YouTube Atheists Sue Christian Film Company Over Multiple Frivolous DMCA Complaints
August 19, 2016
by Hemant Mehta
Hugo and Jake from The Bible Reloaded show announced yesterday that they were filing a lawsuit against the Christiano Film Group (a production company run by — wait for it — two Christian guys who make Christian films).
Here’s the gist of what happened: The atheists frequently review movies on their channel, including those by CFG. In several cases, even when the atheists only showed stills from the movie or used a bit of audio (even though short video clips would have been perfectly legal under fair use law), the CFG folks filed DMCA requests — copyright claims, basically — forcing the videos to come down from YouTube.
It’s the blogging equivalent of journalists coming after you because you used blockquotes to cite short passages from their articles. As long as you’re not republishing most of the content on your own site, it’s usually fine. The whole online ecosystem relies on people quoting others, then offering additional commentary. As long as you give proper credit and don’t plagiarize, you’re in good shape.
Three DMCA strikes on YouTube can lead to your whole channel (and every video you’ve ever uploaded) coming down and you being banned from the website… which, if you’re popular enough, could also mark the end of your livelihood.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2016/08/19/youtube-atheists-sue-christian-film-company-over-multiple-frivolous-dmca-complaints/