The Chipmunks

[D'Snowth]

Wellp, guess what happened today?

I just got a strike on my YouTube account for copyright infringement, and guess who filed the complaint? You guessed it: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. and Janice Karman, for Bagdasarian Productions.

The offense? For taking the soundtrack version of The Chipettes song "Diamond Dolls", and repitching it to sound like the movie version from The Chipmunk Adventure.

So yeah, my actions on YouTube were frozen until I finished watching a four-minute Happy Tree Friends instructional video about copyright infringement, then take a test on the subject of copyright, infringing, fair use, etc, before I could be granted access to my account again, which now has this big read tag on it saying that as far as copyright goes, "Your account is not in good standing".

Despite being popular with people, I put my old YouTube Poop with Jeanette's windmill fetish on private (like that'll help, it seems even my private videos have matched third-party content, which is just plain scary) and completely deleted the sequel Poop that everybody asked for but then nobody liked it.

So, yeah... gotta love those Bagdasarians, lol.

 

[Drtooth]

Wellp, guess what happened today?

I just got a strike on my YouTube account for copyright infringement, and guess who filed the complaint? You guessed it: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. and Janice Karman, for Bagdasarian Productions.

I've got one foot out the door on this poop stuff myself. The copyright nonsense is getting ridiculous. Fair use does NOT exist, and even if it did, they're trying to find ways around it. I'm sure Peacekeeperjohn or whatever his name is that had all the Chipmunks songs from Out of print media (some on vynal) got it too. YT keeps getting closer to becoming hulu and the only original content is crappy vlogs, crappy cat videos, and crappy tweenagers singing crappy songs.

A "contains content from" disclaimer saves face, gets the copyright holders their fair share, and doesn't tick off the fan base. Why everyone BUT Classic Media, Rick Roll, and Lady Gaga seem to get that is BEYOND me!

 

[D'Snowth]

I'm sure Peacekeeperjohn or whatever his name is that had all the Chipmunks songs from Out of print media (some on vynal) got it too.

I don't know, I just checked, and it would appear that all of his stuff is still available, as well as other random videos that I've favorited, or put into playlists... but how I got singled out, I have no idea.

And the thing of it is, it's actually not just Ross and Janice who have it in for Chipmunk vids, it's also WB: although WB DOESN'T own the rights to the franchise, they'll remove episodes of the cartoon for two reasons, if it A) has the Cartoon Network logo on it or B) simply because they distributed the cartoon (or the first 65 episodes) in syndicated reruns.

 

[Drtooth]

Well, at least when the owners took it down, the OWNERS took it down. Not a third party associated with the company, a fourth party that had the song on a CD that one time, or a fifth party copyright that owns video rights and does nothing with them or owned video rights in the past.

YT has become VERY not fun anymore.

 

[D'Snowth]

Well, at least when the owners took it down, the OWNERS took it down.

What bothers me is that mostly, the owners will bust you if they find out, BUT, they don't go looking for them... with Ross and Janice, it seems to me that they're ALWAYS looking for SOMETHING that infringes on them, so I'm not entirely sure if they found out about it, or if they just simply found it themselves.

YT has become VERY not fun anymore.

They've BEEN VERY not fun anymore for a couple of years now.

 

[Drtooth]

What bothers me is that mostly, the owners will bust you if they find out, BUT, they don't go looking for them... with Ross and Janice, it seems to me that they're ALWAYS looking for SOMETHING that infringes on them, so I'm not entirely sure if they found out about it, or if they just simply found it themselves.

They probably employ people to do internet video searches of everything... I think that most of the big studios do. But again, I hate when anything's taken down, but if it's the owners, I'll respect it on that level. If it's someone who kinda sorta had some connection slightly with someone or something at one point in time, I call BS on that.

 

[D'Snowth]

They probably employ people to do internet video searches of everything... I think that most of the big studios do. But again, I hate when anything's taken down, but if it's the owners, I'll respect it on that level. If it's someone who kinda sorta had some connection slightly with someone or something at one point in time, I call BS on that.

Kind of like how a guy removed a lot of Sid & Marty Krofft vids from YT from time to time, and his only connection to the Kroffts? He was a friend on MySpace.

 

[D'Snowth]

I retract my previous statements, it appears that after the discussion earlier today, Bagdasarian Productions made additional rounds on YT today, and yes, Peacekeeperjon has indeed been banned, as well as several other accounts that posted Chipmunk content.

I think PKJ actually had been suspended before and came back to repost the same content, so it's possible he will again, but there were also some people who had Alvin Show clips posted, and I don't believe those might be seen again, since those were posted YEARS ago, and most of those accounts hadn't had activity in the same amount of time; but then again, people do download the videos and such, so toerh random users would probably repost them.

 

[Drtooth]

If they're planning to release ALL the way out of print vynal on CD or digital download of some sort fine... but if they're just going to sit on a huge pile of unreleased stuff for no one ever to see in the history of ever that's just selfish and annoying.

I'm just saying... contains content:

A little button can go a LONG way!

 

[D'Snowth]

The funny thing is, we always hear the same excuse: royalties.

It seems to me that Bagdasarian Productions makes butt-loads of money off of this franchise, from the movies they're making, to the merchandising, and other stuff... you'd think they'd be able to part with a small fraction of their income (which I'm sure is huge, since they also do all their own writing and producing and such) to cover the costs to keeping songs and such intact on products without having to resort to replacements. We've only a handful of episodes of the 80s cartoon on DVD, and a few of them DO have song replacements, and it's because of that, we can't have season sets and such released because of all the legal drama regarding the songs; some people have turned to bootlegs, I know a friend of mine (who's well fallen out of the fandom since then) bought one of those bootlegs a few years ago that claimed to be the "complete series', but only had 54 of the 65 syndicated episodes, and like what happened yesterday, she had them posted on YT, then one day, they all disappeared because WB yanked them, and I remember a lot of fans being outraged by that (I even remember being disappointed when I suddenly saw my favorites count from being in the 100s going down to like 75 or so).

There were rumors circulated once that The Alvin Show WAS going to have a complete series release, but those were debunked, and all we got was like the pilot episode of that series on a single DVD release; then of course, there's the infamous Chipmunks Go to the Movies episode that 90% of the entire fandom wants to see released on DVD, and all because Simon and Jeanette kiss.

The ALVINNN!!! Edition was worth the buy, they restored the episodes (somehwat), and the holiday set was also worth the buy, because those holiday specials are seldom seen on television, plus they each came with bonus episodes (in somewhat poor quality, but still watchable). But these other releases, not so much, because they only come with like three episodes each, and it's not worth the time or the money to get; I was somewhat disappointed with that Chipettes release a couple of years ago, we only got like six episodes, all of which were good, but there were still many others that could've been released (such as their debut episode, or when Miss Miller adopts them and such)... they really could've put all the content from the Cinderella DVD on the same DVD... I really didn't understand the point of releasing "Cinderella? Cinderella!" in such a manner. Again, I'd LOVE to see complete season releases, but I don't believe we'll ever get them.

The way I see it, if it was my work like that, and I hadn't released it officially on DVD or anything, then yes, I would have no problem with people posting content on sites like YT (and I believe the creators of South Park feel the same way), because I understand fans like that: they just want to see what they miss, and it's not like they're making money off them, and it's not like I'm losing money off them. And of course, Poops and MVs and such re always a-okay with me. If the work WAS on DVD and such, then I might remove the content from YT, not because of "copyright infringement" or anything like that, but because I would try to encourage people to purchase the DVDs because the quality and viewing experience would be far superior and such.