
Hitler “Downfall Meme” gets taken down - borism
http://openvideoalliance.org/2010/04/hitler-downfall-meme-gets-dmcad/?l=en
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BigZaphod
I don't think Hitler would take kindly to hearing this news... It's a shame
we'll now not be able to see his reaction.

~~~
timcederman
I think this is the third thread I've run across in the last few minutes where
the top voted comment (by a lot) is some witty rejoinder, rather than an
actual interesting comment or consideration.

Not saying it should/shouldn't be like that, just making an observation (far
be it from me to dictate to the community how it should act), and am surprised
to see it on Hacker News.

~~~
volare
This is a reasonable comment. I'm further surprised to see you being down-
voted.

~~~
chipsy
When I saw this appear in the queue early in the morning, I thought to myself,
"God, I hope this doesn't get front paged, it'll probably be full of Reddit-
style one-liners."

Sigh.

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shalmanese
I always wonder what the hidden backstory is behind these kind of things. Is
it:

a) They were not aware of the downfall stuff on youtube until this point and,
when they discovered it, they were horrified and promptly removed them

b) They were aware from the beginning and hated it from the beginning and it's
taken them 2 or 3 years to work through the process of taking them down

c) They were aware from the beginning and they loved/tolerated it but
something changed their mind recently and now they want them removed

d) It's not actually the film company filing the notices but some elaborate
4chan troll

e) something else

There are no boring hypotheses that I can think of. Every hypothesis has
something weird associated with it so I'm really curious which it ends up
being.

~~~
BoppreH
It seems the videos were removed automatically. Maybe only now Youtube's
software caught that up and the producers forgot to tell that they want to
keep the videos.

But that's just a wild guess on how things work there.

~~~
arantius
[http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en...](http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=83766)

Specifically: What happens when Content ID identifies a match?

If Content ID identifies a match between a user upload and material in the
reference library, it applies the usage policy designated by the content
owner. The usage policy tells the system what to do with the video.

So, I'd highly suspect that just now the content owner set the policy. I can't
believe that the filter is multiple years out of date, and just now catching
up. They wouldn't all be flagged at once, if the processing was that slow.

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rit
Isn't today his birthday? (Random factoid lodged in my brain)

~~~
fbu
20 April 1889

Well done, Sir !

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pavel_lishin
Odd. I remember reading that the director was impressed with what people ended
up making of his work, and laughed about it.

~~~
noonespecial
The director probably has about as much to say about the use of the end
product as the janitor. Witness OK Go.

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protomyth
Wonder how many people bought the actual DVD because of all those videos?

~~~
splat
It's always seemed odd to me when the owners of the media from which some
internet meme is based destroy the videos that made them popular in the first
place, given that it would be completely unknown without the meme. The
artist's biggest enemy is not piracy but obscurity.

~~~
LiveTheDream
_The artist's biggest enemy is not piracy but obscurity._

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slillibri
This is actually pretty sad, since the director of "Downfall" approves of the
usage.
[http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/01/the_director_of...](http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/01/the_director_of_downfall_on_al.html)

------
dacort
Wonder how quickly somebody is going to create one about the downfall of the
downfall meme...

~~~
BoppreH
Bam. It's already here. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fAQKa8rU_4>

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KirinDave
Is the article trying to suggest this is fair use under parody, at the end?

Seems like it wasn't really qualifying. Taking 5 minutes wholesale out of a
movie and overlaying text is a tough sell for "parody", which typically
involves shorter duration.

I hope someone challenges this ruling. It'd be interesting to see if we can
expand what parody is.

~~~
smallblacksun
Artists like Weird Al use entire songs for parody, so I don't think a 5 minute
clip would be too long.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Artists like Weird Al get permission from the original artists, they also
don't use any original material, typically. For what it's worth.

~~~
ywgdana
Although they aren't legally required to. Al does it as a courtesy. He
specifically gets permission from the artist now, because when he did Amish
Paradise he'd received an okay from Coolio's label, but later learned Coolio
himself was upset about the parody.

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CrazedGeek
Just in case you haven't seen one of these, this one's a decent example:
[http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththegl...](http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththeglasses/sketches/16796-hitler-
spoof)

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metamemetics
There are some copies of the popular ones with less views still up. This was
the best one IMO: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUjaW4ZtdN0>

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pw0ncakes
Das ist ein nukular buttfail.

The "meme" is a major advertisement for the film, and free for them. I know a
lot of people who have rented or seen _Der Untergang_ whose first exposure to
the film's existence was the Hitler spoofs.

It's not my fault that the media corporations can't figure out a way to make
money off the new distribution mechanisms.

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joshu
So this is basically the DMCA protecting us from an unfunny copypasta meme?
Awesome.

