Whose lines are they, anyway?
OK, now I’m a little (??) obsessed with this viral video thing, even to the point of creating a new video in response to my first one.
The “other version” of the Hitler-Coakley-Brown video has now received well over a million views. But not only on DrRonPaul2012’s page. The same video has been uploaded to YouTube by:
- Battlefield315 (67,000 views as of Friday afternoon)
- RonPaul4Pres2K8 (4,200)
- tikamue (1,500)
- tonytonytee (1,200)
- wbradss (400)
… and a whole bunch of others. There are probably additional me-too posts coming in every hour.
So now I’m wondering whether DrRonPaul2012 is really the author of the subtitles of “Hitler Finds Out Scott Brown Massachusetts Senate Seat” or if he was also merely a re-poster who happened to get found by the right people.
Can anyone shed some light the true origins of this clip? (Not the TRUE origins … we know it’s from the movie “Downfall.” I mean the true origins of the more popular Coakley-Brown version.) And if DrRonPaul2012 is not the real subtitle author, does the real subtitle author have any copyright claims against him? Or does the fact that we’ve all be stealing from “fairly using” the original movie void any sort of authorship rights for the new subtitles we’ve added?
Comments
Comment from GCB
Time January 22, 2010 at 8:57 pm
The other thing to be aware of is that video titles and descriptions are important. You want to be sure to include the right keywords in each. DrPaul uses Brown’s name his title, you didn’t.
(I have some experience with this and find this tip very useful.)
Comment from GCB
Time January 22, 2010 at 9:03 pm
And I’m fairly certain you retain the copyright to your subtitles as does the writer of the alternative version. (Although the filmmaker could argue they are an unauthorized derivative work, copyright law provides fairly wide berth for parody and political speech, both of which principles apply to your subtitles.)
Comment from GCB
Time January 22, 2010 at 8:54 pm
I agree yours is better.
Curious about what makes viral growth happen. I suspect it’s a matter of someone having a number of social media accounts with a large enough number of aggregate followers that they start a thread like you did by posting to facebook 10x over (or y times over where y is just big enough to tip over the viral threshold).
The Ron Paul related account is probably operated by someone who spends a lot of time maintaining and promoting Ron Paul / libertarian related websites. For instance, you can see a number of sites linked to his video description. (Interestingly, he only created his youtube account a few days ago.)
Why don’t you youtube message the handful of other folks who have uploaded video and ask if they know the original author/source.
I’d also recommend listing your video as a post yours as a video response to the others (by clicking ‘post video response’ on their youtube page as in http://www.youtube.com/video_response_upload?v=c4aQCiRjvZY).
Curious to hear what more you learn.