New Copyright Lawsuit Targets Uploaders of 10-Minute Movie Edits (torrentfreak.com) 74
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: The ordeal of three people, who edited major movies down to 10 minutes and then uploaded those summaries to YouTube, is not over yet. After being arrested and found guilty in a criminal court last year, they now face action in the civil courts. A total of 13 companies including Toei, Kadokawa, Nikkatsu, and Fuji, say they are entitled to at least $3.9 million in copyright damages. [...] Clear indications of how seriously the anti-piracy groups and media companies are taking this action were on display after the lawsuit was filed last week. A press conference was held in Tokyo with a representative of CODA and three attorneys present to answer questions on the case.
Those present, including CODA director Takero Goto, highlighted that the three defendants committed criminal acts when they uploaded the movie edits and then profited from advertising revenue. The civil action aims to underline those convictions with a strong message that rightsholders will not allow people to free-ride on creators' content without facing significant financial consequences. The overall message is one of deterrence coupled with the reaffirmation of copyright law, Goto said.
Those present, including CODA director Takero Goto, highlighted that the three defendants committed criminal acts when they uploaded the movie edits and then profited from advertising revenue. The civil action aims to underline those convictions with a strong message that rightsholders will not allow people to free-ride on creators' content without facing significant financial consequences. The overall message is one of deterrence coupled with the reaffirmation of copyright law, Goto said.
transformative works (Score:2)
While these are transformative works. Most people don't have enough lawyers and lobbyists to safely publish their creations.
Re:transformative works (Score:5, Informative)
The general definition:
"A transformative work must be a work that has a brand new meaning or expression."
Cut/Paste of specific parts of something existing, without actually adding anything, is not transformative.
It's called plagiarism, but since that's pretty much useless in court, they're going the IP route.
This isn't a case of fair use or transformative work in any sense that's accepted nowadays.
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yes
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Richelieu would beg to differ...
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
Snipping up stuff does change meaning, unless you're specifically working to create a summary. It's very often used by politicians and media to transform what people said while still pretending that they said it.
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As I understand it, they were in fact working to create summaries, no?
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Except as the other poster indicated, all these folks did was create a summary of the movie. The plot wasn't changed, the storyline wasn't changed, the ending wasn't changed. All they did was create snippets and string them together in the same order as the movie.
It's like Cliffnotes, but for a movie. Cliffnotes doesn't change the meaning of a book, does it?
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It's like Cliffnotes, but for a movie. Cliffnotes doesn't change the meaning of a book, does it?
Cliff Notes doesn't use the content of the book either, except for selected quotations. But these 10 minute movies are literally made out of the movies.
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> Cut/Paste of specific parts of something existing, without actually adding anything, is not transformative.
Editing is an existing and recognized industry. It's specifically transformative to edit down movies for content.
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CliffsNotes are copyrighted even though the original material may be in the public domain. A summary is still an expression of the new author.
At the worst what was done is a derivative work. The creators of the movie edits most likely hold a valid copyright on the edit itself, but must obtain permission from the original copyright holder. At best it's transformative.
Re:transformative works (Score:5, Informative)
CliffsNotes are copyrighted even though the original material may be in the public domain. A summary is still an expression of the new author.
At the worst what was done is a derivative work. The creators of the movie edits most likely hold a valid copyright on the edit itself, but must obtain permission from the original copyright holder. At best it's transformative.
Have you ever read CliffsNotes/SparkNotes/etc? They're quite additive to the source material. They often explain passages that (especially young) readers have difficulty understanding, regardless of their comprehension of the language. I recall a professor of mine literally recommending we purchase the CliffNotes to one of the harder Lit books we were reading that semester to help with comprehension.
This is more like Reader's Digest Select Editions [wikipedia.org], which (iirc) partners with the publisher/author/copyright owner to abridge the books, and (again, iirc) pay the appropriate royalties minus a small fee.
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CliffsNotes are copyrighted even though the original material may be in the public domain. A summary is still an expression of the new author.
CliffNotes are copyrighted because they actually write new material. They do not just present the reader with verbatim copying of sections of the work as the entirety of the Cliff Note. Fast movies are just edited versions of the original with no additional content.
At the worst what was done is a derivative work. The creators of the movie edits most likely hold a valid copyright on the edit itself, but must obtain permission from the original copyright holder. At best it's transformative.
