r/mildlyinfuriating • u/slick7studios • Jul 16 '26

I just wanted a hot dog Apperantly A24 suddenly thinks they own all of the backrooms.

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Many people have been reporting copyright strikes for backrooms fan games, textures, and other references on Google play, Twitter and other spaces. Apparently the company thinks if they make a movie that suddenly they own the source material that existed years before the movie was even conceptualized. For an idea of how ridiculous this is, it's like saying James Cameron owns the Titanic and every survivor's story because of the movie he made.

With how shitty the world is becoming at what point is it enough, it's literally 1984, can't have shit anymore, even decades old community internet creepypastas apparently.

31.4k Upvotes

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264

u/WhateverIsFrei Jul 16 '26

There's hope it's legal team or automated tools doing it without consulting. Happened to a few things in the past and was addressed.

159

u/tduncs88 Jul 17 '26

Take this image for what its worth, but its from Kane's mouth directly. People are frothing at the mouth with literally 1% of the story. Now, im not saying bend over to the corporations or defend A24, but we as a society have decided that we need the minimal amount of facts or evidence to come to a conclusion on something before we turn to pitchforks and torches.

17

u/yepperoniP Jul 17 '26

Stuff like this has unfortunately been happening on Reddit forever. See Sunil Tripathi and the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings.

2

u/ArmAggravating3307 Jul 17 '26

You mean the guy 4chan identitied, then Buzzfeed reported as coming from Reddit?  

He was dead long before his name was ever posted on Reddit.

17

u/John_Icarus Jul 17 '26

It's still messed up. They might not have been acting maliciously, but still have responsibility for what third parties do.

Even if they retract the strikes, the consequences are still severe. Many platforms don't restore content after strikes are removed. And some will fully ban the creators if they are not reversed in time.

Companies need to hold responsibility for when they hire IP protection thugs, and those thugs start indiscriminately striking content they don't own. A strike first ask questions later attitude isn't OK.

4

u/tduncs88 Jul 17 '26

See, I absolutely agree with all of this except one thing. If a company receives a take down request, they unfortunately need to comply with it immediately. Prior to investigation. From a liability stand point, leaving something that might be an infringement or whatever active opens them up to a ton of liability. So I can understand them taking immediate action. They dont really have a choice. But its on both the take down company's side and the platforms side to make it right. Period.

2

u/SiIesh Jul 17 '26

Hard disagree. Youtube's system sucks and has sucks forever. Taking immediate action as you say could also mean making the video temporarily unavailable until resolved, giving the people who got hit any chance to dispute it etc. Instead it's an immediate strike/ban, content deleted, no way to fight it, hard to undo etc.

Immediate action sure, but no reasons for the way they go about it

3

u/tduncs88 Jul 17 '26

I dont understand why I would be downvoted and you would be upvoted. You didnt even disagree with me. You agree that they should comply with the take down request, you just disagree with how they go about doing that. All I said was that companies hit with take down requests have no choice but to comply. Which is a fact. Your opinion is that it shouldn't be handled by immediately nuking accounts and making it impossible to reverse. Which I completely agree with... soooo where's the disagreement? Lol.

2

u/LurkingRand Jul 17 '26

....You do realize he was just stating facts, not a opinion, right?
You can't "Hard Disagree" with facts. You can feel things SHOULD be different, but you can't go "Nuh-uh!" because don't like the state of things.

0

u/SiIesh Jul 17 '26

What?

1

u/LurkingRand Jul 17 '26

Do you genuinely not understand those words?

In simple terms: The other commenter was not stating a opinion. They were stating factual observation of how companies have in the past reacted to (and are in fact essentially required to due to the potential legal effects if they don't) to take down requests.

You can feel Youtube's system sucks. But that doesn't change how the system functions currently, which is what they were stating. Not how it 'should' work, but the factual state of it.

To try to disagree with that is like trying to disagree with that humans need to breathe oxygen.

-1

u/SiIesh Jul 17 '26

It's not that I don't understand your words, it's that they don't fit the context at all. You are somwhow completely missing my point and the other commenter's point in a very impressive way. Maybe focus on your own reading comprehension first.

1

u/LurkingRand Jul 17 '26

Do try to explain then instead of just dismissing it, because from my point of view it's a case of two people being in agreement the situation isn't good, but one felt a need to point out that the platforms that recieve the take down requests react as they do for a reason.

Which you then went 'Hard Disagree' to and complained about how youtube system's sucks and how it should work differently, as if a opinion had been stated rather than a observation.

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2

u/darsynia Jul 17 '26

Thank you for this.

2

u/tduncs88 Jul 17 '26

A24 actually issued a statement

2

u/darsynia Jul 17 '26

thank you I had actually just seen it but it's extremely thoughtful of you to comment with it just in case!

2

u/tduncs88 Jul 17 '26

You are very welcome. I appreciate your enthusiastic positivity!

