Derivative Works in New Era

With the wireless Internet connection, everything is on our fingertips nowadays. Globalization allows people to search, watch, share and create content than ever before. While focusing on creating content, have you ever thought of the grey area of online video content creation when it comes to derivative works and copyright? Well, before we get into that, let’s us expand our understanding on the “content-creator” in this new era.

Try to recall how people grant the great painter, Leonardo da Vinci; the great composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; the great sculptor, Pablo Picasso. In general, we grant them as artist. And no matter which era you are in, art exists in their own way to suit people’s tastes. Nowadays, some people simply put content creators as artists, “which doesn’t care audience size, monthly reach or engagement rate because art doesn’t work that way” (https://blog.dashhudson.com/influencer-marketing-content-creator-social-media-strategy-brand-marketing/). 

According to the statement above, it clearly shows that, development is really changing the way people are defining things. And when it comes to online video-based derivative works and copyright issue, it becomes more complicated. Have you ever thought about you creating something new by using part of an existing video and this may offer you the possibility to have a court session with the original creator? 

In April 2017, AmoGood (谷阿莫), a popular YouTuber from Taiwan, who has around 1.3m of subscribers, faced a lawsuit on the copyright infringement. What makes him famous is his recap videos of big screen films by summarising the plots humorously and sometimes making his own philosophical reviews about the films. 

Right after receiving the lawsuit, AmoGood immediately released a video to make clarifications. These recap videos were just like remixing released music. In his video, he claimed that the recap videos were video-based derivative works which only used a minimal portion of the original films and the sources were available on Internet. All these made up that his videos were claimed as fulfilled the fair use defence (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7icUXwJRaXQ).

Well, it’s obviously now, the grey area between online derivative works and copyright appears. While both party, the YouTuber and original work creator fight for their own recognition with their own definition and scale for originality, the thing becomes complicated. What’s more about copyright on these online video-based derivative works?

The only conclusion that I can made is subjectivity…