No you've misunderstood derivative works. Derivative works require permission of the copyright holder and no copyrights are transferred. 17 U.S. Code 106 [cornell.edu]:
the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: . . . (2)to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
The movie edits do not have any copyrights as derivative works fall exclusively under the o
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The movie edits do not have any copyrights as derivative works fall exclusively under the original copyright holder control.
No they don't. You need permission of the original author. And then the new work is under your copyright. However the original author might restrict your usage of your new rights, aka you translate a book in a foreign languge, you don't have the right to make a movie based on the translation.
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No they don't. You need permission of the original author. And then the new work is under your copyright. However the original author might restrict your usage of your new rights, aka you translate a book in a foreign languge, you don't have the right to make a movie based on the translation.
My very next sentence: "However, Fair Use does not require permission." Please read.
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We did not talk about Fair Use.
We talked about who has the copyright on a derived work.
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We did not talk about Fair Use. We talked about who has the copyright on a derived work.
You do understand that Fair Use [wikipedia.org] is an expressed exemption for copyrighted works, right?:
Fair use is a doctrine in United States law that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder.
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You do understand that Fair Use [wikipedia.org] is an expressed exemption for copyrighted works, right?:
Yes, I understand. But that was not the topic.
You claimed one who is making a derived work, aka a translation, has no copyright on that translation.
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CliffsNotes are copyrighted even though the original material may be in the public domain. A summary is still an expression of the new author.
CliffNotes are nearly entirely original work. While they may make frequent reference to the original material, their expression of the facts is wholly their own, akin to a YouTuber sitting in front of a camera for 10 minutes to describe in his own words the plot to a new film or different newspapers reporting the same facts for the same event on which they're all reporting. You can't copyright facts or ideas, just the expression of them. That's not what's at issue here.
What's at issue here is the video equi
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They are not just showing the movie. They are heavily editing it, and only showing a tiny fraction of the movie relevent to their artistic vision for the short edit.
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They are not just showing the movie.
My point was there is no additional content besides the original movie. As such, their edit cannot be considered transformative. It would be hard to argue for Fair Use.
They are heavily editing it, and only showing a tiny fraction of the movie relevent to their artistic vision for the short edit.
As described here, that is a derivative work not a fair use exemption. Derivative works require the permission of the original copyright holder. See Clean Flicks of Colorado, LLC v. Soderbergh [casetext.com]. Clean Flicks ran a business where they edited out objectionable content like foul language and violence from movies; however, they did not get permiss
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My point was there is no additional content besides the original movie. As such, their edit cannot be considered transformative.
Probably not in this case, but I have never heard of a hard and fast rule that material must be added to the work in order for the use to be transformative.
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Probably not in this case, but I have never heard of a hard and fast rule that material must be added to the work in order for the use to be transformative.
Fair Use factors [columbia.edu]:
FACTOR 1: THE PURPOSE AND CHARACTER OF THE USE::
"Courts also favor uses that are “transformative,” or that are not merely reproductions. Fair use is more likely to be found when the copyrighted work is “transformed” into something new or of new utility or meaning, such as quotations incorporated into a paper, or perhaps pieces of a work mixed into a multimedia product for your own teaching needs or included in commentary or criticism of the original.
If a work is just an edited version of another work, most courts do not find that generally to be transformative because it does not really transform the original content that much. There are cases on transformative questions. Some examples include: a Harry Potter encyclopedia that just used excerpts from the books sometimes without quotes was not transformative, recreating scenes from an adult film in a non-adult autobiographical film about
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If a work is just an edited version of another work, most courts do not find that generally to be transformative
I agree with that, I was questioning the claim that it cannot ever be transformative.
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So I should be able to take Phantom Menace, edit out everything but the pod race, and profit from my realized vision of the source material?
Nice. I'll get right on that. Can I send George's lawyers your way?
Re:transformative works (Score:5, Informative)
Seems like they could avoid legal issues by simply publishing the metadata - where to skip over parts of the original.
Something like that already exists in the form of SponsorBlock, an add-on for YouTube that uses crowd data sourcing to skip over sponsored sections, recaps/previews, filler, self promotion, intros and anything else people find annoying.
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Would it not be easier to just timestamp the 2 minutes of useful video instead?
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Sometimes there's 1 minute somewhere in the first third, and one minute somewhere in the last third.
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Also, not in the US, this would be 100% protected under US law, apparently the Japanese made a law against derivative works.
