MTSFilms Blog

Saved! It’s a good feeling to be in the right, even it if you’re not really. Recently someone posted some video stolen from Hyperspace, the official Star Wars Fan Club, and posted it on YouTube. Understandably Lucasfilm brought down the hammer and happened to crush a few bystanders. YouTube, in a effort to appease the corporate giant, pulled quite a few more videos than they were supposed to, which is why there was no rhyme or reason to why certain videos were pulled and others weren’t.

Lucasfilm did issue this:

Lucasfilm has been informed that YouTube recently removed from its site several fan-made Star Wars spoofs and parodies. We would like the fan film community to know that this was not done at our request. Apparently the action was taken by YouTube as a result of a misunderstanding of a request to remove an item containing material taken from starwars.com without our permission. We have asked YouTube to restore any works that they inadvertently removed.

Click here for a screen grab of as close to an official apology as we may ever get for something as insane as ripping them off.

Good to know they still let us live in their shadow. Kind of disappointing that I still have yet to do enough to incur some corporate wrath. Maybe Aflac will hate my next parody enough to come after me.

Am I being watched? Not that I mind the recent spike in my hit count, I do believe it has everything to do with the recent trouble on YouTube.

Current opinion from other fan film makers range in opinion. Not that they’re lawyers or anything, but if my film goes down in means that theirs could be next (and believe me, many of them actually infringe on copyright).

I also have to wonder if the lawyer or lawyers from Lucasfilm who sent that DMCA notice to YouTube noticed the site promoted at the end of the film and in the description and if they’ve bothered to visit. I’m sure they can’t post anything in response but I still want to know why? Give me a good reason for that film being pulled. Unless you’re planning on offering me a distribution deal or a film contract I pretty well think that they’ve over stepped on this one.

Does this play into the recent theory that Atomfilms will be the only distributor of Star Wars fan films? Or perhaps that copyright holders as a group hate YouTube because so many people blatantly break the rules. Or maybe somebody was bored and surfing and somehow found my little movie. So what about all the others up there? When will they come down?

Just for reference folks I did a grab of the page where the film used to be. Maybe I should just consider it a badge of honor that the man has come after me. The man attempts to crush me.

Better yet, here’s a grab of the letter that YouTube sent me. The man puts a the squeeze on me some more.

Stay tuned kids, nobody knows how long before the men in black show up at my house.