Judge decides H3H3 video was protected under fair use but says this is not a prescedent

[Master Disaster]

They did it, Matt Hoss has been proven to be a copyright troll and the Kliens might have just made YouTube a better place for everyone.

 

Matt Hoss sued H3H3 last year because they used some of his original footage in one of their reaction videos ignoring the fact their video was largely positive about his work and instead claiming they had no right to use his work in one of their videos.

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Ethan and Hila Klein, the husband-and-wife team behind the popular H3H3 YouTube channel, appear to have won their legal battle against Matt Hosseinzadeh, a.k.a. Matt Hoss. A New York judge today issued a summary judgement in favor of the Kleins.

 

Hosseinzadeh sued the Kleins last year after they posted a reaction video mocking him. Hosseinzadeh’s initial suit focused less on the criticism per se, and instead alleged that the Kleins had infringed his copyright by featuring clips of one of his videos in their criticism.

The Kliens, with the help of Phil De Franco's fund, defended their work as being protected under the doctrine of Fair Use and obviously the judge agreed with them.

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The Kleins defended their use of the footage as fair use, and another YouTube creator, Philip DeFranco, raised more than $170,000 for their legal defense — DeFranco wrote, “If they are bullied and drained of funds because of this ridiculous lawsuit and/or they lose this case it could set a terrible precedent for other creators.”

 

Ethan Klein offered a similar sentiment in a tweet today describing the outcome as a “huge victory for fair use on YouTube.”

 

The basic legal question was whether the Kleins’ creation of a reaction video that included clips of Hosseinzadeh’s content counts as fair use. In this case, Judge Katherine B. Forrest ruled that it does.

 

“The key evidence in the record consists of the Klein and Hoss videos themselves,” Forrest writes. “Any review of the Klein video leaves no doubt that it constitutes critical commentary of the Hoss video; there is also no doubt that the Klein video is decidedly not a market substitute for the Hoss video. For these and the other reasons set forth below, defendants’ use of clips from the Hoss video constitutes fair use as a matter of law.”

Rather worryingly, the judge went on to say this ruling was specific to this case and that it wouldn't apply to every "reaction video" on YouTube

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However, Forrest emphasizes that this isn’t meant to be a blanket defense for all reaction videos. She notes that while some of these videos mix commentary with clips of someone else’s work, “others are more akin to a group viewing session without commentary.”

 

“Accordingly, the Court is not ruling here that all ‘reaction videos’ constitute fair use,” she says.

She also sided with the Kliens on Hoss's other claim that H3H3 defamed him in a later video about his lawsuit stating the contents of the video were clearly opinion

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Forrest also sides with the Kleins on Hosseinzadeh’s subsequent claim that they defamed him in a video about the lawsuit — she writes, “It is clear that defendants’ comments regarding the lawsuit are either non-actionable opinions or substantially true as a matter of law.”

https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/23/judge-sides-with-youtubers-ethan-and-hila-klein-in-copyright-lawsuit/

 

Here's Leonard French's reaction to the ruling

Well a victory for common sense but the judge has still left the door open for the trolls to continue abusing the system on YouTube. IMO she should have made a blanket ruling and put a stop to this culture of wrongful copyright claiming that exists on YouTube.

[The Sloth]

happy that they won also H3H3 also made this video 

 

[captain_to_fire]

Since when a trashy and cheap YouTube drama became a litigation in court? 

[Master Disaster]

2 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

Is that really trolling, though?

Its trolling when the Kliens video was mostly positive (although they did mock him), he knew he was in the wrong yet decided to continue and he also tried to tack on defamation because they made their opinion on the case public, at least IMO.

[Master Disaster]

2 minutes ago, hey_yo_ said:

Since when a trashy and cheap YouTube drama became a litigation in court? 

'Murica

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, hey_yo_ said:

Since when a trashy and cheap YouTube drama became a litigation in court? 

When one side of the drama sued the other

[captain_to_fire]

9 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

'Murica

I don't know. Almost all of the YouTube drama is all about whoring for views which means more adsense money and pathetically asking for sympathy. 

Edited August 24, 2017 by hey_yo_

[Blebekblebek]

3 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

'Murica

Funny thing is, in germany and somewhere in europe, any person can get fined or jail when liking a facebook post.

