film: Justin Gayner’s War
This weekend, ChannelFlip got its first nasty legal bashing.
Entertainment giant NBC Universal contacted our hosting company, Blip.TV, and asked them to take down our review of Charlie Wilson’s War.
According to their ‘anti-piracy’ lawyer Mark Ishikawa, we were infringing copyright by showing clips of the movie.
Now, I don’t know if you’ve watched my review (you can here) but I give it a glowing report. It’s smart, funny and generally a fantastic film.
So NBC’s actions strike me as a little bit daft. If anything, I’m promoting their movie by encouraging you guys to watch it. As it happens, they don’t have a leg to stand on. We are perfectly legally entitled to show clips for review purposes as long as the footage we show is a fraction of the movie’s length. So we told NBC this and it seems they’ve gone away to hassle someone else instead.
Nevertheless, I was left with a bitter taste in my mouth. We’re trying to do a good job here at ChannelFlip and to promote film in general. And I’m the first one to defend the rights of content creators. (Hell - we’re content creators!). So come on NBC Universal - show a bit of heart and help me help you. If anything, I would have expected a nice email from their PR department thanking me for the review. But you know what? We live in such a litigious world these days, it seems like an easier choice to threaten someone rather than pat them on the back. Boo.
The funny thing is, you would think NBC Universal lawyers would know right away that you would be able to use clips for a review instead of you having to tell them. So let’s assume that they did know that before contacting you. What other motive could they have? I think they are just running up a bill to give to NBC with a bunch of unnecessary legal actions to pad their own pockets.