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EFF Assails YouTube For Removing "Downfall" Parodies
Locke2005 writes "In what promises to be one of the quickest threads to become Godwin'ed, YouTube has pulled scores of parodies of the 'Hitler Finds Out' scene from the movie The Downfall. Ironically, I had never heard of this movie before this — and now I want to watch it." Here is the EFF complaint. David Weinberger has posted some details on Google's Content Identification tool, which is being used in the shotgun takedowns.
A good summary of the whole story of the meme before the YouTube action.
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it's easy to get around the content filter really.
how do people not bother? Just change the audio pitch by...I think it's 1 half step? Or 1.1 half steps? Once you do that, the automated scanner will not be able to find your video at all. It will sound practically identical, as well.
Just shows how pitiful the attempts by copyright groups are, since they don't even review the videos.
For video that relies on the graphic, you just have to create a single vertical line (maybe green or something, 1 pixel wide) going down the entire frame of the video, and then the graphic filter won't find it either.
Just shows ya, the more you try to stifle, less it works.
ahh, here it is. The how-to.
http://www.csh.rit.edu/~parallax/
This is rather stupid, considering the director of Downfall watches them and likes them. In fact, in his own words "I think I've seen about 145 of them! Of course, I have to put the sound down when I watch. Many times the lines are so funny, I laugh out loud, and I'm laughing about the scene that I staged myself! You couldn't get a better compliment as a director." http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/01/the_director_of_downfall_on_al.html
- Aetheral Research -
Whose line is it anyway often did that.
Weird Al also always asks permission and won't put it on his CD if asked not to (in the case of pitiful, but he released that for free since Blunt was okay with it but his label wasn't)
I received a "Notice of potential infringement" from YouTube very soon after posting this one a week ago. The video, which had initially been accessible, was pulled from the site.
There was an option to appeal the takedown notice, and I filled it out, providing as a reason "Parody is a recognized fair use under US copyright law." I'm actually not sure if you can play the fair-use card when using the content owner's IP to mock an unrelated subject, but in any event, the appeal seemed to be accepted by YouTube, because access to the video was restored within a few hours.
So, for what it's worth, if your video gets pulled by Youtube, try filling out the appeal form.
The videos are using one scene, not the entirety. And people watch the videos *for* the subtitles.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
To anybody that hasn't seen this movie, it is a great artistic portrayal of Der Fuhrer in his final days, and provides insightful dialog regarding the mentality of the Reich's higher ups during the final days. It is an extremely dark and gritty movie, but the angle it presents is something alot of American history books and entertainment tend to neglect.
I saw the original movie, Der Untergang, which is its original German name, in my German Studies class in high-school, and recommend it to anybody interested in more than just Godwin's Law. Watch it. Must See.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
12-20 hours? What the fuck? I downloaded 12 GB in less than 12 hours, and I'm on a fairly crappy plan. Maybe you need to re-evaluate your torrent settings.
I'm pretty sure the production qualities of the original are not a factor in determining fair use. There's amount and substantiality of the part of the work used (which is based on the whole movie, not the clip), effect on market for original work (zip or net positive), purpose of use, and nature of the work. Parody is an especially strong fair use; things have been found to be fair use when they used substantially all of the work allegedly infringed. The example video had all four factors in its favor.
It woulod be more like you taking 10 minutes of Avatar and changing the subtitles in a somewhat cleverer way than that. You should do it; Avatar cries out for it in spots. If I were doing it I'd concentrate on the idea that the Na'vi were somehow totally superior because they were all hooked into the ecosystem, yet it's the humans were the ones who could travel in space, grow new bodies, and teleoperate them. Or, I might patch in the Aldebarran scene from Star Wars and suggest that's what would have happened shortly after the movie ended.
The EFF has a parody video up about this type of thing happening. It seems to have been posted before Youtube started pulling them down, so it's almost prophetic.
The clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzUoWkbNLe8&feature=player_embedded
He only does that because he's a nice guy though. Legally he could put any of his parodies on his CDs if he wanted to.
"We need to get over this notion, that, for Apple to win... Microsoft must lose." - Steve Jobs, 1997
making a parody where the subtitles are the only original content and everything else is from the copyrighted work is not gonna fly in court.
It doesn't matter, for the purpose of determining fair use, how much additional material was added. Rather, it depends on how much of the underlying work was used, and how important that portion was to the underlying work. Your criterion is often invoked by infringers who legitimately claim that because they added so much to the portion used, their use was fair, and is just as often rejected by the courts, who don't care about that.
In any event, this isn't "the entirety of the video from 'The Downfall.'" The Hitler scene is just one part -- albeit a rather powerful part -- of an entire movie about the last days of the Nazis in Berlin during the war.
