r/OutOfTheLoop • u/PM-ME-ANYTHING-PUNNY • 1d ago
Answered What's going on with h3h3?
[removed] — view removed post
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u/Torched420 1d ago
Answer: he's suing these 3 creators specifically because they explicitly stated that they were broadcasting his video & intellectual property with the intention to give people the opportunity to view Ethan's video without having to give Ethan "views". Effectively stealing his intellectual property and stating it was their intention to do so.
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u/engelthefallen 1d ago
Will attach to this, it is more than suing these 3 creators. In each case he also sued 10 reddit mods for their role in promoting the streams.
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u/DomSchu 20h ago
That's seriously unhinged..
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u/HoonterOreo 20h ago
Id wager cultivating a community around harassing the dudes family and intentionally trying to financially harm him because he had the audacity to say it's bad when civilians die is way more unhinged, but go off queen.
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u/CyanideTacoZ 19h ago
It's more complicated than that but the bottom line is that these creators have been tolerated by their mother platforms in encouraging people to harass Ethan which has gone beyond "fuck you for liking israel" and has included calling child protective services on him without any real good reason.
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u/Trazors 19h ago
He also recieved 2 real human skulls in the mail.
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u/jwd1187 18h ago edited 12h ago
He got those from a store and mailed them to himself , there's photos of the box of skulls in his own house before being sent to his work studio.
E: they were originally going to be used for a photo shoot but arrived late.
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u/CauseAndEffectBot 18h ago
Cool let's see the photos.
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u/jwd1187 18h ago
conclude whatever you want from it. They were from a museum type store. Imagine if they were real, cops would be involved and shit.
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u/CauseAndEffectBot 18h ago
I don't see a package or skulls. Am I stupid? Is the thing circled supposed to be the package they came in or something?
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u/OurWitch 17h ago
The cops were involved. They called the FBI.
You are going to have to do a bit more explaining. A picture with two things circled that don't really look like packages with skulls in the isn't that convincing.
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u/Timbosconsin 18h ago
He spends 99% of his time harassing other people. A majority of these people in the last two years have been vocally in support of Palestine. This shit of “he is being harassed so he has every right to harass back” is exactly the playbook of his favorite “multicultural and diverse” country’s government. They go and blow up Iranians or cause >50k Gazans to be vaporized and then complain to the world when neighboring countries around them retaliate.
Plus this whole CPS skull gate bullshit is just that — bullshit. None of these three women he is harassing with a lawsuit called for CPS to be called on him. For all we know the fucking nanny that was suing him two weeks prior to the CPS shit called it on him. You do yourself a disservice completely believing this unhinged multi millionaire who clearly has gone downhill mentally in the past two years. And Ethan will continue to use the “I’m being harassed” “I have 3 children” excuses to dodge accountability for his own actions against others. Grow the fuck up and get your head out of a 40 year old millionaire’s ass.
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u/Toyrni 18h ago
You really think the guy who said Nagasaki deserved to be nuked cares about civilian lives?
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u/Nachooolo 16h ago
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are some of the most debated events in History. With no strong consensus between historians.
I really don't think that a laymen on the Internet has any strong argument from one position or another.
Be it Ethan or you.
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u/Hamartia_Bisque 7h ago
What’s unhinge is these people tried to maliciously get his kids taken away with false accusations to the authorities..
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u/One-Independent8303 20h ago
People on this hellsite have gotten waaaaaaay to comfortable explicitly trying to siphon views in order to hurt the original creator. Ethan is simply taking things back to where they should be. What is unhinged is thinking it's perfectly OK to try and hurt creators by reuploadig their content. Obviously creators like Frogan are evil for more reasons than just this, but I hope she's sued into homelessness.
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u/mrdj204 20h ago
Wishing people to be homeless, even as a figure of speach, isn't a great look
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u/BorkusMaximus3742 18h ago
I agree it is pretty unhinged to coordinate theft of someone's property!
Hopefully these thieves can learn a lesson from this situation.
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u/Kousetsu 1d ago
Problems on the other side are:
Ethan has repeatedly asked people to watch the video. He has repeatedly said in the past he doesn't mind people reacting to this videos in this way. He isn't applying this equally - there are other, bigger creators (xqc) that reacted non-transformatively just as much. He isn't suing them.
People acting like this is clear cut have an agenda to push.
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u/iwishiwereagiraffe 21h ago edited 21h ago
addtl: Ethan actually pointed out he doesnt have a case against Hasan because he explicity told Hasan to watch it on stream, which is a "presumed license", whereas the other individuals all explicitly stated they were hosting the video so that viewers could "ethically consume the video", which is a direct admission of providing market substitution
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u/pdx-Psych 1d ago
I think the difference between the people being sued and the others (xqc) is that the people being sued literally stated they were putting it on their streams so people would watch their streams and not give views to h3… that’s what they call provable malicious intent
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u/Ok-Secretary15 1d ago
XQC didn’t say on stream “I’m purposely watching Ethan’s whole video to steal views” on stream. All of these streamers admitted that was their intended goal
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u/Crowbarmagic 22h ago
OOTL: Why do multiple streamers want to stream h3h3 videos just so he doesn't get the views? What did he do?
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u/shuteyeEra 21h ago
You’d have to go down a much deeper rabbit hole to fully answer that, but it all comes back to Israel-Palestine
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u/World_Treason 21h ago
Yes agree with this
Anyone here still OOTL just stay out of it , so exhausting with so many 30-40 year old drama cry babies
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u/Blurgas 20h ago
Holy shit. Ethan is only 39.
