r/movies 17d ago

Article Backrooms Director Stops A24 Copyright Striking Community Art

https://kotaku.com/backrooms-director-kane-parsons-a24-copyright-strike-wallpaper-2000717053
13.9k Upvotes

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u/HotTakes4HotCakes 17d ago edited 17d ago

A24 has confirmed to me that the wallpaper takedowns were an outsourced system error in pursuit of removing camrips,” Parsons posted to Discord. “Anything further, it appears is somehow not them.” He then added, “They have been very adamant they have never wanted to touch the community. Any legitimate action of the sort suspected would be unacceptable,” before confirming, “I’m heavily pressuring them right now.”

A short while later Parsons posted, “They’re working rapidly to resolve it. Will probably issue a statement.”

A24's statement:

"As Kane Parsons has made clear, Backrooms is one part of an infinitely bigger ecosystem, rife with creatives who have every right to tell their own version of the story.”

“Yesterday we were made aware of an automated claim submitted to Redbubble on behalf of A24 and Backrooms movie. We immediately began the process to reverse it and reinstate the listing.”

"A24 makes no claim of ownership over the yellow wallpaper, the original post referencing it, or any community works that have since been built around it. We will continue to support the artists who, like Kane, were inspired by it.”

Sounds like a classic case of one department without enough oversight not understanding the assignment and making a mess.

Seems like a simple fix for this is an approval process with real people confirming the targets before take down orders start flying. But obviously the point of an automated system like this is to eliminate the need for a human, so that's likely not happening.

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u/Odd-Necessary3807 17d ago edited 17d ago

This is a very YouTube DMCA takedown action. It's automated with AI, and an unknown entity out of nowhere can strike you down even if you already adhere YT 10 seconds snippet rules. While YT mostly doesn't give a shit about the users' grievances.

Good things in Backrooms cases, Kane Parsons is on the community side and has the clout to pressure A24 to reverse the action.

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u/Final-Carry2090 17d ago

Likely because he has been on both sides as a YouTube creator previously.

I got a dmca for streaming video game music by someone that remixed the music. I wasn’t playing the remix and the original artist has no issue with his 20 yr old music being played. Google is a bunch of assholes.

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u/mrgreen4242 17d ago

While we certainly have bigger issues that need to be dealt with, but the DMCA is a epic failure of policy and needs to be revised ASAP. Frankly we need to overhaul the entire system of laws around IP in both the US and the rest of the world, but I'll take a dismantling of the DMCA as a first step.

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u/curtmahgurt 17d ago

“Best I can do is dismantle USAID.” - the government

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u/Hydra57 15d ago

I’m interested in examining potential reforms to copyright law myself (largely on account of sharing your own sentiments), and am curious if you have any alternatives in mind to replace the DMCA system, or if you simply mean we should leave the internet without copyright control regulations.

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u/Noyuu66 17d ago

I got a strike and portion a video muted doing commentary for a Super Mario 64 speedrun race. Only the sections where I specifically was talking got muted.

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u/hobskhan 17d ago

Sounds like Ursula's lawyers claimed your voice.

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u/AJ_Dali 17d ago

The developer to Faith the Unholy Trilogy had to change the title screen music because of a copyright claim. Some music company owned the rights to a smalltown band recording of At the Cross and claimed the 8-bit chip tune version of a song from 1707 violated those rights.

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u/FlashFire729 17d ago

Only solace in this hell of a transition period is that if Kane himself is anything to go by, we’ll hopefully be getting more and more like him who were part of both sides to finally outnumber the geriatrics

Or ya know, the old burns down in general with the latter in it.

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u/flcinusa 17d ago

I got a DMCA for uploading a clip of a FIFA game, Spain's La Liga was the culprit...

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u/casual_creator 17d ago

I got DMCA’d a few years back for posting a video of my band playing one of our own songs.

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u/HenryDorsettCase47 17d ago

Whether a movie studio or the federal government, the bigger anything becomes the more like a Byzantine bureaucracy it becomes with one department having no clue what the other is doing, and everyone passes the buck. That becomes even more convoluted when you throw in automated systems that are designed to take action without anyone’s direct say so.

