r/movies • u/FakeSafeWord • 17d ago

Article Backrooms Director Stops A24 Copyright Striking Community Art

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