[captain_to_fire]

8 minutes ago, LeinadTM said:

When one side of the drama sued the other

I don't really know the context of the drama because I didn't paid attention to theses channels at all but I think for all aspiring creators and existing ones, the take is that you can never please anyone and no matter how good you did, someone will always dislike it and respond to it. 

Edited August 24, 2017 by hey_yo_

[Guest]

1 minute ago, hey_yo_ said:

I don't really know the context of the drama because I didn't paid attention to theses channels at all but I think for all aspiring creators and exis ones, the take is that you can never please anyone and no matter how good you did, someone will always dislike it and respond to it. 

Neither do I. My understanding is that the guy copyright claimed a clip they used, which happens all the time, but then the guy sued them when they apologied. A little more than the average hater.

[Master Disaster]

19 minutes ago, hey_yo_ said:

I don't know. Almost all of the YouTube drama is all about whoring for views which means more adsense money and pathetically asking for sympathy. I'm so glad Linus and his team didn't do a rebuttal video nor none of his employees tweeted something as a response to this one. 

 Though the ratio of likes and dislikes makes me happy for Linus. 

Weren't these guys a part of the recent "Why we actually spent 100k on a Red Camera" video?

 

That's actually one of things I admire about Linus, if someone calls him out he usually embraces it. He did the same thing when Luis Rossman called him out over baking a GPU.

 

When I watched that video my first thought was LMG obviously has ambitions outside of YouTube, they're trying to create their own video platform and Linus has shown interest in original series content in the past too. Owning that camera is obviously part of the bigger picture for LMG.

[The Sloth]

2 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Weren't these guys a part of the recent "Why we actually spent 100k on a Red Camera" video?

 

 

look at how many adverts they used 

[Trik'Stari]

3 hours ago, hey_yo_ said:

I don't know. Almost all of the YouTube drama is all about whoring for views which means more adsense money and pathetically asking for sympathy. I'm so glad Linus and his team didn't do a rebuttal video nor none of his employees tweeted something as a response to this one. 

-snip

 Though the ratio of likes and dislikes makes me happy for Linus. 

There is so much wrong in that video it's not even funny.

 

That's not how plastic welding works, that's not how any of this works.

[Grinners]

17 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

 

Well a victory for common sense but the judge has still left the door open for the trolls to continue abusing the system on YouTube. IMO she should have made a blanket ruling and put a stop to this culture of wrongful copyright claiming that exists on YouTube.

What blanket rule would you have wanted? For example would a 10 minute video with a 1 second reaction at the end be fair use? You can't claim that all reaction videos are fair use. It will always be a case by case basis but with legal findings like this more guidelines are established. 

 

The judges response in this situation was perfect. 

[LAwLz]

I think the ruling was perfect. If you ask me there are two categories of reaction videos.

There are the H3H3 type of reactions, which are more like "reviews" or criticism of the original video. It's a mix of other peoples' content with their own thoughts added.

Then there are the "reaction channel" reaction videos like Jinx used to make. Where they just sit there, playing someone else's entire video with next to no original thoughts, and then at the end shew some inane shit.

 

This ruling will give a weak precedents for the first type, and none for the second type.

The second type is cancer that should definitely not get any protection at all, and I think both the judge and I thought that it was more important to not give any protection to the second type of reaction videos, than give good protection towards the first type.

 

The first type of reaction videos will still have more protection now though, because people who are potentially going to sue for copyright infringement will see that their bullshit might not go unchallenged. The risks involved in suing someone over copyright infringement has gone up.

 

4 hours ago, hey_yo_ said:

I'm so glad Linus and his team didn't do a rebuttal video nor none of his employees tweeted something as a response to this one. 

Ehm... They did make a "rebuttal" video.

 

4 hours ago, hey_yo_ said:

 Though the ratio of likes and dislikes makes me happy for Linus. 

See, this is why a lot of people, including me, thinks of LTT audience as children.

Someone brings up legitimate criticism towards Linus or some other thing they admire, and instead of thinking rationally about it they react by thumbing it down, telling people to kill themselves, saying that they are only out to create drama, and the list goes on.

 

In reality, they brought up legitimate points and LTT reached out to them to collaborate and fix some of the misunderstandings and misinformation. At the end of the day both Corridor and LTT are friends who can handle some friendly banter. But not the LTT fans. Oh no... How dare anyone say that Linus is wrong about something? That's unthinkable!

 

It's not enough that Linus is doing well. His "enemies" (which are actually his friends doing some friendly bickering) should be punished too!

