Sakura con takes down Girugamesh ad parody on youtube?

[outlawed]

A good portion of the dialogue was not even from the original commercial only the part at the end. To me the video was making fun of the original ad and certain aspects of the anime fanboy/fangirl scene as it exists at the cons.

http://www.omonomono.com/2009/03/27/guhroogamesh/

Thoughts?

[hasteroth]

I think that's completely idiotic. This whole "copyright" thing is going way too far.

[BasharOfTheAges]

It's extremely chilling coming from a con - a place where fan art, fan parodies, AMVs, fan fiction, and cosplay all directly go against strict IP laws. It's all parody. If we can't trust convention operators to respect that aspect of remix culture agnostic of how they feel about the content, then they are as much of an enemy as the rest of Big Content and should not be supported in any way.

[hasteroth]

It's extremely chilling coming from a con - a place where fan art, fan parodies, AMVs, fan fiction, and cosplay all directly go against strict IP laws. It's all parody. If we can't trust convention operators to respect that aspect of remix culture agnostic of how they feel about the content, then they are as much of an enemy as the rest of Big Content and should not be supported in any way.

Yeah I agree. But I think I see why. Sakura con is being self-centred, they don't care if it's a parody of someone else's work but they do care if it's a parody of their own work.

[BasharOfTheAges]

Yeah I agree. But I think I see why. Sakura con is being self-centred, they don't care if it's a parody of someone else's work but they do care if it's a parody of their own work.

Adults are talking - kindly leave this discussion to those capable of discourse and spare us the humiliation of association. (This is a semi-serious matter and your sophomoric, poorly thought-out talking points do more to harm the side you're taking than anything else).

[hasteroth]

Yeah I agree. But I think I see why. Sakura con is being self-centred, they don't care if it's a parody of someone else's work but they do care if it's a parody of their own work.

Adults are talking - kindly leave this discussion to those capable of discourse and spare us the humiliation of association. (This is a semi-serious matter and your sophomoric, poorly thought-out talking points do more to harm the side you're taking than anything else).

No. I'm simply being objective.

[outlawed]

More than likely it has to do with the fact that phrases such as tentacle rape and pre-pubescent school girls were used as jokes and then at the very end it plays the audio from the original CM directing people to the sakura con website. IMO the audio is fair use but obviously I could see where Sakura con might be worried about someone making an association. The problem with that line of thought is that anyone viewing the parody can easily tell that it's obviously not sanctioned by the con or a legit ad considering the amateur level of the audio and video. Now people are talking about this parody more than before because it got pulled.

Someone in one of the blog comments mentioned the creator of the video uploaded a new version with sakura con edited out (i'm guessing audio bleeps) but it was also taken down. To me the biggest problem is no other parodies have been attacked and frankly if I was the Girugamesh guy I would be pretty fucking embarrassed. He deserves more protection than the con's image. After all the con trashed it with their own CM from some people's POV =p. Sakura con made their CM and if they can't handle getting being ridiculed then they need to learn to make a different style of promo. At least we have something useful to discuss now ^_^

[BasharOfTheAges]

Going by the responses here, and elsewhere it seemed like more than one parody was targeted.

They are making abhorrent choices given their bread and butter is supporting the IP-infringing content of most of their attendees. Issuing take-down notices in such a matter is so hypocritical that it makes my head spin. Selective enforcement to quash criticism (make no mistake, insulting parody is criticism) is the very bottom of the slippery slope in the IP censorship debate. They should feel ashamed to have used such tactics and i'd love to see someone step up and challenge the take-down orders in court. Misuse of that system is a crime.

[LivingFlame]

I hope the creator tries to enter this into an AMV contest at Sakura-con. >__>;


Anyway, there's no way Sakura-con would have any claim to have that removed. It's perfectly akin to a Weird Al song or an SNL skit. It's pure parody of their commercial. That said, in this case, it can pretty well double as critical commentary, which is just extra coverage under fair use.

The unfortunate part of all this is that it's "only" on youtube. Since youtube doesn't have an effective way to contest such moderations, I doubt it'll be coming back. And I also doubt anyone could really be bothered to take something like this to court. (I'd be even less inclined to take it to court since it's questionable as to whether the use of Yu-Gi-Oh would be considered fair use.)

I have to agree with Bashar here. It sounds pretty low and hypocritical of them to encourage people to create things like this for their cons, and even give out prizes to the best (I assume....never been), and then turn around and punish someone who uses something of theirs, in a completely fair manner, seemingly only because it could possibly tarnish their name more than their own commercial already had. Hasteroth actually did have a decent enough summation when he said they were being selfish. It is selfish of them to hold a double standard that benefits them either way.

[trythil]

It's extremely chilling coming from a con - a place where fan art, fan parodies, AMVs, fan fiction, and cosplay all directly go against strict IP laws. It's all parody. If we can't trust convention operators to respect that aspect of remix culture agnostic of how they feel about the content, then they are as much of an enemy as the rest of Big Content and should not be supported in any way.

What makes you think Sakura-Con (i.e. the aggregate of everyone working for it) cares about remix culture in the first place? Is there evidence that stuff like AMVs represents a bigger boon to the con than a liability -- the sort of thing that people would think of and go "hey, oh wait, we attract these people who really like to remix things, we'd better not piss them off"?

(I don't know how that would be true for any large convention these days. That includes Mecca.)

Representatives of Sakura-Con's AMV department have already come out and said that they're targeting "derogatory terms and hateful content". (Whatever that means.) So I assume that they're down with this, and (A) that they think this sort of censorship is a good thing, or (B) they think it's wrong but aren't going to challenge it.

Well, it's hard to argue it's not legal (people can send rebuttals to takedown notices, though as LivingFlame mentioned, the bias towards the initial request makes it quite hard to do so), but, well, it just feels slimy.

Would love to hear from the Sakura-Con AMV staff about this.