#WTFU · 7:50am Feb 24th, 2016
Alright, that probably had something to do with the fact that the Author's Note was longer than the chapter.
Letters From A Disgruntled Friendship Student continues to be the most successful project I have ever done online. I have been writing it for close to four years now, and it has gained more than 1,300,000 hits here on Fimfiction alone.
Although I have not gained a single penny from Letters, content such as this is reliant on the Fair Use clause of copyright law. I, and many of you, can no doubt attest to how fun parody is.
There is not a single doubt in my mind that the Brony phenomenon would not be what it is without YouTube. The fact that episodes were able to be uploaded no doubt made G4 the most successful iteration of My Little Pony to date.
The main issue here is, there are content creators so successful that they depend on the revenue from their YouTube channels for their living. My utmost sympathies to all of them, who are no doubt becoming more and more uncertain of their futures.
There needs to be severe penalties for false claims, and claims that fall under Fair Use, to discourage copyright owners from abusing their power.
I'm milesprower06, and I'm asking, "Where's the Fair Use?"
As a whole I agree with you. Copyright is a legal maze though, especially with the fair use, creative commons, attributions, etc. As a whole, the DMCA made it a hell of a lot harder to deal with. The reason there is a massive increase in takedown notices going out is the way copyright is now written, you have to be proactive as hell.
If you find out about something infringing on your copyright, you don't really have a choice in the matter anymore. If you don't DMCA notice the instances you are aware of, it becomes insanely easy to lose the whole copyright in legal proceedings. It's kind of an all or nothing enforcement at the moment. That said, per the law it falls on the defendant to show that their work falls under fair use as it is transformational, parody, etc. Sucks, but that is how the law is written and supreme court has ruled.
Coming from someone that has dealt with DMCA and copyright, trust me it's a clusterfuck that needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. It'll never happen though, too much money changing hands for that.
I too am a brony thanks to YouTube. Not only that, I'm a brony thanks to a parody. Well...technically a fandub. But that qualifies as a form of parody, right? Anyway, if I hadn't come across that fandub, I wouldn't have noticed how good the original content looked, and in turn, I wouldn't have checked out the original content, and in turn, I wouldn't have even considered MLP:FiM (well, maybe I would've come across it eventually...I don't know).
I'm just glad that FIMfiction isn't as broken as YouTube. Could you imagine becuase of legal bullcrap not having the fanfics that we have created? No Past Sins, no Fallout: Equestria, no On a Cross and Arrow, no Cupcakes...okay it wouldn't be all bad.
It's time to put You back in YouTube!
CLICK HERE -> #WTFU
#WTFU
This needs to be heard by many more people. YouTube is crap in its system. Perhaps this message can be spread in a Haitus Letter?
3774486 I just tried. It was removed. Thus this blog took its place.
TeamFourStar, at two million subscribers, got their channel taken down yesterday. What the ever loving hell, YouTube.
I think above a certain subscriber number complaints should be handled by people, not the automated system.
3774579
K
WHAT THE ACTUAL F
I don't find it particularly fun, actually, especially when it's mean-spirited. But to each their own.
3774579
You can't be serious, can you? Pretty sure their work is perfectly safe, it's covered under parody, the only video they monetize are their gaming videos and their shirts have THEIR memes on it, not memes from the original series that they're parodying. I think I figured it out though, the Fair Use is in the same place Carmen Sandiego and Waldo always go. IE, NOT HERE.
3774585
Yeah. Best part: It wasn't even FUNimation who made the claims. I didn't notice them say who is responsible, but anyone other than the actual copyright holder (even then, fair use and all that) would be ridiculous. Automated systems just don't handle this sort of thing very well.
I get that YouTube has its "neutral" stance to keep up, but I feel like there's a better way.
3774621
I never kid when it comes to my favorite guys getting the shaft. Speaking of, I'm pretty sure they even have a thing where FUNimation gets to monetize their DBZ videos, so TFS is super legit.
Time will tell what the deal is. TFS has always been pretty good at communicating with the fans.
I've been following this for the last few days that it's been going on. The entire situation is atrocious, I knew youtube had problems (depending on who you ask, broken subscriptions, broken comments, broken uploading, broken recommendations) but never quite realised how bad it really was.
I sincerely hope youtube listens to their user-base and takes some kind of action to address this whilst they still can. #WTFU
3774462
That's number one on ThunderClap's front page.
3774502 Aw, man, I would've LOVED to see it. I don't care what that one random friend says, I think you're hilarious!
3774579 It should be handled by actual people no matter what. Computers cannot take the place of humans in these kinds of situations. The whole copyright system needs to be rebuilt from the ground up for YouTube.
3774914 Not "one random friend". A moderator.
3775357 Oh, no, I was talking about a random friend OF MINE. I was saying that, despite what HE thinks (I forgot what it was, to be honest), I think you're awesome.
3774451
This is wrong. If you don't police your trademark(s), they can be considered "abandoned" or become generic, like Kleenex. Failing to police a trademark will lose you that trademark, but if you protect your trademark, it will theoretically be valid forever.
However, copyrights are valid for a specific period of time (generally: 50-70 years after the author's death, but it can vary somewhat by circumstances and jurisdiction), regardless of whether you put forth effort to enforce them or not. The primary reason to be vigilant about your copyrights is that it prevents the potential damages to be awarded from a future copyright infringement from going down. If you've got copyright violations floating around for twenty years and then try to enforce a specific violation that's actually causing your company damage, you're not likely to get much money over it. You haven't lost the copyright, though.
Im not sure if its been voiced, but my whole issue with it all is pretty simple. The inherit problem stems from the fact youtubers are making money using, interacting, or talking about content owned and made by other people. While they themselves are working and bringing attention to something via review or discussion, the bottom line is they are making money with other peoples property. In essence, being paid for a free opinion. The very act of making money violates the 'not-for-profit' angle and this becomes copyright infringement. The only reason Youtube itself is not completely slammed is that many buisnesses see Youtube as a way to spread word of mouth, I mean look at what they did with Mlp and games like FNAF.
3774502 Mind if I try making a Bonus Letter then?
3792312 If you mean for Letters, it's not that I mind, but I won't be posting anything more related to #WTFU. One offense was enough, I won't risk the story being taken down, and this blog got nearly 300 views. I'm satisfied.
3792314 Mind if you could send what you wrote? It would make writing all the mine faster.
3792322 You're looking at it. The blog was pretty much copy-pasted from the removed chapter.
3792324 Just did a bonus chapter on #WTFU. Have fun reading it.