Uploaded a fan remix to YouTube which is blocked due to copyright infringement

[deejaysoma]

Hi everyone, I am a new poster on this forum. Apologies if this is in the wrong place.

I recently make a silly/puerile/fun fan remix of the film "Predator" to show my friends on YouTube.

It involves manipulating one scene with a soundtrack created by myself on "Garage Band".

There are 100's of others like it already on YouTube, which I didn't know about until I posted my version. However, my video was blocked due to copyright infringement as soon as it was uploaded.

My questions are: why was my video taken down when so many are available with 100,000+ views? And how can I upload my video?

Video was 2.42 long, I'm going to try again and post it in <1minute sections to see if that helps. I personally don't see that I'm doing anything underhand as this data is freely available on YT and is v low quality. I would consider my harmless "remix" to be different enough from raw footage and clearly a tribute to the movie.

Your views/ideas appreciated.

[danlefree]

YouTube is most likely applying a frame-by-frame analysis (possibly sampled - it'd take quite a while otherwise) - if you did not edit the original video, a frame-by-frame would have picked up the similarity between your post and the existing work.

The analysis would likely be performed on a hash of the frame, rather than a bitwise comparison of the frame itself, so any minor edit to the video portion would probably defeat the automated checks... but that doesn't solve the core problem of your attempt to infringe upon someone else's copyright - I wouldn't recommend doing that unless you've talked to a lawyer who is willing to argue that your use is fair use (http://w2.eff.org/IP/DRM/fair_use_and_drm.html) (he or she will need to be around to take your case if anyone tries suing you).

[deejaysoma]

Thankyou for your reply danlefree, that is interesting information. I'm assuming that only new videos are getting picked up in this way at point of upload.

I agree that the core problem is the use of footage which is not owned by me. Forgive my ignorance, but as there are 1,000,000's of other video snippets of movies/tv shows etc. is there a degree of flexibility here? For example would a 10 second clip be OK?

Thanks again for the input, I am not deliberately trying to do anything illegal, I have just been bitten by the "remixing bug" after watching too many swede mason and djsteveporter videos.

[deepsand]

It may be that the frames in question are watermarked, whereas those similar works which are on YouTube are not. Also, it may be that those similar works presently on YouTube were accepted before a certain screening procedure was enacted.