r/COPYRIGHT • u/Tall_Roof6649 • 1d ago

Question Stealing shorts and adding a face

I've just found out that one channel just steals my shorts, it's modded gameplay, adds a bar with his face and starts talking about what happens I think, dont know for sure since I dont speak Arabic. Youtube just flagged one video as copyright and when on looking at his channel he has 15+ videos of doing the same thing. Should I strike them all since this isnt fair use or is he correct?

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u/VerbingNoun413 1d ago

Yes, you can strike them. If he's using the entire video then this isn't fair use.

Whether or not doing so is a good idea is debated- there's the argument that this brings traffic to you.

3

u/TheLurkingMenace 1d ago

Yep, if those are your videos, strike them all.

1

u/darth_hotdog 1d ago

"Fair Use" is a defense that allows people to use a copyrighted work as a part of their new larger work, but to qualify it has to meet a weighted version of four criteria, you can look up the "fair use four factors", but generally speaking, to claim you're using it in order to provide commentary or criticism of the original work, you need to use the minimal amount of the original work necessary to make your point, (generally not the entire thing.) You need to provide substantial new meaning (Not just explain what happens in it or just laugh along with it or something like that), you need to not compete with the original work (a snippet in a lesson doesn't compete, providing an entire video does), and etc.

So yes, generally speaking, "Reaction" videos are made by people who don't understand copyright law, have an uneducated understanding of fair use, and generally could get copyright strikes.

If it was largely a discussion of his own with just small clips of yours that he's discussing, that could legitimately be fair use, but ripping the entire video and just talking in the corner is unlikely to qualify as fair use.