Blocked on YouTube · 4:32am Aug 29th, 2016
So I got something of an alarming E-mail tonight. Apparently Hasbro Studios, LLC just blocked the video I made for Elements of Insanity with the lyrics of Twilight's song in chapter-1 set to the tune of Sherclop Pones Pinkie's Brew. Not just some automated claim either, but a manual one, meaning ostensibly some real person looked at my video and decided to get rid of it.
The strange thing is it's come after over FOUR years of that video being available with seemingly zero problems what so ever, and now I'm just not sure what if anything to do about it. The cited reason for the block is "visual content", and that's not exactly wrong. I mean, the characters depicted in the video are legally Hasbro's property, even if the resources I used are actually fan made vectors. Still, blocking my video entirely seems rather an extreme response. Over a year ago, Hasbro placed a similar claim on my draft of a Lunaverse intro video, again for visual content, but in that case it was only ever for monetization, and since I never had any intents of monetizing my video in the first place that was never much of a problem for me.
Mostly I guess it all just boils back around to the whole issue of copyright -vs- fair use that has plagued other YouTube channels for some time now. Given how small and unimportant my own channel is, however, I'm just not sure if it's even worth the effort of taking the risk in trying to get my video reinstated or not.
Huh, that's weird as hell. Guess you could just find other artwork for the video or something, but it does seem strange to block a video for pictures. I guess someone was either very bored or randomly spiteful about the content of video.
While a real person was at the other end, that doesn't necessarily mean it was a Hasbro executive, as I understand things.
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It also could still easily have been automated, at least on Youtube's end. Youtube is somewhat notorious anymore for not checking copyright claims, and I understand sometimes people pretend to be corporate reps to make copyright claims on behalf of their "client". Youtube will just automatically block the offending video, and provide a measure of compensation to the person making the claim. It's a rather nasty way of cheating the system.
It might be worth trying find out if the person who made the claim is truly affiliated with Hasbro, as if they weren't, they are - potentially - kind of cheating Hasbro out of money.
That's... ridiculous. The whole copyright/trademark system is fundamentally broken, IIRC.
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I suppose that would be an option, or even just forgoing any pictures all together. Though I'm not even sure if I still have a video editing program to work with on my new computer.
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You're both right, but I'm still nervous about even so much as trying. The way the system is set up just feels so needlessly adversarial, and that just makes me all the more reluctant to file an actual dispute even if only to find out whether it's valid or not. The lack of meaningful communication doesn't help either. It's all just so impersonally mechanical. All I have work from is vaguely blanket statement of what I supposedly did wrong, and my only options to reply are all equally vague.
Worse than that apparently not even all of the options I'm given to respond with are even valid, and selecting them just taunts me with an imiditalt "that's no excuse" automated message. What's even the point of including those in the first place? It seems my only choices are to roll over and except this or to go all in and jump on the "fair use" bandwagon. That's such huge and muddied issue though, and for something so minimalistic as my video was I'm not even sure what does or doesn't apply.
Bigger channels with more content than mine have struggled with this issue. What chance would I really have, and even if I did, is it really worth it to me as someone who hasn't posted anything in over four years to bother wasting the effort? I just feel so confused and helpless.
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"Broken" is something of an understatement.
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Copyright/Trademark law really has largely gotten to the point where the only people who can make any realistic claims towards it are groups with enough money to pay lawyers to decipher it for them. It is somewhat tiresome, frankly. You shouldn't need a team of lawyers to be able to create something, and to protect what you have created. But maybe that's a naive notion, idk.
4188894 True, but it's pretty apt. It doesn't work.