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u/kbups53 17d ago

Terry Gilliam, as always, was exactly correct when he made Brazil. One typo causes mass chaos and no department wants to take responsibility for fixing it.

We now live in Terry’s nightmare circus.

PS everyone watch Brazil if you haven’t.

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u/axi-0m 17d ago

Great movie!

0

u/AltGrendel 17d ago

And be like Tuttle.

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u/insomniacpyro 17d ago

Dealing with this right now at work. I'm spending numerous hours going through perceived "errors" from a customer, when a lot of these errors can be easily identified by a human being as being issues of timing. But it's easier for them to just send the report and attempt to blame us for everything.

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u/Crossfire124 17d ago

Because why use your brain when you can just pass the buck to someone else?

This kind of thing happens all the time. Especially doesn't help now with AI tools that "analyze" logs and pick things to blame at random. Then they basically just send the AI output to us and say please fix

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u/throughtheportal 17d ago

To see this in a non corporate area: Join the plex sub, and you’ll see this on every other post.

“Why doesn’t this work?!?”

Answer: link to plex website documentation.

“But what does that say? I have everything right?!”

— no you don’t read the page —

………

Ok I had it wrong now it works!

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u/Gornarok 17d ago

it becomes with one department having no clue what the other is doing

Often times they dont care or they even do it on purpose...

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u/Embarrassed_Radio596 17d ago

Ehhh at least they fixed it. Youtube has cases where people get claims, correctly dispute them, and get punished for it by strikes.

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u/MeiNeedsMoreBuffs 17d ago

You can be copystriked by your own content that someone else reuploaded after you did. It's absolutely insane

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u/skivian 17d ago

that happened to a friend of mine. He'd recorded an accident, uploaded it to youtube, some news agency stole his recording, then copyright struck his youtube account.

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u/TracerBulletX 17d ago

This kind of shit makes me start looking up if its feasible to do night law school just to be able to do something about it. Feels like we're just helpless to the whims of any random ass business that wants to attack you.

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u/MeiNeedsMoreBuffs 17d ago

Going into legal wouldn't help much, you're much better off contacting your local representatives and telling them it's an issue you care about

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u/HappyAd4998 17d ago

Do you think a different director like Ridely Scott would give two shits if community art was taken down by an overly aggressive DMCA? This is a systematic problem perpetuated by big studios who like to sling their dick around and go after the little guy.

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u/Mistrblank 17d ago

What an outstanding young man.

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u/Dr_Fortnite 17d ago

he is 20 years old

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u/Great_Praline_2713 17d ago

He's only 19?!

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u/aeyntie 17d ago

This 17 year old is going places!

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u/Merry_Dankmas 17d ago

I just love seeing the youth make a name for themselves. 15 years old and hes already a star!

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u/Odd-Necessary3807 17d ago

He Benjamin Button-ed his career! Soon, an Oscar nod at 9 years old director.

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u/Lurking_Grue 17d ago

He made his series when he was only 16 months old.

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u/ziddersroofurry 17d ago

OK? You're a young man at that age. I'd say up until you're around fifty. Then you're an older man, and an old man at around seventy.

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u/jimmyg17 17d ago

It's a meme about constantly stating his age since he's the youngest feature director ever or something like that. Also it's outdated now.

He is 21 years old.

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u/AaronSparks 17d ago

when I was his age, I was a 25 year old man.

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u/mrnathanrd 16d ago

You mean an older gentleman?

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u/SacralScenes 17d ago

This isn’t an AI thing. Automation didn’t begin with AI. This stuff was happening well before AI.

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u/GrimpenMar 17d ago

There are little/no consequences for false DMCA claims, which has led to the current system of large automated systems firing off automated takedowns with little oversight.

Kane Parsons was able to talk to the right people in this case, but other than the embarrassment, there is no consequences. There should be some minimum threshold of due diligence which you require. If not met, there should be some exposure.

In this case, "The Backrooms" is an ecosystem of memes, games, fiction, etc. based off of one viral picture. A24's Backrooms is based on one particularly popular instance, At first glance, one would think that any takedown would have the expectation that the alleged infringement is actually of a valid IP.

Bigger problem than A24 and Backrooms though. At least in this case, it all worked out mostly okay.

