Netflix Gets Cute Using DMCA Notices To Take Down Tweets Critical Of 'Cuties'

from the too-cute-by-half dept

Cuties, the stupid non-controversy against Netflix that simply will not go away. The film, which won awards at international film festivals, centers on a pre-teen and is a coming of age story about a young lady growing up in both a strictly conservative upbringing combined with living in the hyper-sexualized Western culture. While the whole story is about this juxtaposition, Netflix rather stupidly promoted the film using images that focused on the latter. The result was chaos, with large swaths of Puritan-Twitter screaming about boycotting Netflix entirely and one pandering prosecutor in Texas bringing an indictment against Netflix for promotion of lewd visual material depicting a child.

With everyone very quickly lighting themselves on fire over an award winning film, Netflix sat back and calmly explained what the film was about and why it had... just kidding, Netflix is now out here issuing DMCA takedowns for those tweeting critiques of its decision to distribute the film.

Netflix's takedown requests, which are still rolling in today, seem only to have targeted tweets that described the film negatively, although some more than others.

"IMAGINE A CHILD SEEING THIS #Cuties #Netflix #CancelNetflixCuties," one message read. "WARNING CONTAINS EXPLICIT CONTENT," another similar message said. "Go ahead and try to justify how this film is an appropriate representation of 11 year olds. I'll wait. #CancelNetfilx."

Some of the dozens of tweets Netflix issued DMCA claims against used clips from the actual movie, TorrentFreak reports, in which case Netflix's claims are understandable. However, many of the tweets in question shared the film's trailer, which is widely and publicly available on YouTube for anyone to view or share.

DMCA takedowns of trailers, as we've explained before, never make sense. Ever. Ever ever. What Netflix is doing instead is lay bare its intentions behind these takedown notices, which are obviously centered on attempting to censor critical commentary around its decisions surrounding the film. This becomes especially apparent when put in the context for how and for what Netflix has, in the past, bothered issuing DMCA takedowns.

TorrentFreak notes that the cluster of claims is unusual for Netflix, which has sent roughly 300 DMCA claims to Twitter in the past month, half of which centered on tweets related to Cuties. Before Netflix started targeting Cuties tweets, most of the claims it sent were related to accounts known for distributing pirated content.

And so the Streisand Effect kicks in. By trying to bury criticism, the public becomes all the more aware of that criticism. By trying to censor a controversy that was probably juuuuuuust about to go away, instead it gets recycled back into the news cycle.

Netflix, tech company as it is, should absolutely know better. Reliant on the First Amendment as it is, it should absolutely not be taking actions like this that tamp down speech. And given that Netflix is not entirely without blame for the controversy in the first place, it sure would be nice if the company demonstrated skin thick enough to take a little heat now and again.

Filed Under: criticism, cuties, dmca, overreaction, streisand effect, takedowns, trailer
Companies: netflix

CBS Gets Angry Joe's YouTube Review Of 'Picard' Taken Down For Using 26 Seconds Of The Show's Trailer

from the make-it-no dept

Joe Vargas, who makes the fantastic The Angry Joe Show on YouTube, isn't a complete stranger to Techdirt's pages. You may recall that this angry reviewer of all things pop culture swore off doing reviews of Nintendo products a while back after Nintendo prevented Vargas from monetizing a review of a a game. The whole episode highlighted just how out of touch companies like Nintendo can be with this sort of thing, given how many younger folks rely on reviews like Vargas' to determine where they spend their gaming dollars. Coupled with the argument that these commentary and review videos ought to constitute use of footage as fair use and it's hard to see why any of this was worth it to Nintendo.

Or CBS, apparently. CBS recently got Angry Joe's YouTube review of 'Picard' taken down, claiming copyright on the 2 thirteen-second videos of the show's publicly available trailer that Vargas used in the review.

This is normally where some folks would suspect that ContentID or some automated system saw the images, resulting in an automated DMCA notice. Except that, as Vargas points out in his Twitter post, this was a manual block. Somebody at CBS saw Vargas' use of the footage and manually requested that the video be taken down on copyright grounds.

And that's crazy. First, the use of clips like this to discuss a review or critique of content is squarely within the grounds of fair use.

Based on the screenshot, it appears that Vargas was discussing the clips while they were on-screen and Vargas argues that this should constitute fair use – a provision in copyright law that allows copyrighted material to be used without permission from the copyright holder for transformative purposes such as commentary and criticism.

Add to that the clips were from the publicly available trailer footage and this makes even less sense. The trailers are out there for anyone to see. Hell, the entire point of trailers is to be widely disseminated to entice interest in the show. Blocking their use would seem to be at odds with the marketing goals of CBS.

