevated to" rather than "falling into" because I don't think of the publi
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We need a Creative Commons sci/fi universe that people can create from instead of using some copyrighted story. We need a pallet to paint from.
There is one. Orion's Arm [orionsarm.com] has been around more than a decade and anyone can contribute.
It began life as a fan site for Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep but has since morphed into something a good deal bigger. It has sucked in everything from Iain Banks' Culture novels to Ad Astra to Niven's Ringworld and Dyson's Sphere, not to mention the neofeudal societies of Frank Herbert's Dune and Jordan Weisman's Battletech.
Unfortunately the quality of visual artist it attracts is decidedly subpar. The fan ficti
Are fans deaf? (Score:1)
The video with "all the music removed" certainly has what one might consider "music" at the start.
I mean, sure there's a serious issue with the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, and youTube's policy here is awful, but the criticisms seem a little disingenuous.
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Commission your own recording of PD composition (Score:2)
A recording that you commissioned by contacting someone on, say, the FamiTracker Discord server is copyrighted but licensed to you under favorable terms.
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I hear maybe seven notes quoted at a time. Only a corrupt court could uphold a copyright claim on that.
I think they can for as few as a 5 note progression. Cord progressions are not copyrightable but identifiable phrases in a melody are.
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/band-are-victims-of-obstinate-rule-of-law-20100205-niie.html
There are now computers searching though thousand of hit songs looking for obscure musical phrases in order to sue the producers of the hits (who presumably have money) on behalf of the copyright holders who got "violated" in some technically provable but random way. An
Huge problem on Youtube (Score:5, Informative)
I made a rather long YouTube video (over an hour in length) that racked up nearly a million views. 100% of the content in it is either my own original work or from the public domain. Despite that, there are over 20 different copyright claims on the video that I cannot get removed, despite trying. I disputed them with google, and lost all those disputes. It was going to take way more time than it was worth to prepare all the "evidence" that the video was not using the works that the claimers were "citing". In most cases, I couldn't even tell what the hell "copyrighted work" they were referring to that they supposedly owned the rights to. The names of "their works" were so vague and Googling didn't turn anything up. I lost all those disputes... However I don't think I was ever given a Strike.
This is a huge problem on YouTube, and has turned me away from even trying to make it a platform to publish content with any aspirations of earning ad-revenue.
Why not Vimeo? (Score:2)
I've heard so many stories similar to your that at this point there's no way I would put original content on YouTube.
Have you thought about putting the same content on Vimeo? I know it's not as popular but the way people are being screwed over at YouTube, eventually there's going to be a shift somewhere and that seems the next most likely platform people would go to.
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Have you thought about putting the same content on Vimeo?
I thought about it but rejected it, at first due to its six-year ban on video game content (in effect from July 2008 through October 2014), and later for its $240 per year Vimeo PRO subscription [vimeo.com] that is required in order to avoid a vague ban on "commercial content" [gamedesignreviews.com] (still in effect). What is the advantage of paying for Vimeo PRO over hosting the videos on your own website?
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Interesting, I did not remember the video game ban at all.
As for the $240 thing... I think the benefit that would give you over hosting your own video is that your content would be more likely to be found in a search, and since that includes unlimited viewing of your content it means you are not on the hook if some jerk decides to send a massive bot army to repeatedly drive fake visitors to the site to try and DDOS you.
I actually kind of like the thought of paying some kind of fee to help offset the actual
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No one searches Vimeo for anything. It hosts short films that people find by clicking links either from the authors webpage or news articles. The benefit is most people don't know how to host anything, let alone host a playable video on a webpage.
I meant through Google (Score:2)
No one searches Vimeo for anything.
I would agree that pretty much no-one is going to go to Vimeo and search for content.
However what I have seen personally is that Google or Bing searches will find video content on Vimeo, that is what I meant. In terms of search rank Vimeo is going to be a lot higher up there in terms of trust and search placement than video hosted on some random blog with four readers with zero external links.
The benefit is most people don't know how to host anything,
That is true, but like
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Sure, the exact same video on Video will return higher up the ranks than one hosted on your own personal website. But unless you are searching for something very specific, both will be pages back in the search results. And if you are already searching for something specific, it does not matter what website it is hosted on, as long as Google indexes it.
I have never found a video on Vimeo while searching for something generic, their are ten pages of YouTube before you are going to get any other results out of
Re: Huge problem on Youtube (Score:2)
Just curious whether you credit all the music and other third-party media you used in your video, possibly in the end titles? While that doesnâ(TM)t necessarily get YouTube to come to their senses, it may help in providing clarity to the greater community. The other value points here are allowing people to know where to get the music if they like and a tip of the hat to the creators of this other content. In fact, this is something I would encourage creators of all serious videos to do. Giving credit
That fan flick is really good! (Score:3)
I'm impressed.
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It looks quite good for what it was, but I cannot agree that the content was good. The writer either is silently rewriting SW past, has little idea what even happened in the prequels, or just does not understand human emotions at all.
Perfect. (Score:2)
Wow, this was great. The tension in the story had me hooked. Vader is torn between doing what's right, and his loyalty to Palapatine. This is the kind of internal struggle we saw in the first 3 Star Wars films that made them a compelling story, but now it's from the other side of the conflict. FX were good considering the budget. One small change I would have done, when Vader is looking down at that hole to the catacombs with light flashes coming out of it, I would have used purple colored flashes of lig
Warner/Chappell fraud: Happy Birthday song (Score:2)
See the story about Jennifer Nelson's lawsuit [wikipedia.org] against Warner/Chappell for many years of fraudulently charging for use of the Happy Birthday song by claiming a copyright they did not hold (an estimated $2M/year source of fraudulent income). She also made a documentary about her research and suit [youtube.com] which is well worth watching.
Nelson's lawsuit is very informative for many reasons, one of which is it speaks loudly about why we should not trust Warner/Chappell's claims about their copyright assertions. We also h
Why Did He Not Attempt to get the Rights? (Score:2)
Is their a reason he did not attempt to get permission from the actual owners of the rights?
Lucas Arts Should be careful, I imagine any court is unlikely to take pretending to have intellectual property you don't have is many different kinds of illegal.