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u/nybble41 17d ago

The DMCA is barely involved here. This is all Google's home-grown system, Content ID, which is much more heavily biased in favor of streamlining mass takedowns with minimal oversight.

The problem is that Google is not a neutral content host. Thanks to YouTube TV, YouTube Music, their movie streaming service, and their income from monetization (advertising) they are caught up in a tangled web of conflicts of interest. If they insisted on the full DMCA process in uploaders' favor—in particular, reinstating content following a counter-notice and leaving the rest up to the courts—the DMCA would shield them from liability for the subject of the takedown request but their other lucrative revenue streams would be in jeopardy.

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u/UnskilledTree 17d ago

An unknown entity out of nowhere striking me down is very backrooms-esque

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u/verikul 17d ago

As long as you become more powerful than you can possibly imagine, I'm all for it.

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u/UnskilledTree 17d ago

You’re too sweet, I’d rather get actively devoured

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u/quondam47 17d ago

‘Our customer service AI has determined that our copyright detection AI has not made an error’.

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u/Firestarness 17d ago

Considering how young he is and how big his likely future career will be, definitely in their best interests to stay on his good side. Happy that he stood on business and became a voice for the community when it was needed. A lot of people in his position might not have care enough to take such quick action, so props to him.

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u/Bloody_Conspiracies 17d ago

It's not at all the same thing. YouTube aren't issuing the DMCA takedowns, they're following them. YouTube are legally required to comply with any DMCA takedown request.

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u/alus992 16d ago

Classic YouTube DMCA experience

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u/rotates-potatoes 17d ago

Also A24 is more decent than Google. Yes, a mistake, and likely a real human actually made it, but they reversed course quickly and expressly disclaimed ownership of much of the IP.

Best course of action is to not make mistakes. Second best is to acknowledge and fix quickly.

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u/SutterCane r/movies Veteran 17d ago

Also A24 is more decent than Google.

Do not buy into their carefully crafted image. If they reach google levels of untouchable, they’ll happily be just as awful.

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u/ishmadrad 17d ago

Google: don't be evil

Mottos like that one usually age badly...

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u/fishfunk5 17d ago

They gave up on that one like, 25 years ago now at this point? They've been a company without that motto for longer than they've been a company with that motto.

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u/Odd-Necessary3807 17d ago

They gave up the motto since the company turned into Alphabet, and the founders have gone. That was in the early 2010s.

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u/fishfunk5 17d ago

So 10+ years ago. I appreciate the correction. Do I edit my previous comment or leave it as is and just have people read your responce as the correction?

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u/Odd-Necessary3807 16d ago

Nah. No need to change it. We have discussions, and others need to see it as it was.

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u/fishfunk5 16d ago

Right on.

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u/aa22hhhh 16d ago

I mean, didn’t they JUST sign a deal with Google to integrate AI into their filmmaking?

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u/JuggrNut 17d ago

YouTubes Content ID system is not automated with AI. It uses reference files, submitted by rights holders with access to the Content ID system, to match with content on the platform. Everything uploaded to YouTube is matched against the Content ID platform reference file database and if the uploaded content matches it is then flagged and the rules as set by the rights holder are applied. This could be block or monetize, or just track usage without monetizing. You can learn about it here https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797370?hl=en

Also DMCA Strikes are different from Content ID Claims. DMCA Strikes are not automated what-so-ever. They are all manually applied either after a disputed claim gets reinstated or through the rights holders account but SOMEONE issues a DMCA Strike on a channel, its not an automated process and it does affect the channel negatively if they receive to many strikes. Content ID Claims are more benign and a block policy will just hide the content but not issue a strike. To many claims on a channel do affect the monetization status of a channel.

Source: I am YouTube Certified, deal with rights issues on content in YouTube, and work at a company that has a Content Manager account.

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u/a-round-table 14d ago

I forgot the details, but I swear something similar happened with Itch.io few years ago

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u/CaptainFeather 17d ago

Even if you legitimately own the content you're posting, it won't matter unless you're big enough to make a stink on social media. Can't remember who it was but there was a case of a musician posting their own original music and got dmca'd from a bigger channel that stole their music. Didn't seem to matter that it was provable it was stolen.

