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.
