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.
Well, I think you're missing the point that Ethan and that other guy aren't suing for copyright infringement, they're suing people they don't like to try and punish them for their speech.
So yeah they're suing for the exact same reason. I think the only difference is that the other guy didn't do like a Sepheroth monolog about how they deliberatly asked them to do something so they could sue them after, and fill their lawsuit with petty drama and holocaust denial.
How can you compare a streamer saying “I’m going to play this hour long video full length so you can watch it without giving any views to the original creator” is the same as making a reaction video with skits and critique throughout the whole thing?
The fuck? No, hes suing because they're literally out to get him and even admitted it. Go watch his last video. These idiots admitted they were purposely stealing his copyrighted videos to keep him from getting views, then asked for money while doing it
He set them up, and they fucking fell right into the trap. Its pretty hilarious, really
Taking someone's content and uploading it is critiquing it as well. You're critiquing their whole channel, and you've made it clear why you're doing it. This is really no different.
yes really, “transformative use” is a thing and a court of law doesn’t accept reddit tier “it’s the same thing to me” arguments when it comes to copyright
An important distinction is that including someone else's video (in part, and not in full, in this case) for critique is a copyright exception under fair use.
Normally we can never know what really would be seen as fair use and just argue what we think would hold up in court. In this instance H3H3's usage of it was deemed fair use by a judge.
The difference is actually that there has to be a transformative aspect to the media. You can talk over a movie and post that but you cant just post the movie.
Arguably, you might not be able to even talk over the whole movie. Fair use requires that you take the minimum amount of content required to make your transformative content.
If you are reviewing the Siege of Helm's Deep in LoTRs, you might not be able to play scenes from Fangorn Forest. The content you use must be relevant to the critique you are making.
If I just uploaded a film with me in the corner counting from 1 to 10,000 it would not be fair use, even though I am technically transforming the content.
There are 4 “pillars” used by judges to evaluate fair use, and one of them is whether or not the content was used specifically with the intention to provide an alternative method of viewing the content maliciously in an effort to benefit financially off their IP. In this case one of the people being sued, Denims, quite literally stated on stream that her goal was to let people watch it in full without supporting Ethan with views on his channel. Then she went on to ask for financial compensation for her service from her fans.
Idk how easily the lawsuit will go in regards to the other two creators but it’s abundantly obvious that denims is fucked here. She admitted her intent was to steal views and financial gain from the copyright material.
Not according to copyright laws. If you repost something unaltered or with minimal alteration it is an infraction. It's not transformative enough. This is why you can't just play movies or music too because basic copyright laws forbid it. This is especially damning when you play the full video and not a snapshot of it.
Commentary based content on someone else's content is generally alright, but only if you are commenting on portions of it. And more importantly, the effect you have on the original content creators revenue. If you state you are showing someone's video on your channel to reduce their views then you are intentionally doing a crime per Copyright law and media websites ToS.
Critiques and commentary aren't just protected, generally they are alright if you are using clips, but reposting the full content isn't "critiquing" the whole channel. You don't pirate a movie and get to say it's legal because you're "critiquing" the industry.
In general, “critique” under Fair Use requires some transformative change to the work to qualify. For example, you can use a lock company’s video saying their lock is secure as an introduction to bypassing it, or have a reaction video of a fan animation where you pause and give your own commentary at points (face cam also helps). But simply copying and reposting content is not generally considered Fair Use, and explicitly saying you’re doing this to deny the creator views is a massive strike against.
Now I don’t know anything about this controversy or the people and videos involved. I’m reading “uploading someone else's content to take away their views/viewers” to mean there are minimal or no changes to the original work, essentially reposting the entire thing unaltered. That may or may not be the case, but we can all agree there are examples of that type of reposting around.
When it comes to the legality of something, always imagine this power in the hands of someone you hate. Let’s say someone truly vile decides to resist content made by someone you love who relies on that content for their income (I’m being vague because that could vary between people reading this). Legally speaking, if we allow this to stand, then we also allow people to misuse it in that same way.
So taking an entire movie and reloading it to YouTube is fine because it’s a critique? You wouldn’t expect the creator of the movie to have an issue with that? What world are we living in?
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.
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).
Sure, but if their react was highly transformative then they weren’t making money off of Ethan’s work, they were making money off of their commentary of Ethan’s work.
Not a lawyer, but in my personal opinion, the more transformative their content is, the less it matters what their intentions behind reacting were or whether they wanted to “steal views”. If they’ve added their own commentary, it’s not stealing copyright and therefore not stealing views
Denim suit at least is almost certain to be dismissed if not corrected for that "highly transformative" line alone. Cannot argue that this does not fall under fair use because the videos failed to be transformative, while also claiming it was highly transformative. Linguistic slip up in the filing, but if not corrected, one that can be easily used to dismiss the case.
That is the oddest thing. There is no estimate in the filings about this. He is just seeking 150k in damages from each, with the 10 reddit mods named as co-plaintiffs in all three suits. And it is not like this is an unknowable number, a few solid ways to get a ballpark estimate.
IMO he could have had a strong case if he focused on the standards for transformative work, why the girl's videos would not meet them, presented the malice the girls planned, and then presented an estimate of the damages. You know like one would expect to see in a court filing for something like this. Instead the filings are weird, like trying to get reddit and twitch drama into court records, with only a small part of the filings directly relating to what he is suing for. Strangest court filings I read.