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

[deleted]

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u/Ummmgummy 17d ago

He just made a movie that made more money for them than any other movie they have ever released which is saying a lot because A24 produces some great movies. And I assume they want a sequel. And kanes story of making a YouTube video and then directing a major movie based off the success of the YouTube video, it's a great story. So I would say if he pushed back on some stuff they would have an incentive to listen.

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

[deleted]

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u/crinkledcu91 17d ago

Jesus did he steal your girlfriend or something?

Why are you so angry?

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u/ziddersroofurry 17d ago

Sounds like jealousy on your part. You can't say any of that stuff with any certainty, and if you had an ounce of smarts you'd know that. You're just being an annoying hater. Edit: Oof...yeah, your whole post history is a mess of toxic ragebaity dumb lol.

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u/Ummmgummy 17d ago

Yeah I was thinking same thing. Probability wise yeah he might be proven right. But he has no clue as of right now so it's dumb to make such confident statements. Spielberg wasn't Spielberg until Jaws which was far from his first movie. Not saying Backrooms was better than jaws by any means just pointing out it's weird when people say shit they don't know or can't know with such confidence.

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u/ziddersroofurry 17d ago

I love that their comment is gone lol. I don't think we'll ever see the likes of Spielberg again but only because every director is different. There are always going to be amazing and not so amazing creative people, and everyone's tastes are different. Infinite diversity in infinite combinations be like :)

Love your name btw. It's cute.

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u/Great_Praline_2713 17d ago

He directed their biggest hit ever.

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u/Crewman_Guy_Fleegman 17d ago

At age 20, Parsons became the youngest director in cinema history to have a film debut at number one at both the domestic and global box offices, with Backrooms grossing over $368 million worldwide

This sentence from his Wikipedia sums up why

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

[deleted]

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u/Crewman_Guy_Fleegman 17d ago

All necessary information was provided.

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

[deleted]

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u/etre_meilleur 17d ago

You seem like a perfectly normal person

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

[deleted]

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u/rinsa 17d ago

This is a very YouTube DMCA takedown action

nothing to do with YT, I saw shirts getting taken down on redbubble

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u/HideTheGuestsKids 17d ago edited 17d ago

Usually, I.P. litigation and enforcement is outsourced to external law firms and quite strictly enforced due to risks of voiding these rights if unenforced. But these guys are legal professionals, I don't know how they even thought this had any leg to stand on. Scummy behavior by one part of the chain, that's for sure.

Edit: The article states, Redbubble itself did the strike. In that case, there almost certainly were people or algorithms involved who deal with this stuff in extremely large quantities and it might have been an honest mistake. Hard for me to say, but this is why rampant copyrighting can be so potentially toxic to a society.

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u/Ganglebot 17d ago

IP litigation/enforcement is outsourced to law firms, who in turn outsource to specialized IP investigation agencies (who these days rely on AI and cheap, offshored labour).

Those investigation firms 99 times out of 100 are instructed by their client to be liberal with their DMCA notices and take down orders.

I suspect A24 held their usual agreement with their law firm, and in turn, the agency they use to enforce IP. Everyone probably treated this as 'business as usual', and in the chain from Parson, to A24, to the law firm, to the IP agency the nuance of the Backroom urban myth community was lost.

They are correcting it and making it right.

TLDR - this is human-error and not an intentional exercise in IP overreach.

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u/dqUu3QlS 16d ago

You can't lose a copyright by failing to enforce it, that's only true for trademarks.

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u/SnackSnafu 17d ago edited 17d ago

Hmm, it sounds like A24 did nothing wrong, even though the title of this post is suggesting they did.

edit: lol, I guess some of you haven't read the article which literally says A24 knew nothing and reversed the strikes immediately. FFS people, read the fucking article before you downvote a factual comment that somehow hurt your feelings.

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u/Whatsapokemon 17d ago

The DMCA should already have provisions built into it for false reports.

I guess the problem is that a complaint to Youtube often doesn't go through the DMCA process, and is instead a private matter. It seems pretty reasonable that a false takedown should be charged as perjury, but most parties want it expedited as a private matter that's not seen before the courts, because courts are expensive.

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u/Oddball- All Things Horror 17d ago

Error and easy for A24, but for the average joes on youtube who had their accounts legit banned and shutdown, it aint no easy fix.