Of course, the thing that might trip them up is the ridiculous dividing line that the courts have been drawing between parody and satire. When a use is a parody, it makes fun of the underlying work itself, and therefore must draw at least somewhat from that underlying work, in order to come about. It is essentially commentary that ridicules the work, or is at least itself ridiculous. Imagine, for example, making fun of Mickey Mouse and Disney by having the Sorcerer's Apprentice scene from Fantasia involve Mickey summoning up a destructive horde of copyright attorneys. (We are indeed capable of reproducing by fragmentation; fear us) That could be a parody.
Satires, however, are making a point about society generally, or at least about something other than the underlying work. In that case, it doesn't absolutely need to borrow from an underlying work, and the courts have not been as generous to satire as they have been to parody. For example, there was a case in which someone was making fun of the OJ Simpson trial by using Dr. Seuss characters and artwork. Because the use wasn't commenting on the used material, but just borrowing it for an unrelated purpose (unless OJ was right, and the murderer was the Lorax or something), it wound up not being a fair use.
Now, I think this is a dumb distinction. The main issue should be whether the use is transformative, even if it doesn't 'need' to use the underlying work (although a showing of necessity should count for something, considering other doctrines, such as merger, where it is also relevant), along with the rest of the fair use analysis, in particular, the fourth factor (harm to the market for the underlying work). But that's what we're stuck with at the moment. And since most of the Downfall videos (though not all -- the one where Hitler is upset about how many Downfall videos there are would seem to be okay, ironically) don't make fun of anything that requires the use of Downfall in order to do it, things may not go well.
Now, how long until someone follows up on this, does a bit of research, and has Hitler upset about this particular aspect of Fair Use under US copyright law, citing the statute and caselaw? Perhaps Generals Keitel, Jodl, Krebs, and Burgdorf (the four guys that he has stay in the room) could each stand for one of the four prongs of the analysis?
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Send them an email and let them know how you feel about the takedown! zentrale@constantin-film.de
Why not move to X-plane or flightgear?
Seems like a better solution for players and the developers that want to make addons for them.
Many many reasons
- They are STILL not as sophisticated or feature complete. Some of it is extreme. Joystick support is still not as easy as it should be in Flightgear.
- Momentum - not nearly as many addons now means its harder to get the ball rolling
- Both simulators keep changing even in minor releases. Makes it difficult for part time content creators to keep up, and less worthwhile when you know a new version will break it. Well FSX isn't fantastic for backward compatiblity - one of many mistakes, but FS2004 runs most FS2002 planes, and often only minor changes are needed to get an FS2004 plane to work in FSX
- Small changes and tweaks are very easy in FS2004 compared to X-Plane or Flight Gear. Everything but the physical model - from effects to air traffic, even scenery is somewhat easier in FS2004. Repainting is relatively easy too.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Um, yeah -- kind of hard for them not to find a heavily linked site that detailed the methods for the workaround. And such a challenge for them to delete all the videos, including the one that contained 100% white noise. If you'd pull your head out of your ass for a moment, you might realize that he did outsmart Google and expose the means of bypassing automated filtering. Now that his pages is widely linked, of course they took down the videos linked from them--but the methods remain workable.
The legal definition of "parody" is:
A form of speech protected by the First Amendment as a "distorted imitation" of an original work for the purpose of commenting on it.
The key words (from both our definitions) are "imitated" and "imitation". The work in question is not an imitation. It is an exact copy with some minor modifications. I should also point out that the work in question was not providing any type of commentary on the original.
Now, there may indeed be some fair use protection provided by the four factors outlined in the law, but nevertheless, this was a bad example that they themselves created. More convincing would have been a true, original parody that was taken down by Google's system.
Weird Al parodies the existing item.
Downfall videos mock something else.
Weird Al gets permission from the songwriters and reproduces it.
Downfall videos don't get permission and don't reproduce the scene.
Weird Al replaces the lyrics, which is half the sound.
Downfall videos leave the video and sound intact and add subtitles.
Everyone involved in producing sound and video for Weird Al gets paid.
The people who did 99% of the work on the Downfall Videos don't get paid.
a == b QED
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No, the reason he asks permission is to be (a) a nice guy, and(b) being a nice guy gives makes the musicians more open to letting him do stuff like use their actual music video sets for the parodies and other cool things.
"We need to get over this notion, that, for Apple to win... Microsoft must lose." - Steve Jobs, 1997
In reality, the bunker scene depicts Hitler reacting furiously to the news that the war is lost as Soviet troops close in on Berlin. The internet parody leaves the video and audio intact, but replaces the subtitles with Hitler reacting to ridiculous every day events, like having his xBox live account canceled, or finding out that Michael Jackson died.
I don't see how this qualifies as parody when the only thing changed is the subtitle text. The clips are humorous when done well, and an argument might be made for fair use, but this is not parody. Parody requires imitation, whereas this is closer to annotation.
Your brain is not a computer.