See all about it here:
Or if that gets taken down, read about it here:
Tis a shame. They haven’t all disappeared yet, but most of the really popular ones are already gone. I would have saved the “Grammar Nazi” one if I had known.
it may be for the best… the concept had been really diluted.
I remember back in the old days, when we naively thought that stuff posted online would be available forever…
I just wish Google had the balls to tell Constantin films to piss up a rope - 4 minutes of parody out of a 2 1/2 hour movie clearly falls under Fair Use.
I’m no lawyer, but this was my thought too. This seems to clearly be fair use. Guess Youtube/Google doesn’t think it’s worth the fight.
That was really nicely done, though I’m sure they’ll get shit for having Hitler be Constantin Films. But working in “Stallman” as he yelled “Stalin” was brilliant.
Constantin is a pack of retards. In exchange for not controlling access to a single five minute scene, they had the internet running a viral marketing campaign on their behalf, producing wave upon wave of trailers advertising their movie. In my world, this would be seen as a good thing.
While they were worrying about a bunch of 4 minute parodies, I watched the entire thing online for free in 9 parts.
It’s amazing how little lawyers know about digital property and the law. It’s fair use. Plain and simple. I doubt anyone outside of Germany would have known this film existed until this clip was lampooned.
Since I ahem obtained an unedited version of the clip, I will be playing around with it and posting on my soon to be launched site thatsh*tiswrong.com.
I’m a little guy, so I think I will enjoy telling a big company to piss up a rope, as muldoonthief said.
I doubt that it’s a matter of not knowing. I expect that it’s a matter of not wanting to spend the money to argue the matter in court, win or lose. And I doubt that they actually care about the principle of the thing.
I’m hopeful the EFF will take the case. Fair use has to be clarified. This is very obviously Fair Use, as a very small portion is being used for clear satirical purposes and it does not impact the market for the full product. If anything, it has dramatically increased demand for the film.
Amazing how anyone so bone-headed could have made it through law school.
Youtube is quickly making itself irrelevant. They are taking down so much good stuff. Even fan made videos are targeted if they use commercial music. I ran into some videos that played with their sound removed.
People will find alternate places to post. Meta Cafe is getting more popular. I’m sure there’s others that are newer and not as well known.
There’s always the possibility you might create precedent to narrow the definition of Fair Use. That would give serious jollies to not only the producer of Downfall, but to many other producers and distributors.
Does EFF have any standing to do anything though? As I understand it, Constantin is basically asking YouTube to take the content down, and YouTube is complying - they’ve got a policy that if you put up something that someone else owns the copyright too, no matter how brief or fair use it is, that the copyright owner can take it down. They’ve got every legal right to have that policy.
I can totally see Constantin’s point - all these parodies have completely trivialized what should be the climactic scene in their film. Never mind the money, the free advertising, the viral word of mouth - if it lessens the impact of that moment in the film, it isn’t worth it to the actor, to the writer, to the director. That’s the point of copyright, to allow the artist a degree of control over how their work gets used.
The director is on record as loving the videos and thinking they’re directly in line with the point of the movie, which was to knock the Nazis off the pedestal of evil they’re generally placed on.
The movie director likes them , he said many of them make him laugh out loud. He’s seen over 140 of them.
Uh, did I miss something?
I just searched for a ton of them and they all worked on Youtube.
Gorsnak, Bijou Drains: Fair enough - I stand corrected over the director’s reaction. I’m only projecting what my feelings would be if a film of my creation were used in such a way.
Someone needs to do a “Hitler finds out he’s being removed from Youtube” parody!