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[Fare thee well]

https://comicbook.com/anime/news/toei-animation-controversy-copyright-youtube-claim/

What are your thoughts on this issue? Japan and the US have very very different views on copyrights, but I feel there is some real problems here that should be ironed out. Who is ultimately at fault in your opinion? As a westerner my perspective is that opinions and constructive reviews are fair game when dealing with IPs. I tend to be a fair use supporter.

Leonard French is our resident fair use lawyer on youtube. I think he gives a fair and detailed assessment:

 

[Mistake]

This is why DBZ Abridged started putting a disclaimer in front of their parody videos. They got tired of the back and forth

 

[Doom85]

I’ve watched plenty of Mark’s videos, and the dude definitely falls under “fair use” category. He does reviews and analysis videos and doesn’t post full scenes or anything as far as I remember.

Now is Toei in the legal right here? Probably. But that doesn’t make it morally right in my book.

So in short, to Toei I say this:

(kudos to another poster who used this gif in a thread a day or two ago, I forget which one, but damn this is a very applicable gif for certain situations)

 

[Fare thee well]

I’ve watched plenty of Mark’s videos, and the dude definitely falls under “fair use” category. He does reviews and analysis videos and doesn’t post full scenes or anything as far as I remember.

Now is Toei in the legal right here? Probably. But that doesn’t make it morally right in my book.

So in short, to Toei I say this:

(kudos to another poster who used this gif in a thread a day or two ago, I forget which one, but damn this is a very applicable gif for certain situations)

I love that gif. I feel like I could apply that to so many things today, especially this.

 

[Nobody_Important]

I love DBZ and I love Toei Animation for what they have done for the dragon Ball franchise in recent years, but the way that these people handle their IP is just fucking Nintendo levels of ridiculous and archaic these days.



The way that they treat their IP and content creators feels like it's being handled by someone from like 13 years ago who has never seen YouTube beyond a couple of Taylor Swift videos or something.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

It really comes down to your views regarding licensing and use.

When you watch TV and a news channel shows clips of sports or movies or whatever, those are used with permission (or courtesy) of the league or movie studio. Nobody is supposed to replay some sports clips or trailers on their own and make money off it unless the creator says so.

So should this also apply to YT indie creators? Or just for big corporations? Or both?

Big companies trying to do this know they'll get grilled first if they try. As for indies, let's face it. There's so many of them they know deep down the chances of legal action coming their way is almost zero. So they just gun it knowing their zero presence wont red flag lawyers. But hey, sometimes their lawyers notice and care.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

As a westerner my perspective is that opinions and constructive reviews are fair game when dealing with IPs. I tend to be a fair use supporter.

It’s no different than what Nintendo does - the fact is a video is monetised without an owner of a critical component (photage) being compensated. YouTubers are using others’ work in order to earn money. It’s that simple.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

but the way that these people handle their IP is just fucking Nintendo levels of ridiculous and archaic these days.

It’s not archaic, it’s treating a video platform exactly the same way as the other video platform - TV, where all the clips are used with permission. It’s also the same thing as artists suing politicians for using their music or videos without permission.

Youtube being this edgy, young platform for teens doesn’t make it different.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

It’s not archaic, it’s treating a video platform exactly the same way as the other video platform - TV, where all the clips are used with permission. It’s also the same thing as artists suing politicians for using their music or videos without permission.

Youtube being this edgy, young platform for teens doesn’t make it different.

Agreed.

But what's happened is social media has so many people (could be millions) flooding websites with copyrighted material every minute I bet most people think it's legal and a natural course of business.

But it's not. It just seems so because no legal team can tackle it all. Kind of like tax evaders. 99% of them probably get away fudging the numbers because the IRS and Revenue Canada can only catch so many scammers. But that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do just because most people get away with skimming a couple grand here or there.

The digital world has come down to "public acceptance should = corporate acceptance" for a lot of people. And companies and lawyers should just give in and go with the flow.

 

[Fare thee well]

Agreed.