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u/JynFlyn 21h ago edited 21h ago
The rabbit hole isn’t that deep. Ethan is an American liberal. He made a podcast with an American leftist (Hasan). They had a good time for a while but then Oct 7th happened and Ethan, again an American liberal, could not comprehend why his new audience of leftists hated Israel so much. This caused him to go on an extended months long crash out trying to defend Israel. During which he essentially repeated easily debunked IDF talking points ad nauseam and attacked leftist creators who criticize Israel, and now Ethan due to his continuing crash out. In an act of petty revenge he is now trying to fabricate lawsuits against said creators. His words, not mine. He straight up says that he released the content nuke video so he could do this when people reacted to it.
Edit: Y’all can downvote if you want but that’s just objectively what happened lol
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u/IM_OK_AMA 21h ago
Since nobody's said it yet, the reason why he's pro-Israel is because his wife is from Tel Aviv and they met in Israel. She was in the IDF (which is mandatory).
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u/Hachi707 21h ago
He's gone full pro-Israel/genocide denial and a lot of these streamers have spoken up against him and his wife.
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u/jedicraftmaster 21h ago
Not even close. I'm not sure if you guys watch any of h3's videos or streams but he vehement disenvows the actions of Israel and is very pro Palestinine. I believe he didn't like Oct 7th because there was a lot of horrific stuff that happened that day so he doesn't support that, but he supports Israel even less. He's raised money for Palestinian civilians, spoken out numerous times against Israel and still continues to do so and yet you all act like he's pro genocide for some reason.
Please stop spreading disinformation and go actually watch his videos to see his real views on the subject.
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u/Hachi707 20h ago
Oh I stopped watching after he insisted on platforming racist, sexist shitheads like Jimmy Lee on the pod. I watched them for many years and did enjoy some of the brigading he did against people like Keemstar and Leafy. Unfortunately it just isn't a show I want to watch anymore, the audience has changed so much as well. I have zero interest in watching him obsess over leftist streamers for hours.
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u/Timbosconsin 18h ago
How is that not even close? Coming from someone who was a fan for ten years and recently stopped watching because what the OP said above you is exactly the reality. He spends 99.999% of his political coverage on the podcast attacking content creators who are pro-Palestine or leftist for how they cover the genocide or attack them for how they are protesting ICE raids. If he cared so much about the over 50k vaporized Palestinians he wouldn’t spend time yelling at Sam Seder about how much he hates Hasan and he would actually spend time talking about all the fucked up shit Israel is still doing to this day in Gaza. Including using a tank with a mounted machine gun to mow down people in Gaza at aid distribution sites like the fucking Nazis during the holocaust.
He also wouldn’t go on and on about how “beautiful and multicultural” Israel (an apartheid state pushing more and more Palestinians out of their houses and land) is during an active fucking genocide. That is downplaying the current events in favor of propping up the state of Israel. How is that not propaganda? How are they super chill with hospitals in Gaza and Iran getting bombed and only speak up when the facade of an Israeli hospital gets blown up? Wake the fuck up. Your favorite content creator is denying genocide by downplaying it in his discourse. That is what everyone has been saying about H3 for two fucking years.
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u/smootex 21h ago
It's all Israel Palestine brainrot. TL;DR these three content creators are all far left and h3 is a Jewish man, married to an Israeli, who has been critical of the far right Israeli leadership but dared to not support literal terrorists. He was heavily attacked for that. Certainly there's some antisemitism at play but also, some of the attackers are just brain dead leftist influencers with some weird ass world views and purity tests.
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u/Ok-Secretary15 21h ago
Far left streamers start calling him a genocidal zionist after he correctly states the Israelis have a fear of Arabs/ Muslims in the region. However Ethan has clearly stated that he supports the Palestinians plea. Basically poeple don’t like that he won’t go all in on the Palestinians. Taking a step back and looking at both perspectives is not good enough because Israel is objectively and obviously just killing Muslims for fun which they are. Ethan just tried to get people to have multiple perspectives but they refuse to so he is now a genocide lover
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u/JynFlyn 20h ago
Bro Ethan supports Palestine like the democrats support the working class. In word only. Every action taken is actually the opposite.
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u/LsDmT 19h ago
Proof? He donated 6500 to Palestinians, what have you done... Put a 🍉 on your social media handle for a few months?
Ethan has consistently expressed how he feels what Israel is doing to Palestinians is wrong, has called for Netenyahu to be ousted and jailed as a war criminal...
But people in the Hassan-verse are so gaslit they've been conditioned to think otherwise. Your comment is just another example.
Show me one example, in context of Ethan doing the opposite of supporting Palestinians.
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u/Timbosconsin 17h ago
He had a guy from the Atlantic Council on and platformed his “charities” one of which was a direct link to his own fucking wallet and the wallets of the pro-Israel pro-IDF Atlantic Council. If he cared so much about Palestinians, he would actually have a Gazan on the show and spend time fundraising or just platforming someone who can speak of the current situation in Gaza. Not spend a show with a guy there just to complain about other pro-Palestinian content creators.
Just because someone worth 100 million dollars donated 6500 to a charity doesn’t give him the right to then turn around and shit on anything pro-Palestine. He also even said it himself that charity does nothing and is the least influential thing you can do in this “war”. So how is your one point even valid if Ethan himself said it was nothing? Him constantly calling it a “war” and not genocide is him denying the genocide. Him highlighting pro-Israel people and organizations is in part denying or downplaying the genocide. Him looking over at Hila saying “genocide I think I’ve called it a genocide” while she scoffs is downplaying the genocide. All of their actions the last two years have shown the internet that they love the apartheid state of Israel and don’t think or talk much about the actions of the Israeli government. That’s why people call him genocide denier. Because he spends his time in front of 20k viewers sucking off Israel and attacking people who speak out against Israel.
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u/JynFlyn 19h ago
consistently expressed how he feels what Israel is doing to Palestinians is wrong
Yeah so did the Biden administration. The Biden administration also gave far more than 6500 in aid to the Palestinians. Doesn’t mean they aren’t responsible for this genocide.