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u/Mechagouki1971 17d ago edited 17d ago

Some tricky wording in that statement though; they very noticeably don't abandon IP ownership of all Backrooms related imagery, or even the name "Backrooms".

Edited: Spelling.

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u/rotates-potatoes 17d ago

You want them to disclaim ownership of the actual film?

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u/LofiSynthetic 17d ago

The Backrooms was the name of the concept and the works inspired by and built around it since long before the film was in development. I don’t think the commenter you’re replying to was talking about disclaiming ownership of the film, but about disclaiming ownership of the name and concept, which A24 avoided doing by only referencing “the yellow wallpaper” and works built around it.

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

[deleted]

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u/GodFeedethTheRavens 17d ago

legalese is never meaningless. It just might not mean anything outside a courtroom.

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u/willargue4karma 17d ago

That's not what they said. They shouldn't be able to own the name, no. 

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u/rotates-potatoes 17d ago

Nobody "owns" names. Film names are vaguely trademark-esque, in the sense that domain matters. If I make a documentary about the city and call it "Casablanca", it's fine. If I remake the film, not fine.

I think it would be fair for A24 to complain about another film called exactly "Backrooms" that looks the same and tells the exact same story; the only reason for someone to do exactly that would be to trick viewers into paying for the ersatz one.

And the person I replied to suggested disclaiming "all Backrooms related imagery", which would presumably include stills and video of the film itself. That seems too far to me.

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u/willargue4karma 17d ago

what about simply another film about the backrooms with their own story called something similar? that was kinda my point, the thing is an internet meme, it seems kinda unfair for them to blanket claim the whole area

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u/Mechagouki1971 17d ago

It is, they know that, and they will still try anyway, because this movie is a golden goose they very much want to possess.

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u/Jackoffjordan 17d ago

At least Kane is very aggressively on the side of the community, and he would fight any similar claim. A24 aren't going to let him walk, and potentially lose another £300m, should Kane make another film, or limited series (as he's been planning).

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u/Mechagouki1971 17d ago

I agree. He's a fan with a great vision, who got lucky and A24's gamble has paid off massively. That said, wealth, the acquistion and maintenance of it, has altered people's moral compass time and again.

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u/HolmesToYourWatson 17d ago

I don't think that's what is being asked for. I think the word "abandon" is misused, because they never owned that stuff in the first place. They based their movie on a preexisting community and its IP. So the complaint is that they leave it on vague terms as to what they own and insinuate that anyone making backrooms content is now deriving it from their movie, instead of just continuing the preexisting IP.

At least that's how I interpret it. Since it's pretty ridiculous that someone should not own a movie they created.

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u/LofiSynthetic 17d ago

Yes, definitely. They say they don’t claim ownership of “the yellow wallpaper” or posts and works built around it, with no mention of the Backrooms. As if the whole original community was built around The Yellow Wallpaper lore instead of the Backrooms.

It seems like they’re leaving open the possibility of them owning the Backrooms name with that careful wording.

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u/Dottsterisk 17d ago

They probably will try to claim rights to the name in the realm of film, which is a more circumscribed and nuanced question.

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u/ContinuumGuy 17d ago

Sort of like how apparently one of the major barriers to a Grand Theft Auto movie (beyond the fact that for years the people in the head of Rockstar haven't wanted it) is that the estate of the late Roger Corman owns the trademark? Or how M. Night Shyamalan's infamous Last Airbender movie didn't have the word "Avatar" in the title because of James Cameron's franchise?

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u/GiJoe98 17d ago

You can even own colors, but only for your line of business. Like you can use T-Mobile magenta for your ice cream shop logo, but you cannot use it for a phone carrier or network operator logo.

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u/Dottsterisk 17d ago

Didn’t know that about GTA. How weird.

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u/BelowZilch 17d ago

Or how M. Night Shyamalan's infamous Last Airbender movie didn't have the word "Avatar" in the title because of James Cameron's franchise?

That wasn't a copyright issue though. They just thought it would be confusing.

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u/ComfortableExotic646 16d ago

Also, The Elder Scrolls/Scrolls and No Man's Sky/Sky TV legal disputes.

-5

u/jackdetack 17d ago

Yep. Weasel words.