But what's happened is social media has so many people (could be millions) flooding websites with copyrighted material every minute I bet most people think it's legal and a natural course of business.

But it's not. It just seems so because no legal team can tackle it all. Kind of like tax evaders. 99% of them probably get away fudging the numbers because the IRS and Revenue Canada can only catch so many scammers. But that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do just because most people get away with skimming a couple grand here or there.

The digital world has come down to "public acceptance should = corporate acceptance" for a lot of people. And companies and lawyers should just give in and go with the flow.

Just curious where the line is for you. Would you be okay if a monetized channel talks about the property without using images or videos?

Somewhat random asside, but I also believe there comes a point where art transitions from ownership by a person/company to part of the collective art of the world: the same way I can now play a Beethoven Sonata on the piano, film myself, and talk about the piece. The same way I can derive inspiration and talk about Tolkien when making my own fantasy creation. I do think art eventually benefits from such types of sharing and exposure. Now obviously Toei is still present and not in the sphere of the past yet, but do you think the modern practices of copyright are the absolute best path for how we collectively grow art for humanity? I just feel that no art is even original to begin with. I feel it is progressively derivative. I would wager a few older artists could actually make various copyright claims against Toei, maybe for ideas, animation style, etc., but that would be detrimental, right?

Now Mark might not be part of that artistic mutualism. That all depends what your thoughts are on reviewers and critics, and if they even contribute to art. I'm not sure on that myself. I don't know if Siskel and Ebert ever improved cinema for me personally

 

[Yoboman]

Its idiotic because he is basically free advertising for them. His One Piece reviews had millions of views and got a lot of people to give the shows a chance

Its also YouTube fault because they offer no tools to region block the videos, so he ends up breaking the rules in Japan even if he is totally in a fair use category elsewhere. Their copyright system is broken

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Somewhat random asside, but I also believe there comes a point where art transitions from ownership by a person/company to part of the collective art of the world: the same way I can now play a Beethoven Sonata on the piano, film myself, and talk about the piece.

Yes, you can because - surprise - after a set number of years work transition to public domain, according to IP and copyright laws. Toei animation is not yet in public domain.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Its idiotic because he is basically free advertising for them. His One Piece reviews had millions of views and got a lot of people to give the shows a chance

Its also YouTube fault because they offer no tools to region block the videos, so he ends up breaking the rules in Japan even if he is totally in a fair use category elsewhere. Their copyright system is broken

Free advertising?

Everyone talks about this but the beauty of digital is that you can measure everything, every click, every impression - show me the receipts this actually is of benefit to Toei.

Regarding it being ‘fair use outside Japan’ - lol, no. It doesn’t magically make it ok simply because he is in the US, it’s his job to make sure he is in no breach of IP laws, nor YouTube (see the pattern here?), nor Toei.

 

[Yoboman]

Free advertising?

Everyone talks about this but the beauty of digital is that you can measure everything, every click, every impression - show me the receipts this actually is of benefit to Toei.

Regarding it being ‘fair use outside Japan’ - lol, no. It doesn’t magically make it ok simply because he is in the US, it’s his job to make sure he is in no breach of IP laws, nor YouTube (see the pattern here?), nor Toei.

Advertisers pay tens of thousands for sponsorships in YouTube videos that get the views TotallyNotMark gets. And he is dedicating hour long videos constantly to reviewing Toei properties

How is that anything but free advertising? Don't be dense

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Advertisers pay tens of thousands for sponsorships in YouTube videos that get the views TotallyNotMark gets. And he is dedicating hour long videos constantly to reviewing Toei properties

How is that anything but free advertising? Don't be dense

Advertisers have probably possibility to very fine-tune who gets shown their ads and in what context. For some reason they decided TotallyNotMark doesn't give them good enough RoI or they simply do not care. Which is their right.

I'm not dense. Stop with the 'free advertising' nonsense - the guy one day decided to start talking about a given property, do not sign a contract with them, monetize the video in the hopes of making money of it. The IP holder disagrees, end of story. They might be wrong, but it's their right. Are we pressuring companies on how they are supposed to do their business now?