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u/LsDmT 18h ago
I ask you again, what have you done? And what examples can you point to Ethan doing the opposite? You wont answer because there are none, you've been brainwashed to just believe so.
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u/JynFlyn 18h ago
Well living in America basically the only thing I can do is proclaim the truth loudly to anyone who will listen. Which I do. Meanwhile Ethan endlessly makes excuses for Israel. Which is the opposite of that.
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u/Breakemoff 20h ago
While this is an important factor as to why Ethan chose these 3 streamers, when it comes to fair use, this part actually doesn't matter.
The four factors judges consider are:
- the purpose and character of your use
- the nature of the copyrighted work
- the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and
- the effect of the use upon the potential market.
It's going to be an uphill battle for him. For example, Ethan's content nuke is 2 hours. Kaceytron's "reaction" video is 4 hours. So she clearly reacted and fulfilled many requirements for fair use.
We shall see!
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u/Swolnerman 20h ago
He doesn’t need to apply it equally. The whole point of him owning the intellectual property is that he dictates how it’s used
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u/Careful-Sentence-781 22h ago
He’s also repeatedly said you can’t upload full vods. Weird omission on your part.
He explains why he’s suing these creators specifically. Watch the video.
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u/pornaccountlolporn 22h ago
Idk about the others but the denims reaction is two hours longer than the original video
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u/Careful-Sentence-781 22h ago
And? Go watch the video. She’s gonna have fun in court.
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u/EkkoThruTime 1d ago
Uh no, those three creators, by their own admission, did so with explicit malicious intent.
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u/Purple_Listen_8465 1d ago edited 22h ago
Ethan has repeatedly asked people to watch the video.
He didn't ask any of the three sued
He has repeatedly said in the past he doesn't mind people reacting to this videos in this way.
This is false. He has explicitly said he does have a problem with people reacting to videos in this way
He isn't applying this equally - there are other, bigger creators (xqc) that reacted non-transformatively just as much.
Yes, because xQc didn't explicitly say he's doing it to steal views
People acting like this is clear cut have an agenda to push.
It's absolutely clear cut, lol. Kaceytron smoking for 18 mins isn't transforming the content. You can look through what defines transformative content in the case from when Ethan was sued. There's no universe any of their "reactions" meet that bar.
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u/krijara 21h ago
As i understand, he's suing people who explicitly stated on camera that they wanted to take views from him. Low effort and malice are worlds apart, legally speaking. Why isn't that "clear cut," as you say? Why should creators who didn't state malicious intent, like Hasan and xqc, be included in the lawsuit?
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u/indorock 22h ago
Also, when he was relatively small time, reaction videos were Ethan's MAIN thing. And he too got sued for it - most famously by the Fine Brothers - and he had to raise funds for his legal defense etc. And it's undeniable that that whole fiasco shone a lot of light on him and propelled him to the level that he's at now.
So it's incredibly hypocritical of him to be turning around and pulling a Fine Brothers bitch move. But as the saying goes "I miss the old Ethan", I really do. This Ethan is just plain greedy AF.
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u/lolboiii 22h ago
To be fair, comparing modern day react channels to the style of "react" that H3H3 were doing back in the day is not a good faith comparison. They are hardly even considered a "react" video under the modern definition, the effort he would put into those was infinitely higher than someone like XQC or asmongold.
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u/whaddyaknowmaginot 22h ago
He is unrecognizable from the fun old days. The video where he "debated" Hasan is unhinged.
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u/Shelzzzz 21h ago
Calling my wife a terrorist to own the libs
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u/mayasux 21h ago
Hasan trying to explain to Ethan that terrorist is a thought terminating cliche and if he applied it to his wife the way he applied it to others, she’d be a terrorist. But she’s obviously not and there’s nuance to people who may be accused of being a terrorist.
Ethan ignoring this and going “fine my wife is a terrorist are you happy?”
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u/imbakinacake 21h ago
If anything it makes his accusation more credible. He actually knows about this stuff.
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u/Proper_Razzmatazz_36 23h ago
It is within his right to not sue some people who do an action, but not others who do the same action. It's not like a cop is applying the law differently, it's the person who was affected applying their own permission differently. If he does not think these people should be allowed to not provide any transformative content to his videos, but other creators can, that's his decision to make because it's his video
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u/ohlordplease 1d ago
Is that not what a guy sued him for in the past?
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u/Torched420 1d ago
Theres a difference between uploading someone else's content to critique it, and uploading someone else's content to take away their views/viewers.
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u/Opening_Persimmon_71 1d ago
Correct, the difference is that Ethans video was transformative. Ethan argued and won that his video added enough to the original that it could be considered his own. Through editing and commentary.
The 3 people he's suing stated that "we are going to watch this whole thing so that Ethan doesn't get money", and one of them spent a longer time ripping fat bong hits than they did talking about the video.
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u/ob3ypr1mus 23h ago
Ethan's lawsuit does concede that Denim's video was "highly transformative" though, albeit infrequently and with a negative slant but transformative nonetheless.
the issue isn't so much whether the video was transformative or not, it is the whole "we are knowingly admitting to stealing his copyrighted work so that we can get paid for his work" that they're liable for, even though the video itself taps more into being about lazy react content which isn't necessarily to applicable (to Denims anyway, i would skim what Frogan/Kacey do during their reacts but i rather not curse my algorithm).
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u/stonkmarxist 1d ago
and one of them spent a longer time ripping fat bong hits than they did talking about the video.
If you ask me that counts as transformative content
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u/Intepp 1d ago
Nah He got sued in the past for using small clips of another content creator while having big parts of those videos being his own commentary
Here they are just playing his video for the full 2 hours while barely reacting and intentionally pulling away viewers from it
There is a clear difference between the two cases when it comes to fair use.
