inquisitrlogo

 
Inevitable: Hitler ‘Downfall’ meme removed from YouTube, Hitler rants about it

Posted: April 22, 2010

You may know by now that Constantin Films has been finding and deleting the zillions of YouTube parodies of a scene from the film Downfall, where Adolf Hitler rants about iPads or content farms or something in pop culture.

Even the director of the film, Oliver Hirschbiegel, found the meme pretty funny and said he found the joke to be a “compliment” in an interview:

“Someone sends me the links every time there’s a new one. I think I’ve seen about 145 of them! Of course, I have to put the sound down when I watch. Many times the lines are so funny, I laugh out loud, and I’m laughing about the scene that I staged myself! You couldn’t get a better compliment as a director.”

Arguments about fair use and internet censorship abound, with a fair bit of “hey, no one would have seen your movie if it wasn’t for us!” thrown in for good measure. So as word spread that one of the most prolific video memes was under attack for copyright infringement, the internet did what it does best- it spat up a parody wherein Hitler rants about Hitler rants being removed from YouTube for copyright related reasons.

What do you think? Are the parodies fair use? Are the people at YouTube being total nazis about the whole thing? Clip below.

Category: Technology
Tags : , , ,
Posted: April 22, 2010
Kim LaCapria

By Kim LaCapria








Comments


One Archived Response to “ Inevitable: Hitler ‘Downfall’ meme removed from YouTube, Hitler rants about it ”

  1. Mike Amundsen
    Apr 22, 2010

    these parodies to not, technically fall under the “fair use” rules (due to their length). however, the film company is making a huge mistake. instead of issuing take-downs, they should explicitly grant CC rights to this one very popular section of the film.

    by doing that, not only will they protect the rest of the film (see, no CC grants for any other section of the film, just this part!) but they will also actually encourage folks to continue to keep the film alive in people’s minds.

    hell, if i was the film company, i’d create a youtube channel just for collecting and sharing the parodies. think of the social behavior data the company could garner from visitors and contributors. think of the advertising potential!