 

[Kenpachii]

Dude used copyrighted material from a company that didn't appreciated it and got shut down.

He's free to e-mail them and ask them if he can make the footage the next time around.

Simple as that.

 

[thefool]

Does he use copyrighted images and makes money in the process? If yes, I don't see the issue.

Solutions
a) Don't monetize your content based on copyrighted property.
b) Ask for permission, if you want to monetize it.
c) Create your own copyrighted product to talk about.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Does he use copyrighted images and makes money in the process? If yes, I don't see the issue.

But free advertising!

 

[YCoCg]

It's more of the case that it's also he's being targeted, he's pointed out multiple times that people have uploaded full movies, episodes, etc, to YouTube and nothing is done (even stuff that's being monetised) but he gets all this shit for showing screenshots in his reviews and breakdowns. I can feel the anger behind that one, if you're taking my shit down for the smallest thing then at least take their shit down too when it's clearly violating the rules.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

It's more of the case that it's also he's being targeted, he's pointed out multiple times that people have uploaded full movies, episodes, etc, to YouTube and nothing is done (even stuff that's being monetised) but he gets all this shit for showing screenshots in his reviews and breakdowns. I can feel the anger behind that one, if you're taking my shit down for the smallest thing then at least take their shit down too when it's clearly violating the rules.

This quote by StreetsofBeige is relevant here:

But it's not. It just seems so because no legal team can tackle it all. Kind of like tax evaders. 99% of them probably get away fudging the numbers because the IRS and Revenue Canada can only catch so many scammers. But that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do just because most people get away with skimming a couple grand here or there.

Other people might avoid copyright strikes for now, that still doesn't make what he did right.

 

[Doom85]

It’s no different than what Nintendo does - the fact is a video is monetised without an owner of a critical component (photage) being compensated. YouTubers are using others’ work in order to earn money. It’s that simple.

And yet awfully convenient that this same studio turns a blind eye to Comiket in their own country, a convention dedicated solely to doujin artists selling doujin to fans and many of said doujin are based off anime and manga and oh boy you better believe Toei series are well represented there. But they know the Japanese fans would fucking be pissed if Toei or any anime studio dared try to shut it down which could affect video and merchandise sales, so Toei turns a blind eye and chooses to bully international fans instead.

This would be the equivalent of Disney executives bursting into a house, seeing a guy uploading Disney clips online, and another guy making bootleg Disney DVDs/BRs of full movies to sell, and the executives have the first guy arrested but ignore the second guy. It’s ridiculous.

Again, not saying they may not be in the legal right, but only the most naive fool thinks legality automatically equals morality (like, this isn’t even up for debate, fuck in the US alone some states have opposing laws, and of course laws change. Also, you know, some extremely fucked up things were legal back in the day). And again, Toei can’t claim they’re doing it purely to uphold the law because they’re turning a blind eye to a far bigger breach of copyright in their very own country but won’t due anything about that because that would hurt their consumer’s trust. And don’t anybody try to claim they don’t know, Comiket is a massive deal in the Japanese anime fandom, hell quite a few anime series have episodes dedicated to the characters going to specifically Comiket.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Just curious where the line is for you. Would you be okay if a monetized channel talks about the property without using images or videos?

Somewhat random asside, but I also believe there comes a point where art transitions from ownership by a person/company to part of the collective art of the world: the same way I can now play a Beethoven Sonata on the piano, film myself, and talk about the piece. The same way I can derive inspiration and talk about Tolkien when making my own fantasy creation. I do think art eventually benefits from such types of sharing and exposure. Now obviously Toei is still present and not in the sphere of the past yet, but do you think the modern practices of copyright are the absolute best path for how we collectively grow art for humanity? I just feel that no art is even original to begin with. I feel it is progressively derivative. I would wager a few older artists could actually make various copyright claims against Toei, maybe for ideas, animation style, etc., but that would be detrimental, right?

