Updates in the battle for online content/IP: h3h3 wins lawsuit; Sargon of Akkad now sued

h3h3 wins lawsuit

quote:

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After a year-long legal battle, A New York District Court judge yesterday ruled in favor of YouTube channel H3H3 Productions, who had been accused of copyright infringement, misrepresentation and defamation by another YouTuber whose comedy-slash-pick-up-artist video they parodied.

H3H3 Productions’ February, 2016 parody video poked fun at the video “Bold Guy vs Parkour Girl” and garnered over ten million views before a takedown request wiped it off YouTube. YouTuber Matt Hoss alleged that the Kleins’ critical commentary of his video reproduced too much of the original video, a fact Ethan Klein said masked the fact that “he doesn’t like that we made fun of him and so he’s suing us.” The judge’s final opinion was that there is “no doubt” that YouTubers Ethan and Hila Klein’s reaction video constituted “critical commentary,” which is legal under the Fair Use Act.

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usually these suits are settled b/c of how expensive they are to litigate. however, this ruling may set some precedential value moving forward and protecting critique videos via "fair use". this was often assumed by creators for years, and often used as a defense when Youtube would take down videos, but now there is a ruling from a major court (Southern District of NY is where most of these get filed/decided) that strengthens their argument (while not solidifying it entirely, as it was simply a district court ruling). potentially major, major ruling moving forward

Sargon of Akaad sued by Alliyah Hughes

this is a bit different. Sargon just cut up her video and offered no direct critique within his video. Her video was reporting from the HRC campaign on election night and his simply edited down her video to sad faces and the video was titled something like "SJW faces". he has an argument for critique, but it's going to be much more difficult.

in my legal system, Sargon would win (As i'd consider this critique), but our IP laws are terrible, outdated, and should not apply to things like online content creation. i don't get to make the rules and the system is insane, so my opinion is worthless.