Where Is It Indeed?

Feb 21, 20163 min read

Deviation Actions

Published: Feb 21, 2016

959 Views

For many of you who might already know, Fair Use is under the Copyright Act of 1976. The basic premise is that any parody, any review, any sort of original content that was manipulated or altered for creativity (i. e. Fanart of any kind) is protected by law.

What bring this up is what's been happening to Content Creators on Youtube.... Though I don't follow his videos as much as I use to, Mr. Walker himself has talked about the situation seeing that he was one of many that was effected by Youtube's antics.

The situation over at Youtube has garnered some great attention on Social Media... but it has brought up a question. Can something like that that has happened on Youtube, can happen on other Social Media sites? Now before you shout out 'No' at your screen, I would like to mention an incident on Twitter several months back. A very skillful artist posted on his twitter account a fanart piece of Quiet from Metal Gear Solid 5. Konami reported it and had it taken down for no legal reason, except the fact that it was in spite of Kojima. Now imagine companies like Kojima sifting through Tumblr, Redit, Facebook, and even here on Deviantart, reporting accounts that have fanart, reviews, or parodies of their properties and demanding that those accounts be shut down or the site will have to face legal action. It's a bit of an extreme yes, but some companies have gone to level.

So again, can you imagine what is happening on Youtube happen on other Social Media sites? With the way things have been happening the last six years, I'd say yes, it could happen.

Something that I've found to be very eerily accepted as the norm due to the fact of being afraid of getting sued. It also doesn't help the situation these days that Social Media has created this 'Guilty until proven innocent' attitude that has also been accepted as the norm as well.

The point I want to make is that this needs to spread around. People need to be educated and informed that they're legally protected by law when they make a video about talking about their favorite show, post drawing their favorite character in their own art style,post a fanfiction involving their favorite franchise, the list goes on.

And you're having some difficulty still on the subject of Fair Use, I urge you to watch this video of that goes into some great detail of the Fair Use law....