Now Mark might not be part of that artistic mutualism. That all depends what your thoughts are on reviewers and critics, and if they even contribute to art. I'm not sure on that myself. I don't know if Siskel and Ebert ever improved cinema for me personally

I dont know. It seems like a grey area.

If someone is strictly talking about something in detail, it seems to me it's not as bad (or even bad at all because how can someone be taken down just talking?) as talking about something and showing a background video clip with graphics and audio. But would a static image snapshot be ok enough to let slip through? Not sure.

Some content creators do that so they know they are trying to avoid legal action. You see it all the time When I go to YT and see if there's some sports or fight replays, they got the footage, but all they do is talk and found an image here or there to upload and they talk over it. Or they took the image from a sports channel. Is this allowed? I guess so? I dont think legal teams will take down a guy whose video has a single snapshot. But not sure. Maybe they legally can, but dont bother because it's too small to go after.

 

[kondorBonk]

And yet awfully convenient that this same studio turns a blind eye to Comiket in their own country, a convention dedicated solely to doujin artists selling doujin to fans and many of said doujin are based off anime and manga and oh boy you better believe Toei series are well represented there.

I think that's when it comes to "parody" but they probably have their own set of laws. You can do something similar here in the states. I can make "Super Hornio Bros" (Which exists and Nintendo even went out of their way to purchase). At the end of the day while they are obviously influenced, they are not the sole work of another or an existing asset of that company. Thats night and day compared to playing unedited episodes and asking for ad revenue.

To your other point, yeah multiple people are using their content for monetary gain all the time. It's very difficult to monitor so much at once. Sometimes there are martyrs even when compared to the whole, seem minuscule. Think of the incredibly few who got pinched back in the Napster days or for Roms. Sucks but going hard on a single entity makes the point obvious without pissing off the entire world who's probably still doing it. While small, it sure as hell made people skeptical about doing it and probably lessened the amount of illegal downloading considerably. There is also the act of defending an IP. If you are not activly defedning it (atleast once in a while) you somehow lose control. I'm not entirely aware of how this one works but that is usually Nintendo's excuse.

As for morality... I have not watched this individuals content but if they are replaying clips, yeah that does not belong to them. They can go down avenues like filtering the video to a degree, using fanart, or getting permission as a critic. They didn't explore those. Maybe they decided that would be too costly but I do not agree that they are in a moral high ground where it's their right to take someones content, post it, and gain money.

 

[kondorBonk]

I think that's when it comes to "parody" but they probably have their own set of laws. You can do something similar here in the states. I can make "Super Hornio Bros" (Which exists and Nintendo even went out of their way to purchase). At the end of the day while they are obviously influenced, they are not the sole work of another or an existing asset of that company. Thats night and day compared to playing unedited episodes and asking for ad revenue.

To your other point, yeah multiple people are using their content for monetary gain all the time. It's very difficult to monitor so much at once. Sometimes there are martyrs even when compared to the whole, seem minuscule. Think of the incredibly few who got pinched back in the Napster days or for Roms. Sucks but going hard on a single entity makes the point obvious without pissing off the entire world who's probably still doing it. While small, it sure as hell made people skeptical about doing it and probably lessened the amount of illegal downloading considerably. There is also the act of defending an IP. If you are not activly defedning it (atleast once in a while) you somehow lose control. I'm not entirely aware of how this one works but that is usually Nintendo's excuse.

As for morality... I have not watched this individuals content but if they are replaying clips, yeah that does not belong to them. They can go down avenues like filtering the video to a degree, using fanart, or getting permission as a critic. They didn't explore those. Maybe they decided that would be too costly but I do not agree that they are in a moral high ground where it's their right to take someones content, post it, and gain money.

 

[Doom85]

I think that's when it comes to "parody" but they probably have their own set of laws. You can do something similar here in the states. I can make "Super Hornio Bros" (Which exists and Nintendo even went out of their way to purchase). At the end of the day while they are obviously influenced, they are not the sole work of another or an existing asset of that company. Thats night and day compared to playing unedited episodes and asking for ad revenue.

