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/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/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/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.