8

u/BhanosBar Jul 17 '26

Im not defending the corpos.

Backrooms started as a 4chan post, not in a board room. It was a concept that was BUILT on fan projects. If you take down fan projects after basically hijacking the concept you are scum.

Doesn’t help that if this sets a precedent (it has), it means other web fan projects can also be destroyed by corpos. Especially worried by the V.H.S SCP anthology coming soon. If that comes out, the studio could theoretically have the power to take down all fan works.

8

u/Stampyboyz Jul 17 '26

Something to add about that worry about V.H.S: SCP

They haven't talked to wiki staff, nor authors. And it's believed they're going to ignore the wiki's CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Good news at least, the Wiki's licensing team has dealt with abuses of the SCP IP with someone in Russia trademarking the SCP branding and who then held it hostage beforehand.

3

u/WastelandOfNorth Jul 17 '26

Well that one sorta failed, mostly because Russia doesn't recognise international copyright and trademark laws.

3

u/Stampyboyz Jul 17 '26

It was successful actually.

1

u/WastelandOfNorth Jul 17 '26

Wow, you are right, sorry, stopped following the situation when all seemed lost.

16

u/thedylannorwood Jul 17 '26

Kane Parsons did not “hijack the concept”, he fostered his own version that he then decided to adapt into a film. He owns his version of Backrooms. Not saying any of this is right but to say he has no right to enforce anything is ignorant

9

u/BhanosBar Jul 17 '26

Im not saying Kane Parsons Hijacked it. Im saying A24, banking off HIS SUCCESS AND CONTRIBUTION TO THE COMMUNITY, Hijacked it.

4

u/tduncs88 Jul 17 '26

What i was saying though is that we dont know the whole story and if the source that KANE HIMSELF has specifically pointed to isnt lying to him, this wasnt even what A24 wanted. Its entirely possible that, much like we have been able to come to expect from reddit, conclusions were come to far far too hastily. I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt. Because even if what can said ISNT true, A24 realizes they fucked up. And at a bare minimum will back track. Thats all I was trying to get at

1

u/Old-Permit Jul 17 '26

it's crazy that in a few years this guy who used to be a regular guy making movies, is gonna get so rich and famous he probably won't talk on discord with other regular people ever again outside of press events

1

u/tduncs88 Jul 17 '26

Definitely weird to think about!

1

u/ZeoVII Jul 17 '26

While yes that is Kane stance, he is not the only player that has a say, there is A24, and their management and legal team.

Sure it might have been an error of the automated system, but somewhere in the Corp ladder some approved the use of the automated system, and someone approved to setting it loose all over the internet. If A24 was only targeting camrips, how did the wall paper from a non-video website got hit? Corpos want to cast wide net to hit anything...

There have been multiple cases where the authors are very open and free to community, while the company that holds the interest go against those wishes and try to clamp and close down on anything...

2

u/tduncs88 Jul 17 '26

As has been pointed out elsewhere, many of these companies use a third party firm to handle copy right take downs and the like. A24 has already made a statement at this point, that none of it was intentional. Now maybe it was because of the push back, maybe it was an accident. Regardless, they are taking the steps necessary to "undo" the damage. As much as it can be undone. But it was made pretty clear that the Red Bubble thing was a mass take down of any item with "Backrooms" in the name. I personally don't think it's even plausible that this was A24s intent. Whether it was an over zealous legal team, a third party copy right firm, Red Bubbles' own platform AI, one thing is fact. The level at which the takedowns were happening was not supposed to happen.

I wouldn't say I'm "anti-corporate", but I'm very much no where near being some corpo boot licker. With that in mind, I very much feel like we should give A24 a little bit of grace here because what happened is absolutely not a unique situation. There are so many comments in these different discussion threads pointing to examples of this happening before. the net was cast, it was meant to be narrow, it went poorly and A24 is rectifying it. Beyond it not happening in the first place, A24's handling of the situation was best case scenario.

-3

u/KontoOficjalneMR Jul 17 '26

Lol. Read it again.

He goes from "It's definitely not us" through "It's a mistake" to "Yes, it's us we're doing it, but I'm asking them to stop"

So everything people rightly assumed is true and confirmed now.

5

u/Eorlas Jul 17 '26

...that doesnt read like that at all.

0

u/KontoOficjalneMR Jul 17 '26

Lol. Am I the only one who can read?

"They tell me they do not" to "They are working rapidly to resolve it" within a few minutes

How they can resolve it if it's not them? Of course it's them. If it wasn't them they would be able to fix it as well as you or me. They can only stop resolve it because they are the ones causing it.

It just looks like they lied to the director, and he in turn relied the lie, until it was impossible to lie anymore. So they switched from "it's not us" to "you got us, we won't do it again!"

3

u/Beartato4772 Jul 17 '26

Even so there should be actual punishment for false claims like this.

There never will be of course.