To your other point, yeah multiple people are using their content for monetary gain all the time. It's very difficult to monitor so much at once. Sometimes there are martyrs even when compared to the whole, seem minuscule. Think of the incredibly few who got pinched back in the Napster days or for Roms. Sucks but going hard on a single entity makes the point obvious without pissing off the entire world who's probably still doing it. While small, it sure as hell made people skeptical about doing it and probably lessened the amount of illegal downloading considerably. There is also the act of defending an IP. If you are not activly defedning it (atleast once in a while) you somehow lose control. I'm not entirely aware of how this one works but that is usually Nintendo's excuse.

As for morality... I have not watched this individuals content but if they are replaying clips, yeah that does not belong to them. They can go down avenues like filtering the video to a degree, using fanart, or getting permission as a critic. They didn't explore those. Maybe they decided that would be too costly but I do not agree that they are in a moral high ground where it's their right to take someones content, post it, and gain money. Absolutely no moral doubt there. Here we have whats called "Fair Use" which ciritcs use all the time. "Fair use permits a party to use a copyrighted work without the copyright owner's permission for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research."

If doujins used altered names, they must be an extreme minority, as all the ones I’ve seen use both the original series’ titles and the characters’ actual names. If Nintendo is allowed to shut down fan games of their IPs, then this should logically fall into the same category, and I can’t see how reviews using short clips is more damaging to their properties. After all, purchasing doujins is taking away each fan’s money that could have been spent on official merch or video discs of that series. Watching a YouTube review doesn’t affect them that way at all.

Err, what’s that? Why do I know enough about doujins to know how they virtually always use the actual titles and character names? Why, err, purely for research for this very topic, of course! Why, no other reason, of course……*COUGH* (this joke will go over the heads of the more innocent folks here, LOL)

 

[kondorBonk]

If doujins used altered names, they must be an extreme minority, as all the ones I’ve seen use both the original series’ titles and the characters’ actual names

Ha, unfortunately I can only speculate but that's my guess. I imagine they have their own requirements over there but it's not necessary to change a characters name fully in parody where I'm from. It's more so up to interpretation. While influenced and probably in this case, intentionally trying to look as close to the source material as humanly possible, at the end of the day it is the effort of a separate individual so going back to morality, surprising far more okay with that then what this guy was doing. He very well could do this and it would fall under "fair use". He chose to monetize it which puts him int he wrong.

Nintendo's does fall under the same category. Those projects tend to only see legal action when they try to monetize.

So making money on your own created work and using parody- A Okay
Ripping direct content and using it for direct monetary gain without compensating the ones who actually created the work- Bad.

 

[Fare thee well]

Again, not saying they may not be in the legal right, but only the most naive fool thinks legality automatically equals morality

This is where my head is at. The purely analytical are correct from their own current law and perspective. But from an artist's worldview and common sense of morality I feel that a lot of the legal system is flawed from the beginning. As humans sharing and immitation are the core way we learn and thrive. And while we definitely want to see credit where credit is due to some extent, I would say our current legal system is far too concerned with greed. I feel that our current legal level of greed snuffs out the creative spirit of art, rendering it quarantined and dull.

 

[Werewolf Jones]

Professional grifter who talks into a mic (AND DOESN'T EDIT HIS OWN FUCKING VIDEOS) on entry level Japanese fiction thinks Toei owes him something. They don't. He should just take the L and move on. I cackle every time he says "my life's work." Like he made fucking One Piece. All you do is surface level reactions and read wiki articles making out like you predict what'll happen next.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

So making money on your own created work and using parody- A Okay
Ripping direct content and using it for direct monetary gain without compensating the ones who actually created the work- Bad.

That's where I'm at.

If two people on YT want to talk about who is better - Ryu or Guile - go ahead and debate move sets or art.

