

First they came for Hitler...  Youtube takes down Hitler parodies - te_platt
http://reason.com/blog/2010/04/21/first-they-came-for-hitler

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jacquesm
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. The marketing department of that
studio should collectively fire themselves for gross incompetence, it is every
good marketeers wet dream to have a scene from their movies go viral like
that.

Millions of people that would have never even heard of the movie must have
gotten interested in it simply because of the parodies.

Other companies pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to _try_ to get something
like this going.

~~~
city41
I certainly gained interest in the movie. However, I still haven't seen it,
and now my desire to has dropped right back down. Dumb studio :-/

~~~
jacquesm
The movie is actually very much worth watching, it does a great job of showing
'executive isolation' at work. Less and less realistic information reaches the
high command and the bunker scene is where it all comes crashing down, there
is no longer any way to deny reality.

Wannabe CEOs would do very well to watch it, it's a pretty good lesson in what
happens when you hire people that say 'yes' to you all the time and you fail
to notice they're no longer giving you the cold hard facts.

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y0ghur7_xxx
Here is Hitlers reaction :)

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBO5dh9qrIQ>

~~~
Raphael_Amiard
> Cette vidéo n'est pas disponible dans votre pays en raison du non-respect
> des conditions d'utilisation.

= This video is not available in your country due to the terms of use.

I'm unhappy now

~~~
ars
For you: <http://rapidshare.com/files/379042067/kBO5dh9qrIQ.flv.html>

(PS. Please don't download it unless you don't have another way to get it.
rapidshare has a 10 download limit.)

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commieneko
The fact that the _Downfall_ producers didn't buy Youtube ads to pop up when
the parodies were played just shows how stupid they are. I mean really! How
else is a movie about Hitler, in German (!), going to get worldwide mindshare?
Just goes to show all the luddite media knuckleheads aren't in Hollywood...

~~~
othello
Why is it so surprising that a German movie on the last days of a German
historical figure be shot in German ?

A majority of the worldwide mindshare you are referring to do not think in
English. Yet they do watch Hollywood movies in English...with _subtitles_.

~~~
poikjhgvfgbnm
No it's surprising that it has international mindshare. .

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michael_nielsen
This is astonishing. The value of those parodies as advertising for the film
must be enormous. Whatever one might think of the parodies, they certainly
whet my appetite for seeing the movie.

~~~
jacquesm
And besides you untold others. Simply incredible.

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jacquesm
I emailed Constantin (the movies producers) to ask them about this, clearly
they must be aware of it and must be aware of the enormous 'hit' they scored
with the parodies being a once-in-a-lifetime marketing gift.

I'm curious what their reasons are for this, even if it is automated they must
have been aware of the effect the scene 'claim' would have on the parodies.

If I get a response I'll follow up.

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tensafefrogs
This blog post is very misinformed. "YouTube" did not take down the videos.
The copyright owner requested that they be removed.

The blog post seems to think that YouTube/Google should fight for the people
who created/uploaded these parodies, but that's not YouTube's place.

If the owner/uploader of a parody wants to contest the takedown, they can do
so (it's pretty easy to contest it if one of your videos is taken down due to
this). The real problem is the copyright law is fuzzy when it comes to "fair
use" and many people aren't willing to risk an expensive lawsuit just to keep
a video on YouTube.

So send an angry letter to your congressman, not YouTube.

~~~
jacquesm
I don't have a congressman. It's all too easy to think that this is an
American thing, but Youtube is a worldwide site, and hundreds of millions of
people are not in a position to do anything about this.

edit: parodies are legally protected and if youtube is willing to profit of
these things they should be willing to defend them.