And, yet, here we are, with CBS taking down a video for using trailer footage in a way that is clearly fair use. But some say YouTube doesn't have a copyright enforcement problem? Please.

Filed Under: angry joe, censorship, copyright, fair use, picard, reviews, trailer
Companies: cbs, youtube

Universal Studios Misses A Chance To Be Awesome And Instead Tries To DMCA Leak Of Unfinished 'Mummy' Trailer

from the sigh dept

Universal Pictures, it will not surprise you, has a long history of being overtly protectionist on anything to do with its intellectual property. This has led to stories both funny and infuriating. The studio's legal team, for instance, once asked Google to delist 127.0.0.1 for piracy, with that IP address essentially serving to denote the machine currently in operation. It's "home", in other words. On the other side, Universal's lawyers sent out licensing bills to fans its marketing team had asked to pimp one of its movies for free.

Universal keeps a tight grip in an attempt to control everything to do with its products, in other words. But when the internet is involved, such attempts at control can go horribly, horribly wrong. Such is the case with the recent leak of an unfinished trailer for the upcoming film The Mummy.

Yesterday morning very few people knew that a new version of The Mummy will be on the big screen next summer. That changed quickly when an unfinished trailer of the film was accidentally put online by IMAX’s YouTube account. As it turns out, the trailer where Tom Cruise is screaming without sound effects is quite an entertaining watch. Soon, the mistake was reposted all over the Internet, where it triggered a meme fest. Great promotion for the film, one would think, but the bosses at Universal Pictures weren’t smiling.

Let me make this more clear: this trailer, and memes incorporating it, were everywhere these past couple of days. And, to a lesser extent, they still are out there. Not with any sort of approval by Universal, of course, whose lawyers have been firing off DMCA notices to take down the trailer wherever they can find it.

On Twitter alone, several people had their postings removed over copyright infringement claims. According to the movie studio, the “leaked” trailer is not for the public’s eyes.

“The uploaded trailer was a leaked version without sound fx. This was accidentally released online but is not intended to be available for public viewing. We have removed it from YouTube, but it is still populating on Twitter,” they write.

Indeed it is, and it's not difficult to understand why. On the one hand, the trailer without sound effects and music is truly hilarious and entertaining. In fact, one wonders if any polished and completed trailer could garner so much attention as this unfinished one. On the other hand, it's quite interesting to get a glimpse at what the unpolished footage looks like, and to understand how much a musical score and sound work add to the experience. Whichever angle you come at it from, it's fun.

And it was a massive opportunity for Universal Pictures to join in on the fun, be awesome and human, and enjoy all of the massive and free publicity its unreleased movie was suddenly getting. Sure, the trailer is goofy without the production values the completed product will enjoy. But so what? Everyone understands that. And everyone realizes that the studio had no intention of the public seeing this version of the trailer. But now that it's out, Universal should be doing everything it can to supercharge the viral nature of all of this free publicity and bending some good will from the public. Instead, they are trying to shut the whole thing down.

Which, of course, isn't working.

As a result, many copies that were posted on Twitter, YouTube and elsewhere are no longer working. However, there is so much interest in the trailer that Universal can’t really keep up. For every video that’s pulled offline, several others appear elsewhere. It seems virtually impossible at this point to put the genie back in the bottle. In fact, the trailer has become a fertile breeding ground for memes, with people adding their own soundtrack or using Tom Cruise’s scream as the modern-day Wilhelm scream to pimp other videos.

And this sort of thing will only be furthered now that reports are out about Universal's attempt to unring the bell. So, the lawyers will accomplish nothing other than to create animosity where there was once only interest. Great job all around.

Filed Under: dmca, special effects, takedowns, the mummy, trailer
Companies: universal pictures

Animator Sues Disney For Allegedly Ripping Off Her Short Film For Its 'Frozen' Trailer

from the sticking-it-to-The-(Mouse-Eared)-Man dept

Disney has always found overbearing copyright protection to be an integral part of its business model, so much so that it has lobbied hard for copyright extensions while plundering the depths of the public domain for source material, shortsightedly failing to realize that one action undermines the other.

Disney doesn't get named in too many infringement lawsuits, but like any studio with a big hit on its hands (in this case, Frozen, which just became the most successful animated film of all time), there's always the chance someone will come looking for a piece of the action. Unlike the multiple lawsuits filed against the creators of Avatar, this one, filed by animator Kelly Wilson, appears to have some merit.

Wilson's animated short film, The Snowman, has been all over the internet since its release in 2010. It was even entered in several animated film festivals where Pixar employees "were present and competing" in the same category. Wilson doesn't say she personally showed this to Disney employees but she infers that there were many, many ways anyone could have viewed her creation prior to Frozen's development. She does note, however, that Disney's personnel had been supplied with copies of the animated work in the past.