But showing a video of two people playing SF talking about it, can Capcom clamp down if they really wanted to? Probably. But if they feel it's no harm or good PR, they'll leave it. And that assumes out of all the SF videos out there their legal team even notices it among the 1000s of SF media made by users. There's so many videos out there it's impossible to take them all down even if they wanted to unless YT has a clever way of blanketing a take down algorithm based on SF content in one shot.

If someone reviewing a book does a video analyzing the plot is that ok? Probably.

If the same person uploads 10 pages of text out of a 300 page book to read page by page is that legal? Probably not. So why would a gamer showing content on screen be any different? Who knows.

 

[Nobody_Important]

Now is Toei in the legal right here? Probably. But that doesn’t make it morally right in my book.

So in short, to Toei I say this:

I came back into the thread to try and explain my point of view better but couldn't find the right words, but the above post basically sums up what I wanted to try and say.

 

[Fbh]

I've no idea of the legality but I guess I can see the point of view of Toei here.
If he made reviews like, say, Jeremy Jahns where it's mostly him talking to the camera with occasional short muted clips and images I think it should fall under fair use. But looking at his channel all his videos seem to be 30+ minute long reviews in which 100% of the visual content is copyrighted material

 

[Ballthyrm]

Ah yes the whole exposure debate.

 

[QSD]

What is this nonsense?

Dragonball doesn't belong to TOEI
Dragonball belongs to the people!

Goku would agree

 

[Happosai]

I fully support copyrights on material with active licensing for physical or streaming media from Japan. However, for video or other media that's been long oop from Japan from either the VHS/LaserDisc or DVD/Blu-ray eras...they need to loosen up on that and it should be fair use.

 

[Sub_Level]

Ultimately the property belongs to Toei, but some of the blame here should go to youtube. The platform has struggled with this for years now and its dumb that people are still getting the rug pulled out from under them after they have been committing the offense for years.

And no, the content creator is not free to choose another streaming platform. There is nothing even in the same stratosphere as youtube. One fourth of the human fucking population uses youtube.

 

[Kenpachii]

And yet awfully convenient that this same studio turns a blind eye to Comiket in their own country, a convention dedicated solely to doujin artists selling doujin to fans and many of said doujin are based off anime and manga and oh boy you better believe Toei series are well represented there. But they know the Japanese fans would fucking be pissed if Toei or any anime studio dared try to shut it down which could affect video and merchandise sales, so Toei turns a blind eye and chooses to bully international fans instead.

This would be the equivalent of Disney executives bursting into a house, seeing a guy uploading Disney clips online, and another guy making bootleg Disney DVDs/BRs of full movies to sell, and the executives have the first guy arrested but ignore the second guy. It’s ridiculous.

Again, not saying they may not be in the legal right, but only the most naive fool thinks legality automatically equals morality (like, this isn’t even up for debate, fuck in the US alone some states have opposing laws, and of course laws change. Also, you know, some extremely fucked up things were legal back in the day). And again, Toei can’t claim they’re doing it purely to uphold the law because they’re turning a blind eye to a far bigger breach of copyright in their very own country but won’t due anything about that because that would hurt their consumer’s trust. And don’t anybody try to claim they don’t know, Comiket is a massive deal in the Japanese anime fandom, hell quite a few anime series have episodes dedicated to the characters going to specifically Comiket.

If i make a product i decide what i do with that product nobody else.

If i think that bootleg movie maker is helping my company, i will happily support that person and maybe the guy has a contract with the company that u don't know about or gives up the right fibe. If i think that super popularize foreigner that makes video's about my product damages my brand by simple just how he presents himself and maybe it has nothing to do with any of the content he makes. I will shut him down.

For example if i was coca cola i wouldn't want 3 obese people advertising my product no matter how good there advertisement is for the simple fact there are at minute 3 for 10 seconds 3 obese people in the screen. It sends the wrong message as its a sport beverage. So when i watch the guy's video the OP linked i see a adult with some shit on his head and instantly think the dude is weird, would the company want to have this guy advertise there products? i would already say nope based on that. As the IP needs to be connected with cool / trendy and hip.

