Awesome Twilight homage YouTube game shut down over copyright infringement claim (UPDATED)

Update, 10pm PT, July 1: It's back! The YouTube game's creators tell us: "Maker Studios got in touch with the digital department at Summit, got everything cleared up, and the game is back in action. Thanks for your support and help with this. Good that this situation went well- and good to see a digital department at a traditional company being helpful."

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Ben & Raf, the "Fine Brother" guys who created the wonderful "Twighlight" homage interactive game on YouTube I blogged less than 24 hours ago, write:

We have a follow up to this, as less than an hour ago, Twilight shut down our game claiming copyright infringement. This is very disappointing, as this truly is a fair use and parody case, and shows how content creators have no power online, and how they don't see or understand the value this type of content has for their brand. It's a very disappointing day for online media.

• [snakedart]

  It somehow seems wrong that the owners of highly derivative genre works such as these get to make millions off the ideas of others while telling the rest of us to get our own.

  Actually, on second thought, it doesn’t just seem wrong.

• [benher]

  I wonder if those Summit Entertainment guys sparkle when they walk around in the daylight…

  • [Anonymous]

    “That’s the skin of a killer!!!!” :P

    Love the Youtube game. It truly is -superior- to the movie experience!

• [Anonymous]

  Sadly, I don’t think the fair use argument will fly, especially with parody. Parody isn’t just making a humorous version. It needs to be a 180 version with a clown nose. Like the Repuglicans parody shown to your right.

  The youtube game version uses characters, imagery, dialogue, and plot right from the movies with only minor tweaks. Good tweaks, but not enough for you to know it isn’t repackaged content from the original creators. Summit was almost forced to take action to avoid losing certain rights.

  On the other hand, Summit is stupid if they don’t turn around and offer permission to put it back up again. They could bring it under the tent of authorized works. Then it’s transformed from infringing works to guerrilla advertising.

  • [zyodei]

    “Summit was almost forced to take action to avoid losing certain rights.”

    What “right,” pray tell, were they at risk of losing? In what measurable way could they possible be harmed in any way from this?

    • [Anonymous]

      Zyodei, fair question. Since I wrote the comment you are responding to, I owe you an answer.

      Off the top of my head, I can think of two kinds of rights: ownership and contractual. Ownership rights would include trademarks and copyrights. If you don’t defend the exclusive use of your trademark, you can lose it. I don’t think you can lose your copyright entirely, but you could dilute your rights to damages in other instances if it can be shown you aren’t consistent in defending your copyright ownership.

      The other set of rights include the complex contractual rights surrounding a movie. It’s almost certain the contract licensing the book grants limited copyrights for derivative works, so long as a long list of requirements are met. That would probably include protecting the licensed material from unauthorized duplication.

      Then there would be contracts concerning rights to likenesses, distribution rights, derivative works, and so on. With actors, writers, author, studio, etc, etc. A big crazy web. Non-performance could mean loss of rights granted in the contracts (even dumb stuff like the right to send an actor to Jay Leno for PR stint).

      So it’s a 1000 times easier to Summit to send a DCMA notice than to have a slew of lawyers figure out each and every way they may lose rights and balance that against the plus of some free advertising.

      But … make a stink then grant permission clears 99.9% of that up.

• [modelmotion]

  Copyright and Trademark (if you believe in such legal constructs) are a double edge sword. YouTube really had no option here if Summit made a claim.

  The real question is not whether or not it infringed but what motivated Summit to make such a move. But again, this just demonstrates that copyright can be used for GOOD, or it can be used for EVIL.

  You be the judge of how Summit used it here.

  #TwilightGATE

• [modelmotion]

  UPDATE: @thefinebros :

  “Thanks to everyone for the support! Again, the game is back. Thanks to Summit for working with us to bring 8-Bit Twilight back!”

• [teapot]

  Fuck them:

  I say, upload it to all the other video hosting services, then upload a video to youtube which is just stills of URLs pointing to the video on other hosting services. No way they can takedown-notice that youtube vid, and the time it would take them to send takedown requests to all the other video hosting sites would cost them $$$.

  Also, you should pay homage to something awesome next time, not this terrible mindless junk love story that has taken the world by storm.

  Twilight: A waste of trees, celuloid & bandwidth.

• [Dewi Morgan]

  Awesome props to Summit for getting it.
  It’s not at all common.

  I despise Twilight, but I am now, from this one fact, quite a fan of Summit.

• [captain_cthulhu]

  i went to the “fine brother” website but I can’t find where they wrote that comment – where did they post that? I’d like to read the whole thing if there’s more.

  also, i thought youtube implemented a ‘nah-uh’ clause for these takedowns? the copyright owner can issue a takedown which youtube must honor but then the “infringer” can counter the claim and youtube then re-enables the content forcing the copyright owner to prove that infringement has indeed taken place. this makes sense to me because then all the power does not totally lie in the few deep-pocketed, fan-hatin’ corps that dominate content creation.

  https://www.eff.org/issues/intellectual-property/guide-to-youtube-removals

  looks like BigContent has never sued a youtuber. I say counter their takedown and watch the rats run to look up the definition of the word ‘parody’.

  work. buy. consume. die.

  ‘create.’ is not on the list.

• [insert]

  Are abusive copyright owners who effect the removal of non-infringing fair-use/parody content via the DMCA liable for damages?

  They ought to be. There’s no excuse to be forcing other people to lose profits based on what is, in essence, a false claim of ownership.

• [Anonymous]

  I played this game yesterday. It was funny, cute, and entertaining. I never for a moment thought Summit would be buttheads and think yall were stealing from them. Good luck with getting it back.

• [Gina]

  The game that was made seem to be made to be in honor of the fandom that people enjoyed. I do not even like it but it made me take notice of it. Which made me take notice of the fact that the movie was coming out this week. Things like this should not be shut down they should, if anything, be consider free and wonderful advertisement for the movies/fandom/books that drawl people to the movies/fandom/books.

  I have ran across many things people have made things for rather it was videos, games, fan fiction that I did not know what it was and went back to find it so that I did. This did in many cases cause me to spend money.

  So it is very sad that they would close down something like this. VERY sad.

• [chixon]

  I think that the best course of action for Summit to take (which they should have done in the first place) would be to buy the game/videos from the creators, take it down themselves, and then release it with the DVD.

• [modelmotion]

  Copyright and Trademark (if you believe in such legal constructs) are a double edge sword. YouTube really had no option here if Summit made a claim.

  The real question is not whether or not it infringed but what motivated Summit to make such a move. But again, this just demonstrates that copyright can be used for GOOD, or it can be used for EVIL.

  You be the judge of how Summit used it here.

  #TwilightGATE

• [teapot]

  Does it freak anyone else out that the first 5 characters of the title for the eclipse movie in russian reads “3aTMe”? I know! You think I’d be making this shit up…

  http://www.eclipsemovie.ru/

• [MadRat]

  I’m disgusted the whole take don thing happened but relieved it had a happy ending.

• [oasisob1]

  I’m playing it right now, from the BB link. It doesn’t seem very shut-down here.