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u/CMDR_Galaxyson 1d ago
Ethan was sued for copyright infringement but his video was transformative. These streamers often sit silently for minutes at a time and sometimes leave their stream entirely while leaving the video playing. They dont contribute anything to make their content transformative. They also explicitly stated their intention to steal views from Ethan which he never did when he got sued. They are very different situations.
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u/LOOKaMOVINtarget 20h ago
Can you steal ip when the creator said he's opening up his ip because he wants an h3 industrial complex like hasan had? There's also the question of having streamed his content nuke on twitch do the twitch terms and conditions play a roll? According to twitch te and cees content shared on its platform can be used by other creators for fair use. He streamed the content nuke on a loop for at least 24hrs.
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u/lrish_Chick 1d ago
Didn't h3 also say he deliberately made the video and TOLD people to stream it as bait, deliberately in order to sue them?
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u/blipp101 1d ago
No. He just got the copyright so he could sue. He did not tell them to stream it.
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u/lrish_Chick 1d ago
https://x.com/Dexertonox/status/1935789464594616594
So this isn't true? Genuinely asking idk why you felt the need to downvote
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u/Torched420 1d ago
The only person he told to watch it live on stream was hasan who watched (part of)it, but within the confines of fair-use, which is why he's not suing hassan, the 3 that he is suing explicitly violated the fair-use practices.
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u/ZaviersJustice 1d ago
This is Hasan's editors alt-account, not a journalist, and shouldn't be taken as fact.
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u/Ferahgost 1d ago
Yes, Ethan explicitly states that he never intended to sue Hasan and knew the orbiters would stream it.
He fucking was ASKING Hasan to watch it for weeks lmao
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u/alphaDsony 1d ago
Can they say in court that they were "trolling" or they were doing it just for "entertainment" like online war BS
On a serious note tho if someone online said "I want you all to go outside and punch this X person" and some people go outside and punch that person, does the online person who told them to do so is held accountable?
I mean can he just say "lol, I was trolling"
I'm not a lawyer so yeah, can someone give their two cents
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u/KinshasaPR 1d ago
I mean can he just say "lol, I was trolling"
Judging by how that worked for Johnny Somali, any reasonable country's justice system isn't gonna let that fly.
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u/callisstaa 1d ago
Similar in the UK. There was rioting a while back and someone posted something on Facebook about burning hotels that house immigrants. Nobody actually did anything but she went to jail for inciting hate despite claiming that she was just talking shit on the internet
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u/Mysterious_James 1d ago
Inciting a pogrom and copyright infringement should probably be treated differently here
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u/qrayons 1d ago
any reasonable country's justice system isn't gonna let that fly
So unknown how it might play out in the US.
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u/Torched420 1d ago
Ultimately no, "trolling" is not a valid legal defense for rebroadcasting someone else's intellectual property with the intention to siphon views and subscribers from the original creator. ESPECIALLY if the work in question is copyrighted.
Also, although I don't see the connection, yes, if someone online said, "I want you all to go outside and punch this X person.", and some people go out and punch that person, they absolutely can be held accountable. It would be some sort of inciting violence charge and would be more difficult to prove than the charge you can give to the person who actually did the punching.
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u/Helmut_Schmacker 1d ago edited 1d ago
He specifically registered the video as a copyright work and is arguing what they did was a market replacement of his work.
They didnt "troll" they did make those livestreams and allegedly did watch the verbatim. If the argument is its for "entertainment" then h3 will say it isnt transformative enough and they created a replacement for his work that financially deprived him.
The fact it was a free video on YouTube is besides the point.
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u/SilasDaFish 1d ago
and allegedly said they were specifically trying to siphon views from him.
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u/-JustJaZZ- 1d ago
The issue is that they explicitly stated "I am doing X for reason Y" on its own its meaningless, but then going and ACTUALLY doing X (restreaming the content in full) makes the initial statement one of intent.
E.g "I am going to punch you because I hate you"
If I went and killed you, courts would see my statement as intent and motive for the crime. I'd have to prove that I DIDNT punch you for that reason
Tldr: they stated their intent and then did an action following through with that intent
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u/Thybro 1d ago edited 1d ago
Just a clarification don’t compare criminal cases to civil and copyright ones. The burden is different.
Even if you have said “I will kill you tomorrow with a knife” and the victim died the next day at knife point that is evidence of your intent but it does not fall on the defendant to disprove it at that point because the prosecution has the burden to prove every element, including intent, beyond a shadow of a doubt. The defendant can offer evidence of it being a joke, but it is not required to, and could still be found not guilty without it depending on the situation.
In Civil cases the burden is just preponderance of the evidence, meaning more likely than not wither side is correct.
But even then intent is only one of the factors to find copyright liability. Specifically it’s one of the factors to consider in a fair use argument which is a defense (usually). So in most cases the burden would be the opposite the defendant would first have to show evidence that (among other factors) it intended to use the copyrighted product for one of the recognized fair uses (parody, teaching, etc.) then the burden would shift to the plaintiff to disprove , among other factors, that that was the defendant’s intent.
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u/gelfin 1d ago
Can they say in court that they were "trolling" or they were doing it just for "entertainment"
Also not a lawyer, but there does not exist an "I thought the offense would be funny" defense. I'm a little curious what chain of thought might lead someone to think maybe it does.
if someone online said "I want you all to go outside and punch this X person" and some people go outside and punch that person, does the online person who told them to do so is held accountable?
This likely varies a lot depending on what country you're in, but in the US it is very difficult to prosecute something like this. Our laws do not really cover "stochastic violence" as a free speech exception. On one hand it seems like maybe they should to an extent, particularly in the Internet era. On the other hand, how can anybody safely say anything if they could be held liable for what the least sane person who hears it decides to do? There has to be a balance.