But it could also be the content in general for example, disney and nintendo have all kinds of special rules on how there characters are displayed. A simple wrong way of displaying and its a shut down as they have a feeling there ip's are getting damaged. example, mario + luigi kissing.

While for us its just another company. for the company its there money maker to bankroll there employee's.

 

[Doom85]

If i make a product i decide what i do with that product nobody else.

If i think that bootleg movie maker is helping my company, i will happily support that person and maybe the guy has a contract with the company that u don't know about or gives up the right fibe. If i think that super popularize foreigner that makes video's about my product damages my brand by simple just how he presents himself and maybe it has nothing to do with any of the content he makes. I will shut him down.

For example if i was coca cola i wouldn't want 3 obese people advertising my product no matter how good there advertisement is for the simple fact there are at minute 3 for 10 seconds 3 obese people in the screen. It sends the wrong message as its a sport beverage. So when i watch the guy's video the OP linked i see a adult with some shit on his head and instantly think the dude is weird, would the company want to have this guy advertise there products? i would already say nope based on that. As the IP needs to be connected with cool / trendy and hip.

But it could also be the content in general for example, disney and nintendo have all kinds of special rules on how there characters are displayed. A simple wrong way of displaying and its a shut down as they have a feeling there ip's are getting damaged. example, mario + luigi kissing.

While for us its just another company. for the company its there money maker to bankroll there employee's.

PORN. Just going to start spelling it out fo the uninformed here. Doujin are fanmade porn of copyrighted anime/manga/video game characters. There are some non-hentai doujin, but most of the ones that seem to get exposure and that includes for sale at Comiket are the pornographic ones.

I just find it hilarious that this is Toei’s reaction:

Toei sees Youtuber using clips, most without audio even, for reviews which are mostly positive:

Toei sees doujin of the Sailor Scouts doing, err, “activities”, with a bunch of guys:

 

[Codes 208]

I dont see the problem with what mark has been doing. His channel is mostly just opinions and reviews, he’s not live streaming the entire damn show. To me this is about as bullshit as nintendo taking down content creators for playing their games.

but it is nice of TFS to help out Mark during their DBCember this year

 

[Enjay]

It might take another generation or so for people to care about overpaid youtuber problems on enough of a level (IE coming up with a better term than overpaid youtuber or content creator or video essayist)

 

[BbMajor7th]

Ultimately the property belongs to Toei, but some of the blame here should go to youtube. The platform has struggled with this for years now and its dumb that people are still getting the rug pulled out from under them after they have been committing the offense for years.

And no, the content creator is not free to choose another streaming platform. There is nothing even in the same stratosphere as youtube. One fourth of the human fucking population uses youtube.

Honestly, I have to disagree. They're just a video hosting platform at the end of the day - no one would suggest that Chrysler or Ford ought to be issuing DUIs to drink drivers, why should YouTube be responsible for enforcing global copyright law?

Great to see so much sense talked in this thread though. Critique is fair use, but many of these video essays are comprised of hours of licensed material, published without permission, accreditation or right to response and often monetised for huge sums of money. Some publishers will see it as a good thing overall - be it movies, anime, video games or whatever - but others will take umbrage and they're not being dicks, they're just saying "hey, that thing we spent millions of dollars and thousands of man hours creating - yeah, you can't just re-edit and re-upload huge sections of it with a VO track, call it yours and collect $100 a day ad revenue, especially if you're not going to have the decency to even ask us first."

People like James Stefanie Sterling have long been on the wrong side of this argument citing fair-use and 'transformative works', but they know it's not. They know that if they were to remove the copyrighted material from these 'transformative works' what remained would amount to little more than an undercooked podcast.

And I say all of this who thinks copyright laws are a bad, even destructive, and should be severely relaxed - that's not where we're at right now though and any creator who wants to challenge the big corporates over their stranglehold approach to what was once a commonly shared culture will have my full support. They don't want that though, they just want to bitch about the algorithms on a free hosting platform not doing more to make them rich and successful and the basic property rights of the people they borrow from actually being upheld by said platform. Champions of free expression, they are not.