Of all the ways that content creators use copyright to strike down content, one of the most befuddling is when trailers are the subject of copyright strikes. There is occasionally some logic to these sorts of strikes. Trailers that are unfinished, for instance. But even when trailers leak early in a finished state, copyright holders use copyright to take those down.
But the point of a trailer is to serve as an advertisement for the content. Everything else being equal, content creators should absolutely want those trailers to be watched as far and as wide as possible. Even leaked trailers, or unfinished trailers, are still capable of building buzz for a film or show such that their proliferation should be desired.
That’s what makes it so head-scratching that Warner Bros. apparently copyright claimed some reaction videos to their Minecraft trailer.
Minecraft is going through a tough time as the much-anticipated live-action movie trailer was not well received by the fans of the game. The teaser trailer was released recently and created much discussion amongst players. They were disappointed at how everything looked.
And since this created a lot of discussion, many popular creators expressed their dislike towards the movie. One of them was Mumbo Jumob, who is among the largest and most loved Minecraft YouTube creators. A Reddit user named CaptainRelyk shared a screenshot showing how the creator got a copyright claim on their video which was titled “The Minecraft Movie Trailer looks silly.”
That video was taken down briefly after a copyright claim was made on it by Warner Bros. It is back now, with Mumbo Jumob indicating that it was claimed automatically, but that it’s been resolved.
Now, every indication is that this was done through an automated system, rather than anyone making a copyright claim on the video manually. But all that tells me is that Warner Bros. is very bad at the internet and using it to market their forthcoming film. And, because there wasn’t a highly visible public statement from Warner about all of this, the natural speculation is that the company didn’t want people to see the video out of concern it was critical in nature. That doesn’t appear to be the case, but once the rumor mill starts rolling, it’s hard to stop.
More bizarre is the second of the copyright strikes, which was done on a video made by PhoenixSC. That video didn’t even include the movie trailer, but instead included bits from a parody fan film made several years ago. And, even more strangely, the notice appeared to claim copyright on a song that nobody seems to think Warner actually has the rights to.
Another mistake? Perhaps. But Warner should be better at this, or else it should ease off its copyright enforcement practices until it gets its act together.