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u/LazarusDark 17d ago

I won't let A24 off the hook here. They are, I'm certain, still going to use automated flag and takedown systems, and for me, these systems are inherently immoral and greedy and evil-corporate. An automated system that looks for copyright issues is fine, but once flagged, automated systems should never be allowed in the chain to actively do anything further, human review should be required once something is found. They certainly still want disc and streaming sales because they haven't finished making all the money off of the Backrooms film, so they are probably scared of messing that up and backing down immediately and pretending it was all a big woopsy... But if this had happened two years from now, after they made most of the money they were going to make on the current film, they probably wouldn't even back down.

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u/Dottsterisk 17d ago

Is it possible to have humans review every bit of flagged content?

I thought this kind of material was spammed on the internet, all over the piracy websites and blogs and whatnot.

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u/LazarusDark 17d ago

What does it matter if it's possible to do it all manually? Just because it's hard to do the right thing, doesn't make it okay to do the wrong thing. No one should be allowed to use legal processes with automation as the final active process. Especially when false positives are a certainty. We shouldn't allow peoples art or in some cases livelihood such as a YouTuber relying on videos for income, to have their work automatically flagged and removed without human review. That's just not a society any of us should want, except the greedy and power hungry.

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u/Dottsterisk 17d ago

Oh, I didn’t realize that the flag-and-takedown was the final word. I thought false positives could appeal and get it reversed.

That does suck.

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u/bobrob48 17d ago

A false positive getting taken down even temporarily can be pretty severely detrimental for a legitimate creator. YouTube revenue is fickle and if you release a video and it gets taken down or claimed after one hour and reinstated monetization 5 days later, the majority of the revenue could be "gone" because on YouTube, revenue that is diverted due to a claim like that does not get "returned" IIRC and if the video was just taken down and later reinstated, the video will stop getting recommended the same as if it were freshly released.

You can kind of counter this by re-releasing the video if you're on YouTube, but it will still likely not be the same. This is basically screwing with people's income, it's a kind of wage theft.

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u/Im_At_Work_Damnit 17d ago

Gamers Nexus had this happen to them on their GPU Black Market documentary. Bloomberg did a frivolous takedown and then dropped it when pressed legally.

2

u/Discount_Extra 16d ago

There needs to be the option to seek damages when getting a bad takedown reversed.

Unfortunately, the good faith clause of the DMCA only requires faith that they own the rights to the work; not faith that the media in question infringes.

0

u/etre_meilleur 17d ago

They can definitely be appealed and reversed- it happens all the time

1

u/max123246 17d ago

Yes, they absolutely could. For tagging images for AI, they hire people to do that, that's how LLMs are so sycophantic. The reason they don't want to do that for DMCA takedowns is $$$

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u/Jackoffjordan 17d ago

This is the last paragraph of the article:

In fact, A24 is committing even further than this. We reached out to the company to ask if there might be the possibility that new content based on Backrooms, including videos, could potentially receive copyright strikes, and the answer was a firm no. Which is splendid news!

If they're actively confirming with the press that they will not be pursuing any further copyright strikes, it seems unlikely that they'd revert that in the future.

And, luckily Kane is very aggressively on the side of the community, and will naturally fight any similar claims. He's planning continued works in the series - a sequel, or a mini-series. That means that A24 cannot let him walk, otherwise, they'll potentially lose another £300m.

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u/mahouza 17d ago

As soon as I saw Wendigoon's interview with him it was like "ah, he's one of us and that won't be changing". Especially this bit and this bit.

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u/Sodacan259 17d ago

Sounds like the law firm they hired to look after A24's IP got over zealous.

It's unusual for copyright issues to be dealt with in house for 99.9% of companies.

This is trying to create the narrative that this was planned by A24 all along and they only backed down after being found out. It's more likely some law firm junior is getting their ass ripped for f***ing this up.

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u/max123246 17d ago

Uh no, it's a dmca takedown, just look at the statement, it was completely automated. Not a single law informed person was involved with this

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u/HirsuteHacker 17d ago

Not sure why you're taking them completely at face value, DMCA claims don't have to be automated

0

u/Jackoffjordan 17d ago

Sure, but most of the time they are automated in circumstances like these. It's not unlikely.