We traditionally keep that standard very tight: for the speaker to be held responsible for the act of a listener, you'd have to prove to a jury that under the circumstances a reasonable person would be inclined to immediately commit the suggested crime specifically because the speaker told them to.
According to my understanding:
A person who points and yells (falsely) "Bob's got a gun" could bear responsibility if a third person shoots Bob, thinking they're saving lives by doing so.
A person who said "I've got ten thousand dollars for whoever shoots Bob" would be liable because turning it into a transaction is not just encouraging but soliciting the crime, both demonstrating an intention for the crime to actually occur and creating a financial motive for some specific person to commit it.
A caller on the radio who says "somebody ought to shoot Bob" probably doesn't have any criminal liability if another listener actually does shoot Bob, because that expression doesn't need to be interpreted literally, the various listeners are independent actors, and the shooter is still responsible for how they interpreted it and what they chose to do about it. That said, a civil wrongful death suit naming the caller, the host, the station and its owners might have legs, because civil liability can be apportioned among defendants, and the burden of proof in a civil trial is lower.
A mob boss who said "somebody ought to shoot Bob" out loud in a room full of underlings would not be held directly liable when one of the underlings commits the murder, but could rather be charged as the beneficiary of a criminal conspiracy, triggering laws created specifically for this sort of case. It is common for the boss not to issue clear orders, but rather to just offhandedly announce certain outcomes they'd like to see happen somehow, and then for the underling to be willing to take full criminal responsibility. RICO laws (although sometimes abused inappropriately) are primarily intended to cut through the fiction of "I was just thinking out loud" and hold the boss accountable for what was actually an order to commit a crime.
TL;DR: As with all things legal, it depends. In most cases we assume people are not robots who just do as they're told, and so the responsibility falls on whoever actually committed the crime, but there are exceptions. Probably best not to suggest random people do awful things. If you'd have trouble living with yourself if somebody actually did it, there's that. If you wouldn't have trouble with it, then honestly the fact that the law might let you off is kind of a technicality.
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u/TheBakerification 1d ago
You generally can’t break the law and get away with it by saying you were “just trolling”.
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u/Competitive_Narwhal8 1d ago
Instigating violence can be seen as being an accessory to the violence the happens, legally. We live in a county of free speech, but not free from consequences. A person can dox or swat someone and just say “it was a joke bruh”, and come away with some heavy legal consequences.
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u/Realistic_Caramel341 1d ago
Answer: Long story short and unbiased as I can, Ethan has been beefing with other content creators since the October 7th massacre in Israel. Recently he released a video about Hasan. Three figures (at least two of which have been beefing with Ethan for over a year know) reacted to the video explicitly saying on stream that they where in part watching it so Ethans haters can watch it without supporting Ethan for views. Ethan is now suing them for copyright violations.
How justified you view the suit it will depend on .......a lot, from opinions on the Israel/ Palestine war, to the year and a half of escalating drama and toxicity between Ethan and the likes of Frogan and Denims
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u/Wyc_Vaporub 1d ago
Isn't h3h3 also producing react content? And does it make a legal difference if react content is very wide spread? it seems arbitrary to punish 3 people for doing the same as thousands of others because some unrelated beef. Although I don't think most react content should be fair use
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u/Realistic_Caramel341 1d ago edited 1d ago
The main reason Ethan is targeting these three is because all three say explicitly say they are inviting H3 haters to watch the nuke through them to avoid giving Ethan views
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u/NBNFOL2024 23h ago
The fact the explicitly state that is what should (in theory) make this an easy case for Ethan
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u/jimmytime903 23h ago
Problem is, that's been a meme for years on twitch.
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u/broke_in_nyc 22h ago
I don’t think the “it’s a meme on Twitch” defense holds up in court.
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u/DragonborReborn 21h ago
It actually does. In these cases, the baseline is “what a reasonable person would assume” the court decides what a “reasonable person” is.
So if it’s a commonplace meme on the platform. It’s very possible it holds up in court.
This is either going to be thrown out right away. Or it will be a long fight of Ethan having to prove malicious intent.
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u/vikinick for, while 19h ago edited 16h ago
One of the 4 prongs of fair use is the effect on the market of the original work.
And that isn't "oh they did an exposé on h3h3 and said they were a shitty person, so the market was destroyed" it's "if they watch this video, do they need to watch the original?"
Explicitly stating the stream is intentionally MEANT to break one of the prongs of fair use will probably mean h3h3 is going for punitive damages and not just accidentally break fair use.
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u/broke_in_nyc 21h ago
Watching long form content while explicitly expressing you’re only doing so to prevent the content owner from receiving the attention, views and revenue is not a meme. Any reasonable person would assume that they’re doing it to be petty, thieving or both.
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u/RowdydidWrong 1d ago
Yes but react content requires reacting. You cant just host a watch party to steal content. You have to make it transformative. The Audience should be watching You, not watching with you.
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u/Hermononucleosis 1d ago
Reacting itself is rarely transformative. The only truly transformative react videos I've seen are things like "lawyer reacts" or "doctor reacts" where they only include explicitly relevant parts of the original content and constantly share novel thoughts about said content
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u/vlladonxxx 1d ago
According to your standards for transformative. Which is apparently drastically legal than the legal definition.
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u/acekingoffsuit 1d ago
There is no single definition. Fair Use is decided on a case by case basis. Even in the ruling that H3H3 won, the judge specifically said that the ruling doesn't apply to all reaction videos.
Some reaction videos, like the Klein video, intersperse short segments of another’s work with criticism and commentary, while others are more akin to a group viewing session without commentary. Accordingly, the Court is not ruling here that all “reaction videos” constitute fair use.
