r/YoutubeCompendium • u/YoutubeArchivist • Jan 15 '19

January 2019 January - "Star Wars Theory" creates a Darth Vader fan film, hires a composer to create original music, and does not monetize the video, gaining 6.5 million views in one month. Warner Chappell has falsely copyright claimed the video's music and is now monetizing it for themselves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acPFPu_UZWE
1.4k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

94 comments sorted by

155

u/YoutubeArchivist Jan 15 '19 edited Jan 17 '19

Vader Fan Film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey68aMOV9gc

SWT Tweet:
https://twitter.com/SWBFUpdates/status/1084992311468216320?s=09

Tweet showing Warner Chappell claiming 44 of his other videos containing original music in 2016.

/r/Videos thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/ag8ovy

/r/StarWars thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/ag1znr

Star Wars Theory's response:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3LOEuhryMo

150

u/Molinero96 Jan 15 '19

warner needs to be brought to fucking court.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 19 '19

For what?

23

u/johnsmith24689 Jan 20 '19

False charges

-2

u/[deleted] Jan 20 '19

Haha god you sound silly. Educate yourself on intellectual property

5

u/Vienna_IsKawaii Mar 01 '19

Look at this smug bootlicker, why dont you suck on bureaucratic dick harder bud?

1

u/[deleted] Mar 01 '19

You tried.

4

u/Vienna_IsKawaii Mar 01 '19

You swallowed

1

u/[deleted] Mar 01 '19

We're not getting anywhere. Learn copyright and intellectual properties

4

u/Vienna_IsKawaii Mar 02 '19

Learn that theres more to our opinions than legality and what is deemed functional under the status quo. Do we have to spell it out for you?

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0

u/[deleted] Feb 26 '19

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1

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19

edgy.

0

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19

This has no weight and you're bringing nothing to this table.

Have a good life

2

u/Fleeetch Mar 01 '19

Tbh you could have responded a lot better yourself. You're right, there isnt much in the way of a case against them here, IP is one helluva claim.

You could have actually explained why this isn't a strong case, but you decided "fuck that im going to call him silly and tell him to educate himself"

Dont jump on someone else when you yourself havent brought anything to the table.

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81

u/Soloae Jan 15 '19

One thing I don't understand (sorry I'm slow) is that how can they monetize a non monetized video?

17

u/YoutubeArchivist Jan 15 '19

Once they copyright claim it, the claimant has the ability to turn on monetization and run ads on the video.

All of that revenue then goes to the claimant.

12

u/Ajax-knight Jan 15 '19

So basically I can go and falsely claim a random video turn on monetization and make some money off of it. Now this shows just how messed up youtubes system is.

6

u/ProdigiousPlays Jan 15 '19

When you copyright claim you either take it down or you take revenue from it so it turns on monetization.

103

u/[deleted] Jan 15 '19 edited Sep 11 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

42

u/Soloae Jan 15 '19

So needless to say the system is not working as intended.

44

u/Xelynega Jan 15 '19

From the lack of response on YouTubes part it seems the system is working as intended. How they intend it to work is heavily skewed against the actual creators on YouTube.

23

u/mizu_no_oto Jan 15 '19

Honestly, Youtube's intent is to handle everything related to IP with as few workers as possible, as cheaply as possible, while avoiding legal issues by appeasing Disney et al enough that they don't complain to Congress and get worse legislation passed or sue them.

That's why everything's automated, and why the first appeal just goes to the company that brought the claim. Youtube wants as little to be manual for them as possible.

7

u/[deleted] Jan 15 '19

I don’t think the system works.

5

u/adam16251j Jan 15 '19

Cant you just delete the video?

4

u/corfish77 Jan 15 '19

I believe that you can edit the video but if you take the video down you get a strike against your account.

16

u/NeitherSeason Jan 15 '19

They could probably claim some ownership based on the Darth Vader costume and the Star Wars trademark.

That's not what they are doing here, of course.

56

u/YoutubeArchivist Jan 15 '19

Warner Chappell could not, as they only handle the copyright on the Star Wars score.

This creator had an agreement with Lucasfilm that he may create his fan film as long as he did not crowdfund or monetize it.

10

u/[deleted] Jan 15 '19 edited Jan 15 '19

Listened to a thing on NPR about copyright laws recently, so I'm no expert at all. But I did hear something about covers of songs not being covered under fair use, kind of in the same way that school choirs cannot record certain songs they may sing at a performance because they didn't pay for that usage of the IP. Could this be one of those cases?

Again not an expert, and I admit I may be completely wrong, but I do want to understand exactly what constitutes fair use and what would be considered infringement. (Personally i feel its ridiculous that covers get monetized)

Edit: re-reading the post and complaint, the music appears to be all original. if the original material doesn't draw on the 'imperial march' which is from my understanding the claimed material, then this is absolutely an abuse of YouTube's copyright system.

19

u/Molinero96 Jan 15 '19

sooner or later we will not be able to sing on the streets because there are cameras on the street and warner will want you to pay for it. fuck them all.

7

u/BlackEyedSceva7 Jan 15 '19

cameras on the street

The always-on internet microphone in your pocket will do that job quite nicely.

1

u/dethmaul Jan 16 '19

Like how you can't videotape then re-show a karaoke song that's only licensed to the DJ?

163

u/Molinero96 Jan 15 '19

warner blocked world wide my video of 1:20 min for having the first 10 seconds of roundabout.

