EFF Assails YouTube For Removing "Downfall" Parodies 294
Locke2005 writes "In what promises to be one of the quickest threads to become Godwin'ed, YouTube has pulled scores of parodies of the 'Hitler Finds Out' scene from the movie The Downfall. Ironically, I had never heard of this movie before this — and now I want to watch it." Here is the EFF complaint. David Weinberger has posted some details on Google's Content Identification tool, which is being used in the shotgun takedowns.
Downfall is a really good movie (Score:3, Interesting)
...but difficult to watch if you're squeamish about real-world evil.
The parodies that I've seen, though (of the approximately 700,000 of them on YouTube) are hit and miss, though I'm pretty sure this is exactly the kind of thing that's defensible as fair use.
Re:Well what does the director have to say about i (Score:4, Interesting)
By the way, I saw this movie in the theater for a foreign film festival. It made it all the more funny to see the viral videos start popping up since I remembered the scene vividly and it's a pretty powerful movie. Although, I saw it with a German girl and her comment was that Hitler movies were passe in germany since so many had been made. I thought it was good though.
Re:Well what does the director have to say about i (Score:3, Interesting)
This is rather stupid, considering the director of Downfall watches them and likes them. In fact, in his own words "I think I've seen about 145 of them! Of course, I have to put the sound down when I watch. Many times the lines are so funny, I laugh out loud, and I'm laughing about the scene that I staged myself! You couldn't get a better compliment as a director." http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/01/the_director_of_downfall_on_al.html [nymag.com]
Well... The article also ends with the director saying "If only I got royalties for it, then I'd be even happier." But removing the videos from youtube wouldn't help him with getting royalties, so yeah. It is rather stupid. He'll probably get less money now since the videos were essentially free advertising for the movie.
sounds like a bad business decision (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, hardly anyone posting a youtube vid will be interested in licensing the scene. It's short sighted to consider only that aspect, and think of it as lost revenue. This meme is a big one. If properly nurtured, it could ensure future rental revenue in the way that only cult movie status can.
I also only --and legally-- rented the movie after watching the Xbox Live parody. The movie was a large international success upon its release, but it didn't make my radar. The parodies are can be so funny because the banality of the fake subtitles is so incongruent to the remarkably powerful acting.
My thought process went from "this is hilarious" to "wow what a great scene... I need to watch this movie".
Corporate interference with Free Speech again... (Score:1, Interesting)
I know there's at least one remixed Downfall video on YT that was a serious part of political discussion in Australia ("Alex Hawke Liberal Party Downfall"), and removal of that is interfering with 'Free Speech' in its intended sense. Deleting that video is deleting political history. Bad Thing.
In related news... (Score:3, Interesting)
Hitler's relatives sue Constantin films for copyright infringement of his private conversations while in the bunker.
Re:JUST LIKE THE NAZIS! (Score:1, Interesting)
First they came for the fascists, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't a fascist.
Re:WTF is this article about? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:JUST LIKE THE NAZIS! (Score:3, Interesting)
That's why I do speak up when they come for the fascists [wikipedia.org].
Re:Unfortunate (Score:5, Interesting)
I read an interview with the director of Der Untergang where he said that he liked all those Untergang parodies. Not every filmmaker has his pivotal scene become such a big internet meme, and he was very flattered by that, and tried to watch every one of them.
Clearly he's not the one who calls these shot.
Re:this is the what intellectual property means: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll admit that intellectual property kills culture a little bit. Right after you admit that unbridled sharing kills culture a lot more.
Besides, as you pointed out, leaving these clips up could be a form of advertisement. The only problem is if the free advertisement ends up being a substitute for the non-free whole package. So, the concept of intellectual property, and sharing small portions (or small parodies) of the work, are far from mutually exclusive.
Hmm. So you're saying, if artists have the option to try to make money off their works via copyright, they will be worse off than if you tell them what to do? That's an interesting philosophy.
I would rebut your conjecture by saying that I know better than you what to think, and thus it's about time for your frontal lobotomy, don't you agree? Of course you do. Because I say you should.
Re:Der Untergang (Score:4, Interesting)
It is indeed a fantastic film, highly recommended.
Being married to a German, having lived in Berlin for seven years, and with both my kids having been born there, I have long felt that it's absolutely incumbent upon me to really try and understand what happened in 1930s and 1940s Germany, rather than continuing to hide behind the simplistic "we won, you lost, you killed lots of Jews, Germans are bad" attitude that was drummed into most of us growing up in the UK in the 1960s and 1970s.
That's not to condone or forgive anything at all, but it's important that we understand why a deeply civilised nation went so catastrophically off the rails in the first half of the twentieth century, if only to look inwards and ask ourselves, each and every one of us, what would it take for me to go down a similar road. Only then, I believe, can you try and avoid it. Again, it's too trivial to say "never" without thinking about it: we're all human and all capable of extreme actions in extreme circumstances, I believe.
In that regard, Der Untergang is a truly crucial addition to the literature (be it written or visual) on this very important topic.