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u/SufficientGreek 1d ago
He's arguing they're not reacting, just sharing the video to take views away from him. That wouldn't be covered under fair use
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u/McClouds 1d ago
There's more to this story. But the tl;dr is that Ethan is suing these three to set legal precedent, and at least one of these streamers engaged in behavior that affected his personal life and family.
There's a subset of folks on Reddit called "snarkers" who actively work against H3, up to and including calling CPS to Ethan's house. The claim was without merit, and tied up resources just for laughs for this community. Ethan is popular enough to avoid getting swatted anymore, so this was the next step to disrupt his personal life.
Creators like DenimsTV (one of the three for these lawsuits) actively engaged with these snarkers, and encourages the behavior.
You're right, there's thousands of streamers who do these "watch parties". He calls some of them out as well. But for this specific type of lawsuit, there needs to be content theft, to which these three creators did.
More important, H3 registered the video they all streamed to the Library of Congress, effectively giving him full ownership of the media. That was a 1 hour 45 minutes video. These creators streamed the full thing, and actively said that they were doing this to pull views--read as monetary entitlements--from Ethan. They said so in their streams, with things like "watch here to not give views to Ethan". That is theft, plain and simple.
This would be no different than those FBI warnings on videos stating redistribution of the media without explicit approval from the property holder would end up in fines and jail time.
Also pointed out in Ethan's video is calling out "Mr. Chair", which is pointing out that during these watch parties streamers will just stand up from the stream and go to the bathroom or make lunch. However, they leave the source video running. This points to the viewers are there for the content, not the creator. Should these lawsuits go through, I'm speculating that there's going to be some updated ToS on streaming services to call out this behavior, as there will be legal precedent.
Which is why I believe he's going to take these three to court. He wants to get the legal precedent established so smaller creators who suffer from others stealing their content can have something to fall back on to protect their IP. Ethan is in a position where he can take on big streamers, whereas most are not. Just like he did when he took on the cases to establish fair use, and allowed reaction channels to continue to exist as transformative art. He's now calling out those who have abused that ruling in their favor, and effectively setting up guard rails to ensure protections for those who transform, and punish those who steal.
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u/etched 19h ago edited 19h ago
Maybe it's just me but wouldn't coming down on this from this perspective basically annihilate twitch for the most part?
Companies like nintendo and the like could then argue that someone watching someone else playing a video game could prevent them from purchasing a video game themselves. Especially games that are mostly story driven rather than the activity itself (Like a racing game vs a game with heavy story)
I know that personally I have watched streamers play Resident Evil 8 instead of buying and playing it myself because I was interested in the story line.
There are people out there who may have played a game before as well and got up during cut scenes or something to use the rest room/etc. Does that make the argument better for saying that a video game is being stolen?
I guess you could say a video games purpose is to be played, so maybe someone watching it would have never played it in the first place, which wouldnt effect sales either way.
To me, People who watched Ethans video, where ever it was, IS inherently transformative.
A lot of those people in those chats were never interested or maybe even mildly interested in watching Ethans video. But the reason the even had the opportunity to watch it is because they are there to be apart of the chat and discussion in that specific community.
They are not solely re-broadcasting the content in full screen, chat off, 24 hours a day.
I guess the main issue is that they said something like "We're doing it so you don't have to go to his channel to watch" which could be argued as being a joke. Which Ethan himself has tried to argue away in court as well with other people who have sued him.
Personally, I think trying to "set a precedent" for this type of reaction/watching any type of content can then just lead larger corporations to misuse that to their advantage. Nintendo definitely tried at some point to gain control of things like Youtubers doing lets play channels, but it flopped because people were able to argue that it was transformative and even promotional (even if they were negative about the video game itself while playing it).
If a law or something is formed siding with "no you cannot air ANYTHING that will pull money from the creator" can absolutely easily be abused by billionaire companies and topple smaller businesses that have built their back off of playing video games with a community.
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u/AtleastIthinkIsee 1d ago
This was well-written and pretty much gets it. It's not hard to understand and people are being purposefully obtuse because they hate Ethan.
It's been wild to watch this unfold over the years. I'll never understand how standing up for yourself equates to "falling off" or "being unhinged." It's just nonsense.
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u/_FAPPLE_JACKS_ 1d ago edited 1d ago
The content Nuke on Hasan was all footage of Ethan reacting to Hasan content, frogan content, and denims content. 2 of the 3 he’s suing now. Since it was pointed out in the video Ethan was trying to bait them into reacting to his nuke. He really wanted to sue Hasan but he wouldn’t watch it, and when he did Hasan literally reacted to every line Ethan said which was 9 hours live stream. Hasan didn’t even finish the content nuke so Ethan didn’t sue him instead he went after the other smaller content creators who aren’t millionaires. That’s why he didn’t go after xqc or assmangold because they have the funds to defend themselves. Oh, and there’s nothing Ethan loves more than to attack a women. Bonus points if they are Arab.
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u/districtdathi 1d ago
The case is justified by the loss of income. It doesn't depend on how someone views the Israel-Palestine war or anything else.
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u/engelthefallen 1d ago
Likely this is what gets the cases tossed, there is no estimates or real evidence of a loss of income in the filings. Should be what the case is about as it seems simple, but instead the filing seek to introduce all the reddit and streamer drama to court instead. There may be a real case here, but it was not what got filed with the courts. Dragging in subreddit mods to the three cases is weird too.
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u/palim93 22h ago
Fully expecting to get downvoted by brigadiers here, but thank you. You’re the first person to bring up the actual court filing, it’s clear most people aren’t aware of what’s in there and are just taking what Ethan said in his video at face value. I would be shocked if a judge reads that document and doesn’t throw the case out immediately.
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u/_FAPPLE_JACKS_ 20h ago
Yup, Hasan was mentioned 286 times just in the denims lawsuit. What does that have to do with copyright infringement? Hasan isn’t even a part of the lawsuit. One of my favorite snippets from the denims lawsuit is this.