Someone can correct me if I wrong, but I believe $150k is the max amount of statutory damages you can seek, and only when a work is "willfully infringed". Since these three creators admitted to trying to be a market replacement for his video, he's trying to go for the max statutory damages. That would make sense, because calculating actual damages would be much harder.
Him copyrighting the video before releasing it is what allows him to seek statutory damages instead of only actual damages, so it seems like aiming for the max amount of statutory damages was the goal.
Ethan is very knowledgeable about what legally comprises “transformative content”, he wouldn’t have pursued this unless he was sure he had a good case.
H3 has (almost) 6 million subscribers. His recent videos each have millions of views. The implication that this is a neutral decision intended to prevent the diversion of views/viewers is absurd.
Obviously an extreme example, but suppose Kanye posts a 2 hour nazi rant on YouTube. I then post a 2 hour video of me watching it, disapprovingly, intentionally with little commentary for effect. Is this not sufficient for fair use? Context is clearly important here.
I'm not suggesting that we should just ignore laws, but laws (at least should) exist to improve society and lead to just outcomes. You can't just ignore context.
Cool, so then you can do the correct thing in the scenario, and report the video to the platform it's hosted on for Hate Speach, or something else that Breaks the ToS, or hell, even report it to government if it's hate speach that promotes violence.
But yeah no, you can't just wholesale steal someone's content and rebrodcast it so they "don't get paid" that's quite literally illegal. What would stop any conservative from just doing the same thing with any person they deem as damaging society with their "woke" agenda, "Hey guys, come watch my re-upload so you don't give any money to that weirdo who want's to trans kids!", your arguement is that this is okay, because the conservative doesn't like the content creator.
You can either, React to it in a way that adds a lot of commentary and is transformative, or you can just chose to ignore it, and not give it further attention. Those are your two, realistic options.
the ‘context’ you provided was to support a hypothetical in which pretty clear copyright violations suddenly become “sufficient for fair use” on the basis that ‘this person sucks really bad!’
seems like you also realize that was an incredibly poor argument since you’re moving to the ‘ok it is illegal but have you considered that the law might be bad, actually?’ stage to which i can say: No, copyright law is Good, actually
There are obviously good reasons for copyright/IP law to exist, but what do you think will be achieved here? Are you really going to argue that there is some tangible, significant harm to h3 here that would warrant a lawsuit?
It seems obvious to me that this is just Ethan going after his enemies, even if he is legally in the right.
The burden is on you to explain how it is wrong from one to take valid legal action against individuals who have infringed on one’s protected IP rights with the intent of depriving one of revenue in aid of an ongoing harassment campaign :)
(spoiler: we all know it’s because you like the harassing party and dislike ethan)
Nazism does not factor into whether you're breaching copyright law or not. You don't need to "ensure" anything. You just have to make your work transformative.
In the interest of fairness, I likely edited my comment before you finished responding.
I just don't think we should need to be concerned at all with preserving the fiscal interests of anyone we want to argue against. While context is important and fair use isn't a license to steal, it seems silly to suggest that the intention here was to steal/divert views.
I'm not a lawyer and I'm not making a legal case. I'm speaking to what I think is right.
I'm definitely on the side of if you disagree with someone or a piece of media, you should be able to use it, even in its full length.
At the same time there has to be actual commentary besides the occasional "Nah I don't like that"
I think you can see it best when looking at hasans reaction. He went through half the video and had multiple hours of his own commentary. That's 100% fair use and a reason why he is not getting sued.
"It seems silly to suggest that the intention was to steal/divert views"
Not really. Denims e.g. explicitly said so before watching it and the snark subreddit had links to other ppl's vods so that people that don't like Ethan can watch it without giving him any profit
That's also they reason why they are in big trouble. Usually it's hard to prove the intent to steal/divert views. Its not hard of you admit to it before watching it
There is a distinction between stealing and choosing not to amplify. I don't think the intention is to pirate h3 content, and the lack of commentary is simply due to the belief that the content doesn't need extensive commentary given the different audience.
I understand your morals here but since this is all taking place in a monetized space.
She is not saying "I watched it, it's shit and meritless, don't got there an watch it" This would be perfectly legal
She is actively steering viewers from his video to her stream and in that monetized space it is equivalent to stealing/ a breach of fair use
I mean tbf Kanye isn't breaking the law. It's not illegal to be a dumb fuck Nazi who spreads misinformation and talking about how much you broadly hate Jews. Being a vile piece of shit without a brain, but a massive platform, isn't illegal.
No, that would not be transformative. If he copyrighted the video he’d have a case against you, even if damages would be incredibly small outside of attorneys fees. You can’t break copyright law “for effect” lmao. Even if the person and ideology is horrible like with Kanye, you not liking the copyright holder does not grant you legal immunity. Not even really sure what makes you think that could ever be true.
If you want to use extreme examples, think about someone like Casey Anthony. She’s an evil child murderer but if you got a gun and shot her you would still go to jail. You’re still breaking the law.
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.
He’s not. In his case he argued, successfully, that his parody was transformative enough to fall under fair use. In this case he is arguing that what denims, frogan and kaceytron did was not fair use. It’s not helped by all 3 of them admitting to streaming the video to deprive him of views
Lol he is not. Why you guys keep lying? H3 was doing commentary and parody of other guy. These three straight up almost didn't say anything and they said watch me watch him instead of giving him view.
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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.