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This would not be 100% protected under US law. The people producing the edited versions could make a claim they were making fair use of the original material, but it's very likely they would fail. Fair use is a 4 part balancing test, and none of the parts look favorable for the editors:
The real crime (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the real crime here is that you can actually condense the content of a movie down to 10 minutes without omitting anything important.
Re:The real crime (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah! Except the style, nuance, the intention of the director, some subplots, important character development... but nothing of value.
I present to you John Carpenters "The Thing", edited for today's young consumer:
"Snowed in guys met a shape shifting monster. Thankfully, they blew it up... maybe? Not sure. Anyway, dogs are dead and the diabetes guy eats faces with his fingers."
Saved you some time.
Re:The real crime (Score:4, Funny)
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The Lord of the Rings trilogy could be edited down to 10 minutes if you do not consider multiple battles important. Just a delivery guy taking a package to a volcano.
Two minutes and 15 seconds, actually. [youtube.com]
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If it's not possible to edit down a movie to 10 minutes or less without omitting anything relevant, how is it a problem to the original creator?
Why would I get threatened by a 10 minute edit of my work if I didn't think that this would keep people from actually watching the whole piece because they already saw everything relevant?
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Why would I get threatened by a 10 minute edit of my work if I didn't think that this would keep people from actually watching the whole piece because they already saw everything relevant?
Factors for determining Fair Use [columbia.edu]. Factor 4: The effect of the use on the potential market for or value of the work. By uploading a summary not authorized by the original copyright holder, they are affecting the value of the original in that (1) fewer people will see the original and (2) the unauthorized edits can affect the perception of the work in negative ways so that they will never see the entirety of the work.
For example The Fellowship of the Rings can be edited so that the core story is about some t
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Seeing everything relevant is not the only reason the 10 minute edit would keep someone from wanting to watch the original. At least as likely is that the edit butchers the original, leaves out important elements that are a big reason people like it, and in the process convinces people the original is worthless.
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What's the real crime here is that you can actually condense the content of a movie down to 10 minutes without omitting anything important.
Can you though? Though there are plenty of trash movies for which your statement is doubtless true, the fact that you can make a 10-minute cut of a film does not mean that nothing of value was lost.
When conveying meaning, there's both denotation and connotation. It seems to me like these sorts of cuts convey the denotation with very little of the connotation. They're great if all you want is to get caught up on the plot points for some reason (e.g. quick refresher before a sequel, have a desire to be mildly
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What's the real crime here is that you can actually condense the content of a movie down to 10 minutes without omitting anything important.
There is zero surprise this a top voted comment. This is the direction of society now. Ignoring the context of anything to justify their reason for abuse, ignorance, indifference, etc....
Never heard of this, thanks! (Score:2)
Go after the ad companies (Score:1)
Go after their cash. The ad platforms that collected ad dollars and funneled to these "creators". Sock them. If there is enough evidence to arrest them, there is enough evidence to get all the ad revenue sent to these bootleggers to be paid to the original copyright owners. It is
Who profited? (Score:5, Insightful)
FTFY
If a 10 minute summary loses them revenue (Score:4, Insightful)
If a 10 minute summary truly leads to lost revenue from people not buying their precious creative works, that's a pretty damning indictment of the state of movie making these days. Their moves must be pretty bad. What's next suing movie reviewers? Suing people who post spoilers on facebook? Amazing stuff. Greed knows no bounds.
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The purpose of advertising is to get more people to see the work. The purpose of copyright is to protect investment. The purpose of a movie is to produce revenues. If you are very lucky the industry will occasionally also produce a movie which is interesting and/or beautiful enough to have actual merit. The nation is motivated to protect copyright on even hot garbage because the industry employs people, and more importantly, the bulk of payments for IP are returned to the originating nation. Strong copyrigh
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Their moves must be pretty bad.
What about: the summary is pretty bad and makes your original look bad, despite the fact that it is a marvel?
Happened in Japan (Score:4, Informative)
Police in Japan have arrested three individuals who uploaded so-called 'fast movies' to YouTube. These edits of mainstream movie titles, that use copyrighted content to reveal entire plotlines in around 10 minutes, are said to discourage people from watching the originals, costing the industry hundreds of millions in lost revenue.
...
After entering guilty pleas, last November all three received suspended prison sentences and were ordered to pay fines to the state. The deterrent messaging of that criminal case is now being underlined with a civil lawsuit.
Last week, 13 member companies of the Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA) and Japan Video Software Association (JVA) filed a civil lawsuit at the Tokyo District Court. It targets the same three individuals convicted in last year’s criminal matter with the aim of recovering significant financial compensation for damages.