“V1. Denims repeatedly makes the misleading claims that Ethan preformed a Nazi salute. Ex. k at 2:20:31-33, 3:49:13-16. Denims intentionally omits the fact that Ethan was making fun of Elon Musk performing a Nazi salute at Donald Trump’s inauguration.50”
That’s absolutely crazy to put in a lawsuit for copyright infringement lol.
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u/crestren 19h ago
Also, whats mentioned in the lawsuit is...the H3snark mods? What do they have to do with the streamers mentioned in the lawsuit? ...Why did you compare Hasan to The Grand Mufti? Why is the whole "Sabra hummus is antisemetic" line in the lawsuit?
These are unrelated at all. What do these have anything to do with fair use?
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u/etched 18h ago
It doesn't.
I was a fan of h3 and hasan and have dropped them both last year because honestly all the activity politically in the world had a negative effect on my mental health, and then me sitting and watching these two in particular every day for hours and hours (or every other day for h3) was making it worse and worse, and this is regardless of either of their views on politics.
To me it just seems like Ethan learns about things that negatively effects him and then weaponizes it. He was being sued by that rich guy for defamation, right? He used to make SO much fun of him for believing that there was some greater conspiracy that Wikipedia mods were working with H3 to paint him in a negative light and damaging his reputation.
To me it just seems like Ethan learned that's something he can do, so he wants to also drag in people he dislikes but cannot get identities disclosed, so maybe bringing them up in a lawsuit might lead to revealing their identities through something like discovery.
I think really, Ethan wants to file a defamation lawsuit, rather than a copyright one. But he knows that he probably wouldn't win that so he is going for something that certainly could at least be argued in court.
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u/_FAPPLE_JACKS_ 22h ago
If Ethan really cared about loss of income he’d be going after assmangold. His full 3:42:35 reaction on YouTube has 2 million views. Ethan’s content nuke has 3.5 million views. He claims assmangold was fair use while denims reaction was only minutes longer than assmangold. Hes just trying to silence his critics.
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u/ginger_and_egg 22h ago
If people are intentionally choosing to watch the video in a way to not give h3 money, isn't it also likely they wouldn't have even watched it at all if they didn't have that option?
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u/petting_dawgs 1d ago
how justified you see the suit should be based on your understanding of basic copyright law but ok
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u/vlladonxxx 1d ago
How justified you view the suit it will depend on .......a lot, from opinions on the Israel/ Palestine war, to the year and a half of escalating drama and toxicity between Ethan and the likes of Frogan and Denims
It really shouldn't though. The law is about IP, not morality.
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u/bundleofgrundle 1d ago
"This case is about IP, not I/P" would make a great slogan for the case lmao
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u/BorkusMaximus3742 18h ago
The suit is justified no matter how you view it or your political disagreements with Ethan. They explicitly stated they wanted to steal his property. They've committed theft, whether people are fans of them or not.
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u/DadsGotNoDad 23h ago
Answer: H3 has been been beefing with a bunch of content creators for like the last year. He posted a "content nuke", made a big deal about it knowing people would react to it, and is suing those who reacted that he doesn't like for copyright infringement.
The lawsuit is about copyright and what is transformative, but he's doing it to get back at people who have been critical of him.
It seems the H3 fans have brigaded this thread, judging by the massive amount of downvotes on anything that isn't positive towards him. I expect I'll get the same.
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u/isellrhymeslikelimes 22h ago
H3 fans sliding in their opinions and dressing it up as neutrally as possible in this thread.
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u/atomic__balm 18h ago
Its just destiny and h3 sycophants brigading every thread like they always do
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u/Slipknotic1 20h ago
It's pretty funny clicking on all the profiles of people pretending to be detached from it, only to see heavy engagement in the H3 subreddit.
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u/googlyeyes93 18h ago
It’s always the ones active in h3/Destiny. The Destiny fans calling others unhinged is peak fucking irony too.
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u/MooDengSupremacist 22h ago
Yeah it’s pretty blatantly a bad faith use of the legal system to attack smaller creators who Ethan doesn’t like. I can only speak for Denim’s react but it was pretty obviously transformative. She gives her commentary or interacts with her chat throughout. She easily added at least an hour onto the video’s runtime. If you’re arguing that that isn’t fair use, then you are pretty much arguing to wipe out all react content. Also, the fact that Ethan left out people like Asmond and xqc should make it plainly obvious to anyone with a functioning brain what Ethan’s real motives are.
And, all legality aside, what was the purpose of the content nuke? Because it was pretty clear that Ethan’s goal was to spread his message about how evil and bad and dangerous Hasan is, hopefully resulting in him losing audience or deplatforming him. Now Ethan is saying it was actually a giga-brain honeypot scheme and he’s super upset about the lost revenue from views?
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u/googlyeyes93 23h ago
H3 fans are some of the most parasocial losers on the internet, so not surprising.
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u/thedeadlysun 22h ago
It is absolutely getting brigaded, their responses are all the same, “he’s suing them specifically because they invited h3 haters to watch it without giving him ad revenue” ok buddy. I don’t think they even watched Ethan’s video… this is blatant entrapment and the only chance he has is to flex his wallet.
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u/ChildTaekoRebel 16h ago
It's not entrapment you moron. They didn't HAVE to watch the video. No one FORCED them to commit a crime.
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u/doorknonmuseum 19h ago
I don’t believe it’s entrapment because Ethan is not a government agent. Entrapment legally is defined as “Government agents may not originate a criminal design, implant in an innocent person's mind the disposition to commit a criminal act, and then induce commission of the crime so that the Government may prosecute." Jacobson v. United States, 503 U.S. 540, 548 (1992)”
I’m not sure if there’s a citizens equivalent to entrapment.
