Copyright claims are hard to face and YouTube is no stranger to those as they received a lot of criticism on their process of determining the issue and if you follow anime shows, it is nothing new to have content easily struck down which is what happened to 150 videos of famous YouTuber Totally Not Mark or Mark Fitzpatrick. With that, it resulted to backlash on the studio who asked to delete the videos.
An update was shared by Totally Not Mark or Mark Fitzpatrick on YouTube to anime fans as he expressed his dismay over the blocking 150 videos that he has up on his YouTube channel which were by Toei company’s copyright claims. Majority of those were under Toei’s top intellectual properties such as One Piece and Dragon Ball.
Fitzpatrick said in his video, “"Over the last twenty-four hours, I've sat back in disbelief, shock, and sorrow as my life's work has been unfairly ripped away from me. Two nights ago, I received an email notifying me that fifteen of my videos had been copyright claimed and blocked by Toei Animation.”
Fitzpatrick added, “One hour later, that number rose to twenty-eight. And when I woke up this morning, it had reached a total of 150 videos that my audience can no longer see and that I can no longer monetize. And as a result, the main source of my company's income is now gone"
He also raised the concern of how dire the situation is with the blow on his brand’s revenue as he has employees working for him and they remained faithful to the fair use terms given by YouTube. However, Japan has been very strict on copyrighting materials and their law does not even allow fair use policy which led to the striking down of Fitzpatrick’s contents.
Fitzpatrick had some spicy words against Toei as posted on his Twitter page, “Toei has without regard claimed and blocked 2.5 years worth of work. I have spoken to YouTube. There is no recourse. They cannot and will not help because these were manually claimed by Toei. Truly. I do not know what's next.”
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Under Japanese law, there is a strict application on intellectual property preservation which gives the publishers and creators the right to protect the integrity of their creations against anyone or anything at all. They have the majority of the control over their intellectual properties so those contents on YouTube may be following the fair use policy of YouTube may be illegal in their country.
Due to piracy concerns, companies like Toei have been aggressive in taking actions over their contents and those who were on YouTube has been affected like that of Fitzpatrick. International laws which are not in consonance with each other usually result in conflict of law where what may be legal to other countries could be illegal to another.
This is exactly what is happening between Toei and Totally Not Mark with YouTube in the middle. It is under the legal sphere that Japan could strictly implement their copyright laws over the matter considering that the creators are from their country. It may be a sticky situation but as the timeless legal maxim dating back to the 3rd century says, “the law is harsh but it is the law.”
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