YouTube - 3 Reasons YouTube Shouldn't Censor Downfall Parodies
Click to view(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuT6GNS-nHE)
The video sharing site YouTube.com recently started blocking access to countless parodies of the 2004 German movie Downfall, a critically acclaimed film that chronicles Adolf Hitler's final days in a Berlin bunker.
The parodies take off from a powerful monologue by the great actor Bruno Ganz and the original joke version had Hitler being banned from XBox Live for bad behavior. Other examples feature Hitler trying to score Miley Cyrus concert tickets, counseling Conan O'Brien after losing a late-night slot to Jay Leno, and much more.
It's understandable why Downfall's production company, Constantin Film, might be upset that such a serious movie is being burlesqued, but pushing YouTube to ban the parodies is a terrible idea for at least three reasons:
1. It's fair use! The parodies, which transform a few minutes of a three-hour movie, are clearly legit under existing copyright laws. Because they clearly transform the original and have no possibility of confusing viewers, the parodies are clearly protected speech.
2. This is free promotion! As George Lucas could tell the filmmakers, fan-generated videos help keep the original source material vital and relevant. Lucas used to try to police all Star Wars knock-offs, until he realized that his audience was promoting his films more effectively than he ever could. More people have surely seen Downfall due to the popularity of the parodies.
3. Let's keep the Internet creative! The greatest cultural development over the past 20 or so years has been technologies that allow producers and consumers to create and enjoy an ever-increasing array of creative expression in an ever-increasing array of circumstances. This development is nowhere more powerful than on the Internet, which has unleashed a whole new universe of writing, music, video, and more. Indeed, YouTube is itself one of the great conduits of cyberspace. Pulling down the Downfall parodies may be within YouTube's rights, but it nonetheless strikes a blow to the heart of what is totally awesome about the Internet.
"3 Reason YouTube Shouldn't Censor Downfall Parodies" is written and produced by Meredith Bragg and Nick Gillespie, who also hosts.
Approximately 2:49 minutes. Go to http://reason.tv for iPod, HD, and audio versions and more information. Subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube channel for automatic notification when new material goes live.
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The more or less reflexive demand by the original producers of Downfall that use of that one, relatively short clip to make spoofs and parodies of everything from sporting events, X-Box, and Apple's releases of various kinds of new software and hardware to peer-reviewed science and you name it is plagiarism, and that Youtube take down any such spoofs from its site or face their and their lawyers' wrath reminds me of what happened at The Biggest Riot UCLA Ever Had Up Until That Time (1966), when three idiots decided to burn copies of the flags of Hitler's Germany, the UN, and Southern Rhodesia in UCLA's Quad at noon one day. They were trying to demonstrate that the UN was exactly as bad as Nazi Germany and Southern Rhodesia, for much the same reasons (a sentiment I don't particularly disagree with). A huge crowd began to gather as they set out the flags for burning and began to do their thing there in the middle of the quad. And then suddenly, everyone in that crowd turned to everyone else in that crowd and began to beat him/her/it up with zeal and gusto (the three idiots who set this off escaped by scrambling under nearby bleachers and running away as quickly as possible, and there's a whole long story about what came after that I'll save for some other day, but anyway). And in the middle of all the confusion, a young exchange student from Israel suddenly stepped forward, pointed emphatically at the Nazi flag, and screamed, "You can't burn that flag -- my grandmother died under that flag!" -- an action and a statement that surely deserves the WTF-of-the-Century Award, if any ever has.
The producers of Downfall obviously weren't thinking when they made their demand that all spoofs made from it and uploaded to Youtube be taken down immediately. Those video clips are the best possible advertising for the film, and all of it absolutely free. What better marketing device could any film ever have? Loosen up, guys -- they'll all just go up on Vimeo, anyway, and no matter what, they'll generate a ton of money for you if you just leave them the hell alone, okay?