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LucasFilm Rescues Darth Vader Fan Film From YouTube Copyright Fight (newsweek.com)
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.
so less than 1% liked it?
Mine! Mine! MINE! Wait, what is it again? Oh well, doesn't matter ---- MINE! MIIIIINEEEEE!
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. But it SHOULD be mine though, I'm working on that.
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
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.
That Vader film certainly has a few bars of what sounds very much like the Imperial March.
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.
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.
I'm impressed.
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 light instead of white, just to add a little more foreshadowing to Palapatines, "Amethyst saber wielding Jedi"
Beyond the story and FX, I loved the costumes too. The storm trooper talking to Vader at Naboo, he looked almost like a 50's hot rod to me. His mask had dual K&N looking air intakes on it. In the original Star wars, much of what Lucas had to work with was based on a limited budget, and things familiar to him. Considering Lucas directed "American Graffiti" it was almost like a nod to where the original Star Wars got so much of its design from. It was a combination of 40's and 50's era technology shoe horned into a futuristing setting (The Millineum Falcon's cockpit for instance was designed to look like a B52's, much of the space dogfighting was modeled after WWI Biplane dogfights)
Disney should hire you guys to flesh out and direct any new star wars films. Given your limited resources (Which might have contributed to why this is so good) it's perfect. There is a love for the universe in every detail of this, and I look forward to the next episode.
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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 the copyright holder.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
A recording that you commissioned by contacting someone on, say, the FamiTracker Discord server is copyrighted but licensed to you under favorable terms.
See the story about Jennifer Nelson's lawsuit 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 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 have good reason not to trust any system or policy that encourages quickly shutting down service at the behest of a copyright claim. Copyright fraud is very real and there seems to be little incentive for claimants to fear making erroneous, exaggerated, or outright lying claims which continue decades of fraud as Warner/Chappell apparently did. As Nelson said in an interview with Al Jazeera, "A lot of people were duped into thinking that they had to pay for the song when in fact they didn't."
Digital Citizen
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.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
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 I said even if you know how to host video Vimeo is still solving a lot of issues for you you may not want to take the time to address.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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 public domain as being of lower value to the public. I see "falling into the public domain" as propagandistic and I think it's worthwhile to get people to reconsider that oft-repeated language.
Digital Citizen