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It's an important detail because Japanese copyright law does not have a general fair use defense like we do in America, a trait which they share to a large degree with almost the entire world. Much of the world has some kind of fair use, but almost nowhere would summarizing an entire movie down ever fall under it — probably not even here in the USA. You could do it for the purposes of critique though; if you're not just providing a summary (which would be a derivative work) then you can in theory use
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Goto considered harmful (Score:1)
The overall message is one of deterrence coupled with the reaffirmation of copyright law, Goto said.
We've known for a few decades that goto is bad programming practice! Why must we learn these same lessons over and over?!
Sorry, couldn't resist. /ducks
The defendants were able to reduce (Score:2)
...their jail sentence to 10 minutes.
So Netflix is SOL? (Score:1)
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The rights holder is being paid in that case though. Netflix has paid them and licensed the movie. These 3 folks didn't pay the rights holders, they didn't license the movies. They used them to make tiny, probably fairly crappy 10-minute versions, but did not license the content legally. Despite what some commenters are suggesting, I think this won't fly in the U.S. much better than it did in Japan. Think about sampling tiny bits of songs to make new songs: surely "transformative", but in the U.S. you still
I'm taking my movie and going home! (Score:2)
At 10 minutes the resulting product is pretty much a trailer or a teaser. Isn't that what film producers use to promote their product?
The dumb fucks suing the people who make these mini-movies are the same as the dumb fucks who issue takedowns on Rick Beato's YouTube videos. They're all shooting themselves in the foot by taking down what would otherwise be free publicity for their works. Realistically, how many people who would have watched the movie / listened to the album, are NOT going to do so because t
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At 10 minutes the resulting product is pretty much a trailer or a teaser. Isn't that what film producers use to promote their product?
Lots of movies throughout history have had nothing really except some reveals, and a lot of artificial tension between them. If you have seen the pivotal scenes then you don't need to see the movie. Most movies are crap. We just don't remember most of the crap, only the truly spectacular turds.
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In a word, no. A trailer or teaser is intended to do something other than summarize the complete original. They're intended to tantalize the audience by showing them just enough of the original to make them want more without revealing enough to make the complete movie irrelevant. The goal of these 10 minute edits is exactly the opposite. They're more like an abridgement,
Who finds those clips useful/interesting? (Score:2)
Spoilers ahead: watch out and take care (Score:2)
With the amount of editing and required and the commentary/memes placed through out, watching these condensed versions of otherwise lost movies in the $1 bin is much needed. Not everyone have all the time in the world to watch these movies and sometimes these movies are so boring with all the crap/tropes as fillers. These condensed versions tells a much better story without all the crap that many times don't help move the story forward. Do I really need a 15 minute gun fight or just a 5 second cut letting m
fair use (Score:1)
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This fails in the face of *every factor* of the fair use test:
1) The use is not transformative - it does not create (nor even claim to create) new expression or meaning. In fact the entire point is to distill the *old* meaning.
2) The nature of the original work is published fiction, which slightly favors the original creator
3) A substantial part of the original work was taken, and the entire purpose of that taking was to get to the "heart" of the work, which would not be fair use even if the amount used wa
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Haha! Good one! First, this is in Japan, which doesn't have 'fair use'. Second, even somewhere like the US has has fair use, this wouldn't come close. Here are the tests to be applied to determine if something is 'fair use' or not:
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
Clearly failed that test
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work
Entertainment - no good reason to c
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Then we are all lucky you are not a lawyer :P
Fair Use my ass ...
As someone working in media, I have nothing agains (Score:2)
Gameplay vs movies (Score:2)
I wonder why uploading the gameplay of a video game is allowed, but not a movie.
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I wonder why uploading the gameplay of a video game is allowed, but not a movie.
Some gameplay footage has in fact been taken down by DMCA request. This is a legal grey area. Most game footage is seen as advertising by publishers, but if you drop n-bombs or what have you they don't appreciate that.
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It's allowed because the publishers let it happen. They have every right to stop gameplay videos and streamers, but they don't do it.
For example, Nintendo has issued a ton of DMCA takedowns for "Kaizo Mario" videos on YT. It's within their right to do so. But publishers generally don't issue takedowns because they realize how much Let's Play-style videos and Twitch streaming affects their sales, especially among younger audiences. If a popular streamer starts playing one of their titles, they will see a rev