What Kind of Totalitarian A–hole Would Object to ‘Downfall’ YouTube Parodies?

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If you guessed “Hitler,” you’re a winner:

Tim Cavanaugh at Reason‘s Hit & Run:

The thousand-year reich of Downfall parodies has ended in ruins. Constantin Films, the German producer of the 2004 film Der Untergang, has compelled YouTube to start taking down the popular Hitler-rants-about-funny-thing-X clips. . . .
The 4.3 million-view original, in which Hitler gets banned from Xbox Live, has been replaced by the notice: “This video contains content from Constantin Film, who has blocked it on copyright grounds.” A quick search of YouTube shows that many others have vanished. . . .
The legal merits of Constantin’s argument are clear: They do not exist. Downfall parodies take less than four minutes of a 156-minute film . . .
Not that that will matter. The issue is YouTube’s kneejerk takedowns. The site is free to do what it likes . . . it’s not like there’s some inalienable right to run your content there. Still, the use of immediate takedowns is a blunt instrument that YouTube and its owner Google will, I hope, learn to refine in the future.

YouTube: Obeying Der Fuhrer Since 2010

(Hat-tips: Instapundit and Memeorandum.)

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12 comments

  9. It really is silly. Under DMCA the parodies are legal and Google is being very stupid on this. I’m sure a number of other sites would be glad to host the clips and get the traffic.

  10. It really is silly. Under DMCA the parodies are legal and Google is being very stupid on this. I’m sure a number of other sites would be glad to host the clips and get the traffic.

  11. Love the juxtaposition of Stalin and Stallman. If you don’t get the humor, don’t worry — it’s very much an inside baseball thing for open source software people.

  12. Love the juxtaposition of Stalin and Stallman. If you don’t get the humor, don’t worry — it’s very much an inside baseball thing for open source software people.

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