Producers Of Movie About Falling In Love With Nazis Using DMCA To Silence Criticism
from the dmca-for-censorship dept
Apparently the producers of the movie "Where Hands Touch," which is being widely panned as terrible (NY Times calls it a "gut-wrenching misfire" and notes "by the end of the movie, my jaw felt unhinged from dropping so often."), aren't responding well to the criticism. While some of the criticism is about the "plodding" storyline, much of it is about the main plot, which is about a black woman in Nazi Germany -- who appears to support the Nazi cause -- falling in love with a Hitler Youth.
The film got little attention in its theatrical release, but became available online recently, and apparently the producers decided that people tweeting negative things about it deserve to be hit with DMCA takedowns. It seems to have started with Haaniyah Angus who live tweeted watching the film. Reading the entire thread is a treat (seriously, go read it), here are just a couple of clips from her live tweeting:
YALL IM YELLING
— niggathée chalamet (@hanxine) January 2, 2019
Like this romance is so poorly written outside of the weird Nazi x black woman thing
— niggathée chalamet (@hanxine) January 2, 2019
This is such a poorly edited film my god
— niggathée chalamet (@hanxine) January 2, 2019
Anyway, there's a lot more like that. In short, the film is getting mocked widely. Angus' thread was so good and so thorough that Vulture published a conversation with her about just how bad the film is (another clip, but go read the whole thing):
Oh God, there are so many scenes that made me physically cringe. But I think the worst is when her little white brother (whose existence is never explained) says that her father was black “head to toe.” I don’t know why, but that piece of dialogue just made me want to curl up in a ball and scream. Other than that, I think the scene where a Hitler Youth rally takes place in front of Leyna’s apartment and for some reason her first logical thought is, Oh, I’ll go hang with the li’l Nazis. As most would guess, they aren’t happy to see a black girl, and then proceed to call her a nigga. It’s just so much at once ...
At one point in her thread, Angus uses a very short clip from the film to show how the film uses the awful romcom "rush to the airport, and see each other through a crowd of moving people" trope... except in a Nazi labor camp. You can guess what happened next: the producer of the film, Charles Hanson, filed a DMCA takedown notice:
The producer is apparently the person who manually filed this claim since Twitter didn’t. This is just making me yell since If this is damage control there’s nothing you can fix. pic.twitter.com/ANCVnibO2l
— niggathée chalamet (@hanxine) January 4, 2019
Charlie Lyne saw this and wrote a good thread pointing out, why this use of the DMCA to censor negative criticism was clearly bullshit.
It sucks that the producers of Where Hands Touch would resort to DMCA takedown notices to suppress negative tweets about their film. These underhand tactics—which combat Fair Use critiques with heavy-handed anti-piracy legislation—stifle criticism and coddle cinema.
— Charlie Lyne (@charlielyne) January 5, 2019
Lyne explains in detail what happened -- even using the same short clip -- to criticize the filmmakers for censoring criticism. You'll surely guess what happens next. Yup! They send a DMCA notice about his thread too:
I suppose I should have seen this coming. pic.twitter.com/s0nPfpA5FJ
— Charlie Lyne (@charlielyne) January 5, 2019
Yesterday I wrote a Twitter thread about the use of DMCA takedown notices to stifle criticism. Wouldn't you know it, by the end of the day my thread had received one of its own. I'll be contacting a lawyer on Monday before filing a counter notice. https://t.co/AsF2dTNNgU
— Charlie Lyne (@charlielyne) January 6, 2019
As Lyne points out, this is not really about the use of a very short clip (with commentary, which is clearly fair use), since the filmmakers seem to be leaving up tweets that show clips that are positive about the film:
And if anyone still thinks this is really about copyright infringement, here’s a tweet sent two days before @hanxine’s thread, which also includes a clip from Where Hands Touch. This one takes a more positive stance, to say the least. It’s still up. https://t.co/GcKkkwwiOM
— Charlie Lyne (@charlielyne) January 5, 2019
Though, to be fair, it appears that after Lyne pointed out this bit of hypocrisy, then Hanson decided to send a takedown for that clip too.
Lyne and Angus weren't the only ones to receive such takedown notices. Another Twitter user received a similar DMCA notice:
so um. @AmmaAsante is sending dmca notices to people who criticize and make fun of her bullshit nazi romance movie pic.twitter.com/UveoGYbM1G
— erin #TimesUpForBryanSinger (@erinsolives) January 5, 2019
She says the "video" was "literally just me and my friend laughing over the ridiculousness of one of the scenes" using her smartphone.
The producer of the film, who appears to be manually sending these DMCA notices himself, responded to Gizmodo with a bunch of utter bullshit about how he's only doing this to protect the copyright:
Charlie Hanson, the producer of the film, told Gizmodo in an email that they “do not have the power to stifle criticism of the film. Everyone has been free to comment positively and negatively whether they have seen the film or not.” He argued that the film is only released in the U.S. at the moment, and that Where Hands Touch Ltd. “has only issued DMCA notices regarding breaches of copyright in cases where unauthorised clips of the film have been copied and posted online.”
This is wrong for a variety of reasons. The fact that he admits the film is only available in the US highlights how these short clips -- all used with comment and/or criticism of the film are obviously fair use. The clip that Angus and Lyne both posted was literally 14 seconds out of a movie. That's not impacting the market. The criticism of his shit film might be impacting the market, but the clips are not. It appears that Hanson's Twitter account is the aptly named @CharlieTantrum, which seems to accurately reflect his childish tantrum to criticism of his film. His Twitter feed is ignoring this entire controversy, but is merely reposting gushing tweets about the film instead.
