In an unexpected turn of events, the director of the Pirate Bay documentary TPB-AFK has sent takedown notices to YouTube requesting its removal. The director states that he sees the streaming portal as a radicalizing platform full of hate. The takedowns are not without controversy, however, as TPB-AFK was published under a Creative Commons license.
You’re kind of missing the point. He released the film under creative commons license, specifically
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported. The license specifically says;Which of course includes YouTube. The license cannot be revoked as long as you follow the license, and sharing to YouTube doesn’t constitute breaking the license. Which means he’s breaking the license.
He’s very liable to be sued in this situation and he would absolutely lose.
the thing with DMCA is that it’s super easy to issue one but potentially more costly to challenge, especially if your appeals to the host fail and your only option is court.
Hosts are scared of facing liability for approving appeals so they’ll just ignore them (unless the victim is a big name that can muster popular support) so as the DMCA victim you’re usually fucked
The only legitimate takedown I can see is is the non-commercial clause. If YouTube is making money off streams, wouldn’t that be a license violation?
That’s a question for the court. It may sound cut and dry, but it’s really not. In the US legal system, other people don’t stop having rights just because you have rights. There are 3 entities at play here, the author of the work, the uploader, and YouTube, all of which have rights. But the author of the movie limited (intentionally) his rights by releasing the work under Creative Commons. The user has the right to upload the video to YouTube. That is not in question. The question is whether or not YouTube is beholden to the original Creative Commons license. They didn’t upload the media, and the media was legally uploaded and for all intents and purposes must follow YouTube policy which is their right to monetize.
This isn’t a case of someone uploading a copy-written movie and YouTube making money off of it, it’s much more complex and anyone telling you different doesn’t understand the actual legal issue here.
Which distributes videos commercially.
He DMCA’d all versions of his movie, even the ones which were not monetized. This is not a good argument and won’t hold up in court. Simple fact of the matter is, is that he violated his own license.
My understanding at least is that the CC does not mandate distribution, merely allows it, so I don’t see how he could have violated his own license if a third party uploaded the video to youtube in violation of the license.
Because he gave others irrevocable permission, without any stipulations (including what platform they uploaded his content to), to upload his content. Period. It’s a contract, and as such he cannot after the fact come out and say “oh, well, I have a problem with YouTube so you can’t upload my stuff on YouTube anymore” because that breaks the contract (license).
If the videos are monetized by the uploader, he has legal standing. But it’s not currently known or understood if he has the legal authority to pull the content because YouTube is profiting from his content. That’s up to a court to decide.
Are you telling me that this, the most obvious question of legality of profit in the entire pipeline of uploading content since around 2013, has not been considered by any court up to this year of Arceus of 2025?
Wow. Now I can begin to really understand the problem.
Name another movie uploaded under this exact CC license has been striken down under DMCA for the same ideological reasons… You make it sound like this court case pops up every week, and it doesn’t. There’s no precedence as far as I can find–which means it’s not a question which can be answered with any supporting empirical evidence. It requires a court case to say definitively if its legal or not.
Sued for what exactly?
Violation of his own Creative Commons license. It’s a tenable contract in the United States–a contract between him and viewers, creators, and frankly anyone.