Sony Wants YouTube To Take Down Popular Crowdfunded Film “Sintel” Michael Lee, April 7, 2014April 7, 2014 When a big and powerful movie studio as large as Sony Pictures sees their copyrighted material being used without their consent they will rightfully ask whatever video hosting website to take it down. But when they don’t own anything or their is no obvious copyright infringement it creates some what of a problem.This is the kind of problem that Blender is going is going through right now with their crowdfunded indie film Sintel. Sony Pictures wants YouTube to remove the film from its website. And even though this isn’t the first time the studio has made the request, the video keeps being taken down, only to resurface, but suffers the wrath of the studio’s legal team again. Hit the jump to learn more. Here is how CartoonBrew describes the situation:Sintel, a film by Colin Levy which has been featured before on Cartoon Brew, was created by the Blender Foundation, the non-profit organization which promotes the free, open source 3D software Blender.Their goal is giving the Internet community access to its 3D technology.Sintel, which was developed back in 2010, was created by a group of artists, and was funded by donations, DVD sales and other sponsorship. All of the film’s materials, characters, animation, textures, and more fall were created by the artists who used the Blender technology. Therefore their work would fall under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. This would allow for the content to be shared freely.The removal of the film is most likely the result of a faulty DMCA take-down request, but it speaks to a bigger and more troubling issue: corporations today have unprecedented control to wipe independent creators off the Internet.CartoonBrew later updated the report with a tweet from MediaGoblin@muhkayoh @cartoonbrew @ColinLevy Sony has also blocked a Sintel + Elephants Dream remix in the past: http://t.co/UkjWUvfWKo— MediaGoblin (@MediaGoblin) April 6, 2014Many sites are saying that Sony should be ashamed of themselves for filing such a claim, even when they don’t own the property itself. Some are pointing their anger at YouTube for even acknowledging Sony’s false DMCA claim. It’s unclear how Blender will react, if they react at all seeing that they are a non-profit group. But nobody would blame them if they did file a lawsuit against Sony Pictures for filing a false DMCA claim.Sintel (2009) – Full Film from Colin Levy on Vimeo. News BlenderBlenderFoundationLawsuitSintelSony Pictures
Avatar Expected to Sink ‘Titanic’, Impact on the Future of 3D January 11, 2010Let me start by apologizing for such an obvious and cliché title, but I couldn’t resist. Avatar is expected to pass the Titanic and become the highest grossing film of all time, or at least that’s the general consensus. As of January 11th, Avatar has grossed $1.3 billion, only $500 million… Read More
Conventions WonderCon Interview: Five Tidbits From Luc Besson On ‘Lucy’ And Directing April 21, 2014MovieViral was able to participate in a roundtable discussion with ‘Lucy’ director Luc Besson (The Fifth Element) after a WonderCon presentation for his upcoming picture. Hit the jump to learn the five most important things we learned during the talk about the movie, it’s inspiration and his craft. Read More
The Buzz: BioShock, Man of Steel, Jurassic Park 4, and More! March 15, 2013The Buzz is a feature in which we round up the Top 3 most-buzzed-about movie/TV stories of the week (in more-or-less chronological order). Why go through pages of blogs just to find out what everyone is talking about? We’ve got it all right here in The Buzz. Read More