Plaintiff created The Snowman and submitted The Snowman—in part and in full—to Defendants as part of job applications on four different occasions from 2009 through 2012. The Snowman was also submitted via DVD to Defendants in 2010 as part of a job application from The Snowman’s co-creator Neil Wrischnik. Disney has surreptitiously appropriated Plaintiff’s valuable work The Snowman to create the FROZEN teaser trailer and the character of Olaf the snowman in FROZEN without any attempt to obtain authorization from Plaintiff or to accord her credit.

What's interesting about Wilson's case are two things:

One, she isn't going after Frozen itself, but rather its first trailer, which featured a storyline remarkably similar to hers. However, Wilson is looking to grab a part of any and all profits made by the movie because the allegedly infringing trailer was used to promote the film.

Two, there are some very distinct similarities to her animated film, as she details in a series of screencaps contained in the filing.




Here's the two in motion for comparison:




Beyond that, her filing links to other websites and writers who noticed the similarity between the Frozen trailer and Wilson's work, including a Slate writer whose daughter was disappointed the actual movie wasn't just about a wacky snowman.

The case, as it's laid out by Wilson and her legal rep, is pretty solid. While there are a few areas that are rather gray (the similarities of any narrative -- antagonist/protagonist, ice is slippery, forest animals are exchangable, etc.), many of the smaller details seem to indicate there's been some copying going on.

The Snowman and the FROZEN teaser trailer present the exact same plot in exactly the same sequence… There is no difference in the plot between the two works, except that The Snowman is longer in running time and therefore has additional plot elements. Both works are about: (1) a snowman competing with animals for a carrot nose on slippery ice; and (2) the formerly adversarial animals acting out of friendship to return the carrot nose to the snowman...

[T]he artistic rendering of the snowmen in both The Snowman and the FROZEN teaser trailer is likewise substantially similar. Both snowmen are portrayed as awkward, insecure and clumsy, and both are portrayed as having lanky bodies with heads larger than their bodies... [Wilson notes that most snowmen are portrayed as having heads smaller than their bodies elsewhere in the filing.]

First, in The Snowman, the snowman competes with the rabbits on the slippery ice to retrieve the carrot. Similarly, in the FROZEN teaser trailer, Olaf the snowman competes with the moose on the slippery ice to retrieve the carrot. Second, in The Snowman, the snowman is able to take hold of the carrot before the rabbit does. Similarly, in the FROZEN teaser trailer, Olaf the snowman is able to take hold of the carrot before the moose does. Third, in The Snowman, the snowman loses his carrot nose to the rabbit when both he and the rabbit have a grip on the carrot but the rabbit ends up wresting control of the carrot from the snowman. Similarly, in the FROZEN teaser trailer, Olaf the snowman loses his carrot nose to the moose when both he and the moose have a grip on the carrot but the moose ends up wresting control of the carrot from Olaf the snowman..

Wilson goes into much more detail in the filing, but her inclusion of independent parties who have noticed the similarities helps set this apart from other lawsuits in which the infringement noted was largely subjective.

We'll have to wait for Disney's response to see where this is going, but this lawsuit does look a bit more valid than others that have been filed in the wake of runaway successes. As much as I'd personally like to see Disney get smacked for infringement damages, I'm personally a bit hesitant to back Wilson's claims that an infringed short film is due a cut of the profits made by Frozen, especially considering the allegations only cover a trailer whose events are not part of the larger film.

In addition, the demands made might play right into Disney's hands. Wilson asks for Disney to account for "any and all profits" derived from the "exploitation" of The Snowman. Hollywood accounting has shown over the years that some of the most successful movies have yet to show a profit. Deploying enough creativity in the ledger could have Disney offering Wilson a cut of its "empty" pockets.

Filed Under: copyright, frozen, kelly wilson, the snowman, trailer
Companies: disney

Great Moments In Marketing: Disney Pulls Movie Trailer Off YouTube For Copyright Claims

from the it's-a-COMMERCIAL dept

Ah, the stories that just make you shake your head in wonder. The purpose of a movie trailer is that it's a commercial. It's a pure advertisement with the math being simple: the more people you get to see it, the more likely you are to get people interested in shelling out cash to see the actual film. As such, you would think that anyone would be thrilled if people are actively promoting that advertisement for you. Not at the Walt Disney company, apparently. After a trailer of the hotly-anticipated Tim Burton adaptation of Alice in Wonderland hit YouTube, Disney sent a takedown notice to pull it offline. Because heaven forbid people actually want to see the advertisement they put out.

Filed Under: advertisement, alice in wonderland, commercial, movies, trailer
Companies: disney, google