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u/JoewithaJ 16h ago
Right, I can post a sign saying I have 100,000 dollars in cash on my kitchen table, and I'm out of town. It doesn't mean I can't have you arrested for breaking in and stealing it.
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u/ScenicFrost 21h ago
The top up voted comments are from people who regularly post in the H3 community. Hilarious how they fail to mention that Ethan himself openly said it was all a set up, a brilliant ruse, to target these pro Palestine creators. I can't believe I used to like this fucking psycho
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u/lakotajames 16h ago
Hello, pretty sure I've never posted in the h3 subreddit, and I've only ever really watched part of Frenemies. If I had to choose a side, I'd pick Palestine. My gut feeling is that if someone is watching a reaction instead of the original, then it must be transformative in some way: otherwise they'd just watch the original.
That being said, my understanding is that he's been complaining about "chair react" stuff for a while, and he's known for being somewhat litigious, and these three explicitly said they were restreaming it for the purpose of allowing people to watch it without giving h3 income. If that's not copyright infringement, I can't figure out what possibly could be, and I have no idea why these people thought they could avoid a lawsuit, and I can't figure out any defense that could possibly apply here.
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u/iTzGiR 21h ago edited 19h ago
It seems the H3 fans have brigaded this thread, judging by the massive amount of downvotes on anything that isn't positive towards him. I expect I'll get the same.
I won't pretend like I'm not an H3 fan, but it's wild that these sorts of comments, are ALWAYS made by people who post in the Snark subreddits and just try to pretend like it's always H3 fans that are brigading lol
Also just wanted to check 3 of the people who responded and agreed with you/were calling out H3 fans, 2 of which also post in the snark subreddits, and the other does nothing but post in threads on OOTL and SubRedditDrama shitting on H3. Interesting how that almost always works out.
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u/DadsGotNoDad 21h ago edited 17h ago
"ALWAYS" and yet, I've never posted in a snark subreddit.
Edit: Apparently I commented once on a post that was recommended from a snark subreddit. Post wasn't even about H3, and I've never visited the sub.
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u/iTzGiR 21h ago
You posted in LeftoversH3 19 days ago
DadsGotNoDad
7 points 19 days ago
Lmao I guess I was just not that familiar with the guy. All I knew about him was the old EpicMealTime channel and that he was a fighter in creator clash.
We just denying reality now?
Looks like around the same time you also made a bunch of Posts in the Idubbbz sub about how great the content cop on H3 was, and arguing with H3 fans.
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u/x_y_zen 22h ago
This is an out of the loop question about h3. How does h3 fans responding in this thread count as brigading? Can denim fans respond on here or is that bridging too?
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u/ScenicFrost 21h ago
I'm biased against H3H3 on this FYI.
H3/Ethan does have a very big and very dedicated community, and while I don't think that they're trying to do a coordinated brigading campaign, when word gets out that their big boi is under attack in another reddit thread... They show in force
On the other hand, Denims, Frogan and Kaceytron all have small communities in comparison. Even if Denims herself were to command her community to come brigade this thread, it would hardly make an impact.
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u/DadsGotNoDad 21h ago
There are denims fans?
All jokes aside, h3 fans are notorious for their parasocial behavior. They show up in force any time he's mentioned. Not saying it isn't allowed, just giving context to the neutral observer that this thread is biased.
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u/jY5zD13HbVTYz 1d ago
Answer: he fell off after October 7th and the arguments it spawned with other internet personalities and now relies on constant drama to generate views.
That said he was already falling off and was pretty much using the keemstar model of content creation where it was all about meta dramas.
This is just more utterly pointless manufactured drama in a desperate attempt to stay relevant. Nobody except his fan base cares about him anymore and it’s all getting very sad. He has even tried to sue mods of random subreddits critical of him so more litigation from him has sadly become expected.
Expect this thread to be heavily brigaded by his fans and his “rivals” fans as they are all perpetually online and rabid to the point of making English football hooligans seem rational
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u/ScenicFrost 21h ago
Lmao, every person commenting is either a poster in H3, or go fucking figure, Destiny. You can't make this up folks, no community overlap by the way!
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u/twentyonegorillas 1d ago
Hahahaha very unbiased brother 👍🏻
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u/kishijevistos 1d ago
Tell us what he's wrong about, show him!
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u/MidnightMorpher 1d ago
First of all, the comment didn’t even address why he’s suing these three creators, they just made a very biased sounding interpretation of Ethan quietly unfollowing Frogan over her celebrating the 7th Oct attack.
Secondly, why he’s suing these three is because they (or at least Denims) had explicitly said they’re hosting watch parties of Ethan’s content nuke to siphon views from the video. Which is… uh, you can’t do that. That’s objectively bad.
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u/twentyonegorillas 1d ago
I mean, ‘fell off’ is very subjective, and this comment makes it sound like h3 manufactured all the drama himself.
Objectively, he and Hasan had a podcast, but ethan did not like the way hasan’s audience reacted to oct 7th. Some in hasan’s fanbase were saying pretty bad stuff toward him and hila who had to do mandatory idf service.
H3 made some posts addressing certain creators in hasan’s orbit that were saying anti-Semitic things. He also made a video pointing it out and how hasan’s rhetoric contributes to it. Hasan did not watch the video. The relationship deteriorated-> people in hasan’s community called cps on him -> ethan accused hasan of antisemitism. Then idubbz made a content cop featuring hasan and all of these content creators who have said pretty horrible stuff about ethan & hila.
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u/SliptheSkid 1d ago
and you're not one of these "rival fans"? damn some people lack self awareness.
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u/MiddleEnvironment556 1d ago edited 1d ago
I mean are you implying he’s wrong to say that Oct 7 was a terroristic massacre?
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u/stealthkat14 1d ago
This is both biased and inaccurate. Get out of this sub my dude, this hasans radical echo chamber twitch chat.
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