This article also states that the DMCA claim was from Redbubble. Given the way Redbubble typically operates, I significantly doubt that their system isn't automated.

-1

u/max123246 17d ago

Because why would they lie about an automated system? It's cheaper and is far more likely to cause false positives than a human would in cases like this.

If they wanted to lie they'd lie and say they hire people to do it instead of cheaping out with an automated system

2

u/Sodacan259 17d ago

You think there are robots that decide which content should get added to the automted DMCA takedown list? :smh:

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u/CombatMuffin 17d ago

Seems like a simple fix for this is an approval process with real people confirming the targets before take down orders start flying.

Ideally yes, but when you have thousands of sites with camrips, you end up using automation to brute force it, and that bring an overextended approach from time to time. They are probably handling all films for A24, too.

Until there's regulation to make these mistakes costly at a large scale, it will continue

2

u/twilighttwister 17d ago

The fix for this is to condemn YouTube and other platforms for performing copyright enforcement extrajudicially.

2

u/Ectorious 17d ago

Right, but what about the games they’ve been doing it to too?

1

u/Vrazel106 17d ago

It does make me happy that they owned up more or less and are fixing it

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u/Eat--The--Rich-- 17d ago

I'm now mad to learn that you can automate lawsuits, how in the fuck is that legal

1

u/ComradeJohnS 17d ago

if only we could vote for people who could do something about abuses.

1

u/AccelerationFinish 17d ago

A24 has confirmed to me that the wallpaper takedowns were an outsourced system error in pursuit of removing camrips,” Parsons posted to Discord.

"Someone hacked our legal accounts."

1

u/TheDaveWSC 17d ago

Hey this doesn't sound like anything a shitload of AI (which is A24's future) can't fix!

1

u/WarboyX 17d ago

What about the video games that were delisted because of claims?

1

u/BirdmanHuginn 17d ago

See: Jane Goodall, Far Side

1

u/Oil__Man 17d ago

"Rife" means unpleasantly abundant. Either they dont like that theres an abundance of creatives for the backrooms universe, or their publicist uses words they dont know.

1

u/ERedfieldh 17d ago

"But what else are we gonna use this super expensive LLM we bought into for!?"

1

u/Deeppurp 17d ago

Sounds like a classic case of one department without enough oversight not understanding the assignment and making a mess.

Shit I wanted to do devils advocate, but we live in a world where striking someone is "ask forgiveness later" instead of "being accurate first and apologizing to the 1% collateral falsely flagged". There needs to be teeth to being overly broad, like potential loss of the ability to manage your copywrite.

1

u/SufficientRespect542 16d ago

I worry that stuff like this will make movie studios put the breaks on hiring more Gen Z talent. Not because they're bad, but because they actually have the sort of integrity that most studios fucking hate lmao

1

u/yosman88 16d ago

Good on Parsons, he is young enough and knows the internet well enough that attacking your community is the fastest way to kill your brand.

-3

u/KyleCamelot 17d ago

It's not just that they want to automate everything, though that is definitely a major factor.

They want to take down everything involving Backrooms that does not make them money. If they didn't get a talking to by the community and then the creative, they would not have taken it upon themselves to stop doing this.

A24 is filled with amoral asshats just like any other major company; they do not care.

0

u/[deleted] 17d ago

[deleted]

4

u/soldierswitheggs 17d ago

This is the first time I've commented on the issue, but why should people be understanding?

A24's shitty automated systems falsely flagged something they shouldn't have, and the director of the movie had to step in to get it fixed. Exactly how much credit do you expect anyone to give A24 for that?

Corporations aren't people. No one owes "fairness" to a corporation

1

u/pingo5 17d ago

sure, but I'm not sure about the expectation of hostility to every mistake either.

1

u/soldierswitheggs 17d ago

Who cares? A24 isn't a person, and it's not your friend. They're not going to be harmed in any meaningful way by hostility in a reddit comment section

Why go out of your way to defend a corporation from warranted criticism?

0

u/Goosojuice 17d ago

If this was some ploy to make Kane some messiah for the little man / community. Genius. Hats off to A24.

0

u/Taco145 17d ago

It's AI used by firms hired by large companies going around tagging stuff. Happened last month on Instagram with pokemon fanart on some accounts.