Just when you think studios couldn’t act worse… they just keep on surprising you! I’ve just been notified by YouTube that 20th Century Fox has just filed a copyright infringement notice with them to have our review of the ass awful film “Reno 911: Miami” taken off their site and deleted.
And before you ask… yes… the review was a negative one.
It is curious that they are claiming copyright infringement. As most of you know, in our video reviews we will cut in clips from the trailers of the movies we’re discussing. Trailers that are made publicly available by the studios for anyone, anywhere to download at anytime. on top of that, according to Stanford’s website, “Fair Use” of material is covered under the category of “COMMENTARY AND CRITICISM”. The site states:
“If you are commenting upon or critiquing a copyrighted work–for instance, writing a book review — fair use principles allow you to reproduce some of the work to achieve your purposes. “
Let me repeat that I didn’t take clips from a pirated version of the movie… I used the clips, in a legitimate “fair use” exercise, from a source that the studio themselves made fully and publicly available to everyone. And yet they pulled my review of their terrible movie off of YouTube. Fox knows full well that this has nothing to do with copyright infringement.
The review is ancient history, and I could care less about it. But the principle here of a billion dollar studio using its legal department to have legitimate negative reviews of their movies taken off the internet is outrageous.