If the removal was automated (which is definitely a possibility) then youtube
should do a better job because clearly going by sound track or a significant
part of the image alone is going to remove all kinds of stuff that have a
legal status that is different than an actual copy.

~~~
poikjhgvfgbnm
And this would be protected if it was a parody of Downfall - what isn't
protected is using a third party's work to parody something.

It's like the difference between a protest at city hall and a protest at the
car dealer because they wont drive you to city hall.

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anigbrowl
Although I like some of these parodies, the self-pitying use of the Niemoller
poem is really tasteless.

I can see the parodic value because we've all had the experience of being
unreasonably angry at having our plans thwarted (and doing a downfall parody
about the takedown itself is particularly witty). But expressing
disappointment by parodying a lamentation about the holocaust....not funny.
YMMV obviously.

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hugh3
Whether the parody defence applies here or not seems to me in my non-expert
opinion to be an iffy issue, especially as it may apply in some jurisdictions
but not others. There's certainly a case to be made, but why should youtube
foot the bill for making it?

Anyone who is really upset about this and is sure that the parody defence will
work is free to host their own Hitler parody and try to get themselves sued by
the producers. I might even kick in ten bucks to your legal budget.

Of course the other issue here is less to do with parody and more to do with
the Germans' legendary touchiness on the subject of Hitler. I remember when
that film first came out there was some controversy about whether it was
excessively "humanising" Hitler (as if Hitler were something other than
human).

~~~
jacquesm
> There's certainly a case to be made, but why should youtube foot the bill
> for making it?

Because they made good money of it?

~~~
hugh3
I'm guessing that whatever money gets dragged in by the ad clicks on Downfall
parodies it isn't nearly enough to pay for a major copyright case.

~~~
jacquesm
But it's not just the downfall parodies, it's _all_ parodies they'd be making
a stand for.

Youtube should be willing to make a stand on this, clearly these have cultural
value, and to lose them is a real pity.

~~~
hugh3
Not really, it's a small subset of parodies. The parody defence is well
enshrined in law in most justisdictions but it's a genuine legal question
whether it applies in this case. IANAL but this parody is stretching the
definition since:

a) It uses a not-insignificant slice of the original film (an entire scene,
four minutes long iirc)

b) It changes nothing from the original except to add some subtitles. (Note
that this means that someone who spoke German but not English would not be
able to distinguish between this scene and an English-subtitled version of the
original film)

c) Possibly the kicker: the target of the parody is _not_ the film being
copied. People making these videos aren't aiming to make fun of _Der
Untergang_ (which many of them have probably never seen), they're aiming to
make fun of Xbox Live, or Apple, or Star Trek, or whatever. Wikipedia on
"Parody" says:

 _"The Supreme Court of the United States stated that parody "is the use of
some elements of a prior author's composition to create a new one that, at
least in part, comments on that author's works.""_

so you'd have to argue that the edits were intended as a commentary on _Der
Untergang_ , which seems iffy to me.

~~~
tolmasky
Regarding point "b)", I think you made your own point against yourself
already: for _most_ people, the scene is 100% different since they don't
understand German. If I were to make a parody where I changed the words, I
don't think it would be a valid argument to say "but for deaf people the scene
is exactly the same!". Similarly, keeping the music and doing drastic changes
to the visual you could argue "but to blind people its exactly the same!".

~~~
hugh3
For _most_ people the scene is the same since they don't understand German
_or_ English.

In any case my point about German speakers was subsidiary to my actual point:
it's quite a small change to the original.

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asimjalis
I love the it-was-an-automated-process defense. Something happened but I guess
no one responsible for it because it was an automatic process. It's the
contemporary version of the Nuremburg defense.

~~~
poikjhgvfgbnm
Zer computers ver only following orderz.

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RandolphCarter
This title is offensive to the millions of people who died defeating that
sonofabitch. The line "First they came for..." is about the need to defend
those who cannot defend themselves because one day oneself might need to be
defended. Referencing this line to refer to the most evil individual in human
history is beneath contempt. I would think HN would want to be a little more
aware of the implications of its headlines.

~~~
nandemo
The title is genius. In case you didn't notice it means "First they came for
[the people making videos parodying a movie about] Hitler...". But that
wouldn't be as funny.

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Tautology
THEY CAME FIRST for the copyrighted Youtube videos, and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a fan of lame soundtrack videos.

THEN THEY CAME for the Youtube old layout, and I didn't speak up because I
kinda like the new layout.

THEN THEY CAME for my Hitler parody videos and by that time no one was left to
speak up.