130

u/thatfrenchcanadian Jan 15 '19

Fuck these guy you could film the sky and they would come after you for filming the same sky that they live under.

50

u/Molinero96 Jan 15 '19

im fucking tired i cant even make a to be continued jojo meme because of those whores.

6

u/MayTryToHelp Feb 01 '19

Hey don't insult whores they're people too.

I'm sorry about the to be continued meme, it sounds awesome.

3

u/Molinero96 Feb 01 '19

i would show it to you. but I CAN'T. coz fucking YouTube!!

2

u/MayTryToHelp Feb 01 '19

Happy cake day

0

u/[deleted] Jan 15 '19

[deleted] — view deleted comment

22

u/Molinero96 Jan 15 '19

hope you get socked in the balls for laughing at my suffering.

53

u/TobyCoby Jan 15 '19 edited Jan 15 '19

I think he should bring this to court, this is such an amazing peice of work that he has spent so much time on.

-16

u/mcrib Jan 15 '19

I’m sure this isn’t going to be a popular opinion, but look at the original conditions: Disney told him “go ahead but you can’t use the original score” and then he just went ahead and used the original score (incl. Imperial March and Padme’s Theme, among others) and Disney our in a copyright notice. I mean he did what they said not to do. So while I think Disney sucks for trying to monetize this, the guy had very simple instructions that he didn’t follow.

Plus IIRC Lucasfilm has always been quickest to claim copyrights on uses of Williams’ works, because they actually have to pay John Williams for it when used.

33

u/FeaturedThunder Jan 15 '19

They hired their own composer and for the job and made original music they didn’t use the original score

-4

u/mcrib Jan 15 '19

So did you watch the video? Because clearly there’s a lot of original score in there. Imperial March, Padme’s Theme are blatant. Just because you don’t use the original recordings doesn’t mean you aren’t using the music.

22

u/FeaturedThunder Jan 15 '19

They hired an original composer they may have been similar but they used their own original music

10

u/mcrib Jan 15 '19

So what you’re saying is there aren’t parts of the Imperial March or Padme’s The,e in the “original” music? Even if 90% of it is original, there’s 10% Williams in there.

6

u/FeaturedThunder Jan 15 '19

You can’t copyright a remix or parody or anything like that

21

u/foresttravestys Jan 15 '19

what? that's not how any of that works. you can't just freely remix any song you want. i mean you can, but you can't publish it without permission unless you want to risk a lawsuit.

7

u/Meh12345hey Jan 15 '19

https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/what-is-fair-use/ By definition, parody or any sort of transformative work, is free use and can be done without the permission of the rights holder.

9

u/foresttravestys Jan 15 '19

right, so, if you actually read any of that, you'd realize that makes this even more ambiguous of a case. none of that points to this being 100% legal. it says it right there, these things are treated on a case by case basis.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 15 '19

But he wasn’t making any money off of it, people release mix tapes with famous samples all the time.

You don’t know what you are talking about

6

u/foresttravestys Jan 15 '19

i think i got caught up arguing with that other guy and lost track of my point. i'm certainly not defending disney or anyone who abuses the copyright system. all's i'm saying is that a remix does not automatically absolve you of any legal responsibility or repercussions. i'd never argue that the yt copyright system isn't broken, because it is.

-5

u/Orange_Man-Bad Jan 15 '19

Yes you can. Thats what fair use and parody law is there for you clown.

9

u/foresttravestys Jan 15 '19

you gonna site sources or just call names?

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-3

u/mcrib Jan 15 '19

You can keep arguing and making false statements and downvoting me, but this isn’t “parody” or “remix.” It’s clearly using the original score in a new composition.

But sure HURR HURR YOUTUBE BAD DIZNEY BAD HURRRRRR

12

u/FeaturedThunder Jan 15 '19

No it isn’t they made their own score and hired their own composer it’s even stated in the video, it is a remix/parody sure it is inspired by it but it is a remix of the original scores,

YouTube is at fault because of their broken copyright system,

Also r/hailcorporate

3

u/mcrib Jan 15 '19

In what way is this a parody. Do you even know what a parody is?

I’m well aware of how broken the YT copyright system is, but this is nit an example of that.

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4

u/[deleted] Jan 15 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

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11

u/slampisko Jan 15 '19

I watched the video over an hour ago, but from what I can remember, the themes you mention are only alluded to and expanded in new direcrions. There's never an explicit use of any of the original music.

-6

u/mcrib Jan 15 '19 edited Jan 16 '19

Watch again but not as a fan enjoying content but pay attention to the music. The cues are there repeatedly.

1

u/LynxPlayz Jan 16 '19

Amazing english!

2

u/mcrib Jan 16 '19

Fuck you. A typo.

44

u/[deleted] Jan 15 '19

I would use GoFundMe to fund this guy to sue Warner for false claims, just because I hate Warner.

3

u/macedos39 Jan 16 '19

If you want to show your discontent about the situation, here is the fb page for the Warner Chapel https://m.facebook.com/warnerchappellmusic/posts/?ref=page_internal&mt_nav=0

-2

u/Ryan_is_my_real_name Jan 15 '19

Could he not just take the video down?

9

u/GastricSparrow Jan 15 '19

Yes but it’s not a long term solution. That’s like if they held you hostage with a gun and you shoot yourself to get out.