 

 

4 hours ago, nerdslayer1 said:

look at how many adverts they used 

People who live in glass houses...

 

 

 

[Master Disaster]

1 hour ago, Grinners said:

What blanket rule would you have wanted? For example would 10 minute video with a 1 second reaction at the end is fair use? You can't claim that all reaction videos are fair use. It will always be a case by case basis but with legal findings like this more guidelines are established. 

 

The judges response in this situation was perfect. 

Not talking about this case specifically however the judge could have cited some previous ruling pertaining to other cases and set a legal precedence for similar cases that may occur in the future, even Leonard French was surprised that she didn't do that in her ruling.

 

For example she could have used this case to outline what actually is and isn't fair use in relation to YouTube and clarified the rules for everyone on the platform. Its my understanding that in these types of cases Judges will usually do that to try and stop spurious lawsuits from happening in the future.

 

This is a victory for H3H3 but its not the case everyone wants to sort out the mess that are YouTubes content ID and DMCA systems although it will certainly deter some people for sure.

[RagnarokDel]

7 hours ago, hey_yo_ said:

Since when a trashy and cheap YouTube drama became a litigation in court? 

since one of them sued the other?

[PlayStation 2]

In a sense, I do see a reason to leave the door open even if many won't agree including me. I'm assuming this was ruled for this case specifically and not in general to allow cases which would potentially be legitimate actually go through properly (if that makes sense).

[MageTank]

7 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

Weren't these guys a part of the recent "Why we actually spent 100k on a Red Camera" video?

 

That's actually one of things I admire about Linus, if someone calls him out he usually embraces it. He did the same thing when Luis Rossman called him out over baking a GPU.

 

When I watched that video my first thought was LMG obviously has ambitions outside of YouTube, they're trying to create their own video platform and Linus has shown interest in original series content in the past too. Owning that camera is obviously part of the bigger picture for LMG.

I've been calling him out over memory overclocking for years. He never embraced me 

[Misanthrope]

8 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

Is that really trolling, though?

Yes, it was: Hoss never really thought the H3H3 video wasn't transformative and henceforth not subject to copyright under fair use: He was just upset that they made fun of him and wanted to exploit the DMCA and copyright system to pursue a personal grievance. 

[AshleyAshes]

9 hours ago, hey_yo_ said:

I don't know. Almost all of the YouTube drama is all about whoring for views which means more adsense money and pathetically asking for sympathy. I'm so glad Linus and his team didn't do a rebuttal video nor none of his employees tweeted something as a response to this one.

Is this sarcasm...?  I can't tell if this is badly done sarcasm if you legit didn't see LTTs video featuring Corridor Digital this week.

[goodtofufriday]

10 hours ago, hey_yo_ said:

I don't really know the context of the drama because I didn't paid attention to theses channels at all but I think for all aspiring creators and existing ones, the take is that you can never please anyone and no matter how good you did, someone will always dislike it and respond to it. 

Then please watch the videos to get context. The hoss guy sued because he didnt like people commenting badly on his, im most opinions, very creepy videos.

[The Sloth]

3 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

That's insecurity...

 

[Misanthrope]

7 hours ago, LAwLz said:

See, this is why a lot of people, including me, thinks of LTT audience as children.

What, this audience?

 

[PurpleVirtue]

8 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Someone brings up legitimate criticism towards Linus or some other thing they admire, and instead of thinking rationally about it they react by thumbing it down, telling people to kill themselves, saying that they are only out to create drama, and the list goes on.

 

In reality, they brought up legitimate points and LTT reached out to them to collaborate and fix some of the misunderstandings and misinformation. At the end of the day both Corridor and LTT are friends who can handle some friendly banter. But not the LTT fans. Oh no... How dare anyone say that Linus is wrong about something? That's unthinkable!

Right here you're making a blanket ruling, and that's just wrong. I gave Luis' video calling Linus a like and watched some of his content. While there were good points in Niko's video, I disliked it, despite being a sub of their channel, due to the fact that they raised points I genuinely disagreed with and made assertions which I felt gave Linus too little credit, specifically on the storage points. You shouldn't characterize an entire audience off a vocal minority. That video has 12,000 dislikes, roughly 1/38th of the people who watched Linus' latest video, and roughly 1/370th of Linus' subscriber base. You cannot judge 100% off of such a tiny group of "representatives"