Movie producer takes down Hitler parodies

Who is not familiar with the "Hitler rants..." parodies on that famous bunker scene from the German movie Downfall? Constantin Film, the film’s German producer, recently took down a few of the popular "Hitler rants..." parodies on YouTube... which has in turn led to a new "Hitler rants..." parody.

By adding homemade subtitles to the three and a half minute clip from Downfall’s bunker scene - when Hitler goes over the edge when it is suggested that the war is lost - the clips give often hilarious commentary on current news events. The top ten most popular "Hitler rants ..." parodies have titles like "Hitler Is Informed Of The iPad's Lack of Multitasking", "Hitler Is Informed That Twitter Has Gone Down," "Hitler Rants About Being Banned From Xbox Live” and "Hitler Rants About The Death of Michael Jackson." There even is (or was) a special YouTube channel for the "Hitler rants..." parodies.

Reportedly, the removal of the parodies was not so much the result of Notice and Take-down requests from Constantin Film, but rather the results of matches with YouTube's Content-ID filtering system. This system notifies a copyright owner when there is a match between content on YouTube and his copyrighted work. The copyright holder can then judge whether he believes that this content forms a copyright infringement and have the content removed, or that a copyright exception applies or that there are other reasons to keep the content online.

According to the EFF the "Hitler rants..." parodies would be permissible as part of the 'fair-use’-doctrine. In Europe no such thing as a fair-use doctrine exists. However, many European countries have implemented a parody exception in their national Copyright Acts, based on Article 5 paragraph 3 under k of the European Information Society Directive.

In the Netherlands, making parodies of copyrighted works is permitted under Article 18b of the Dutch Copyright Act. It is allowed to make a parody of a copyrighted work as long as it "is consistent with what is reasonably permitted according to the rules of social intercourse". Whether or not a parody stays within these open rule remains for a court to decide.

Many content owners are often very pleased with parodies on their work. They believe people should be able to make parodies and actually appreciate the attention for their work. The director of Downfall also would have said to appreciate the Hitler parodies on YouTube. Producer Constantin Films apparently feels different about this. Almost all "Hitler rants..." parodies were removed from YouTube. But not all ... at the moment the most popular "Hitler rants..." parody actually is "Hitler Rants Rant About the Hitler parodies. Pending YouTube’s review of Constantin Film’s decision to take the parodies down, this clip has remained online.

Source: TechDirt