Warner Brothers Pulls Plug On Viral Greenpeace Ad Utilizing 'The Lego Movie' Theme Song (And Legos)

from the WB-execs-say-real-life-story-needs-more-villains dept

Another clear case of fair use is greeted by a major studio with, "Hey, that's our stuff!" A new campaign from Greenpeace targeting Lego's partnership with Shell has been nuked from orbit by Warner Bros. Entertainment. The short video depicted a stylized, Lego-built Arctic (complete with Eskimos, arctic wolves and Halo's Master Chief) being slowly swallowed by oil to a downtempo cover of The Lego Movie's impossibly catchy theme song "Everything is Awesome."

You used to be able to watch it on YouTube, where it had racked up nearly three million views before this happened.

Apparently, Warner Bros. Entertainment took issue with the use of the theme song and the inclusion of the two Lego Movie characters (seen briefly near the end of the 90-second video) and issued a takedown. Whether or not you agree with Greenpeace's complaint, there's no denying the fact that its use of the theme song and very brief use of these characters is clearly parodic fair use.

Greenpeace has now moved the video to Vimeo, where it will possibly receive a stronger fair use defense from the hosting company, although still in the form of "oblige takedown request first, investigate later." It may work a little harder to defend this one up front, considering all the viewers that were heading to YouTube to catch Greenpeace's new viral video are now landing on its doorstep.

Warner Bros.' action here isn't exactly censorship (as it probably was agnostic about the video's message) but it's not exactly forgivable either. Seeing as this video probably didn't trigger an automated takedown by YouTube's content-matching system, it was most likely the result of an active search for infringement, which means whoever's policing content for WB ignored everything but the song and the brief appearance of its Lego Movie characters. Once again, digital shouts of "MINE!" trump fair use.

Filed Under: copyright, criticism, free speech, greenpeace, legos, parody, political speech, youtube
Companies: greenpeace, shell, warner bros., youtube

Wrongfully Blaming Hackers For Rainforest Deforestation

from the blame-the-actual-logging-companies dept

Here's an odd one. Apparently the folks at Greenpeace are claiming that a move to computerize the permit system for logging companies in the Amazon rainforest allowed hackers employed by the logging companies to issue fake permits allowing them to log well beyond their quota. However, it's difficult to really see how the hackers or computerization really had much to do with this at all. Prior to that, the system was based entirely on paper, where it would seem much easier to forge a piece of paper. By moving it to a computerized system, if anything, it would seem to create a much better system for tracking and catching those that forge the permits. After all, any decent computer system should recognize if extra permits are being issued, or if they're forged completely, then a quick check via the computer should show that the permits being used are faked. An entirely paper-based system would allow for no such simple check.

Filed Under: deforestation, greenpeace, hackers, licenses, rain forest