Every so often some "copyright scholar" or "think tanker" will insist that copyright can't be used for censorship and insist that it's actually the engine for free speech. Those people are lying to you. And this is yet another example. Copyright is regularly used for censorship, though in this case, all its really served to do is make it much more widely known why no one should ever bother watching this awful movie.
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Filed Under: charles hanson, charlie lyne, copyright, copyright as censorship, dmca, fair use, haaniyah angus, takedowns, where hands touch
Companies: twitter
Reader Comments
The First Word
“What do you expect from people whose thinking has tanked? :)
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It's popular to bash white people at the moment. Psychotics come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. Pick any Protected Class and do some hunting. You'll find a couple of psychotic mass murderers that were members.
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"Sure they killed lots of people they percieved as not matching their religious and ethnic standards, but Japan did bad shit too, so lets not blame the fact that they believed their skin tone justified murder"
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When race plays into a killer's reasons for killing, its valid to point it out.
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Only the violent racist morons. Depending on where you live, they're far more dangerous to you than other groups. Certainly far more dangerous than people who died on the other side of the world decades ago.
"Pick any Protected Class"
White *people* are part of a protected class. White *nationalists* - the group being criticised in the post that triggered you so much - are not a protected class. if you're discriminated against because you're white, you are protected the same as a black person would. If you're discriminated against because you're a white supremacist, all bets are off.
I think you need a moment of self-reflection and examine why you were apparently incapable of noticing the difference.
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What do you expect from people whose thinking has tanked? :)
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'Fair what now?'
I wonder what the response would be were someone to point out that 'Fair Use' is a thing in the US, with 'for commentary purposes' one of the pretty firmly established ways you can use copyrighted works.
Either they're completely ignorant of the very concept of 'fair use'(unlikely I'd guess), or they're ignoring it to kill off any criticism that happens to use clips of the crime against video in order to better highlight why it's so bad with visual examples rather than just descriptions.
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Enthusiasm for what?
If you mean making deplorable films, no. As terrible as it apparently is they are and should be allowed to make it thanks to free speech allowing them to do so, and I would have to object to attempts to shut them down for my own sake(the same freedom of speech that protects them is the one that would protect me if for whatever reason someone decides that they don't care for what I'm saying) if nothing else.
If you mean sending out bogus DMCA claims in an attempt to stifle criticism on the other hand, then yes, a penalty of some sort would be fitting and called for I'd say.
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Punishment
And they used DCMA takedowns - hey, we know there is no penalties for that, so it's a crime *not* to use them.
But it's a terrible film with awful editing. Can we bring them up on charges for that? Crime against the arts! (Next we go after Michael Bay and Ewe Bool for their crimes against us all..)
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Almost entirely?
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Also how long before we think they will be repped by Guardlay in mass lawsuits claiming the loss of billions from evil evil pirates who wouldn't even pony up the $1 rental fee because they would spend to much time cringing to actually finish it??
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"all its really served to do is make it much more widely known why no one should ever bother" respecting copyrights at all.
Fixed that for ya.
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I have to wonder: Where are the “MUH FREEZE PEACH” people to rant and rave about how someone is literally using the power of the government to silence someone else’s legally protected speech?
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It's a perfect out_of_the_blue shitstorm...
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They're clearly the same person.
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I'm really not sure if that would be less pathetic or more, having someone gush over themself like that, though it would certainly be in character for them.
If they were doing it themselves that would mean that they were constantly trying to make it seem like someone was laughably so fixated on them as to try to bait them into commenting, yet at the same time it would also mean that someone else wasn't as obsessed over them as they are with TD.
I flagged both as worthless spam at best however, so to be honest I haven't, and don't plan on, putting much thought into it beyond occasionally pointing and laughing at them(whether singular or plural). Whether they're gushing over themself as their own fictional, one-person fanclub, or someone else has taken enough blows to the head to do it in turn, it's a sad, pathetic state of affairs.
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There's not much of a downside, in my opinion.
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The troll creed where they believe that every reported comment is either worth reading, or true, or both, does give humorous implications.
We'll have to agree to disagree on this, because mocking blue? I'd tap that.
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It's Blue. He's admitted as much.
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But a ding dong like Mike Masnick loves to ignore that reality and focus on outliers. Why? Because he is a 100% ridiculous person.
Have a nice day.
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Please provide proof that situations such as these are “outliers” and the necessary citations required for verifying your evidence.
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Fixed that for you bro
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My thinking is along the lines of Blackstone's Ratio concerting this. Being that Free Speech is magnitudes more important to our society than copyright, I'd rather thousands of copyright infringements go unpunished in order to protect a single individual's First Amendment rights.
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Gah. Above comment is mine.
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Once you get into the very murky grey areas of how copyrights are actually enforced in the real world, it makes his argument far less compelling even if you buy into his "anomaly" claims (which he never backs up, of course). There are indeed numerous artists who have thrived when their work was not effectively protected by copyright, and artists who have been irreparably damaged by it.
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Springtime for Hilter and Germany...
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Re: Springtime for Hilter and Germany...
You have to wonder what persuaded him to make such a film.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jul/16/a-hotline-to-satan-why-is-the-ex-ceo-of-vodafone-philip p-humm-making-a-film-version-of-faust
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Been awhile.
Anyone in?
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Where Hans Torched - A Charlie Manson film
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Jonathan Swift is definitely turning in his grave. His works would all be attacked by the virtue signaling nutters today.
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