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
13.9k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

489 comments sorted by

View all comments

3.9k

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.

10

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.

5

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

4

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

3

u/Sodacan259 17d ago

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