The Copyright system being abused yet again to stifle free speech through forced, legal doxxing…
This guy is just suing everybody on youtube or trying to “cancel” other youtubers when he disagrees with them on the genocide happening in Gaza.
His fans are all for it. Ugh.
Isn’t this the guy that won that massive case that set the precedent for fair use on YouTube?
Edit: it is that guy
Can someone post a free link? I cannot read the full article.
I wonder what the background history of this is, because people don’t just do this for no reason.
One thing I heard a while ago is that Klein and his children were getting harassed/stalked in public and in their home because they got doxxed or something. I don’t remember how long ago I heard this, or if it is related to his suit. Can anyone verify what I said? I would rather not comb through the politically polarized brain rot of social media.
What I imagine is that maybe he is unmasking the legal identities of those Discord server and subreddit mods because they are responsible for these harassments? I don’t know, maybe, maybe not. It would make sense to pursue the actual criminals who were harassing him.
Does anyone know the background history? Or can anyone post a free link?
Edit:
: ( I hate making random accounts.
I’m confused. What do you mean by bots? I would understand if there were restrictions to commenting on the article, but I am just viewing it. I’m not sure what the concerns are for when a bot views it. Unless they are against web scraping or something? Is that the goal?
1 Like
The article is free, you just have to make an account, as a counter to bots.
1 Like
It is related to what you are saying. There are HOURS of debate and drama on this and there are clearly 2 sides to the stories. It’s super complex and involve many creators including bigger ones like Hasan Piker, IDubbbz (Ian) and Destiny. Some of it is also related to the Gaza / Israel war.
Problem is Ethan is the bigger channel and what he’s doing with his influence is trying to shut people up. He’s trying to cancel any influencer that dare say a word against him. And I personally hate that attitude.
Here’s a 5 minutes summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoQXu57dmqg
For one, could you make it as a new reply instead of editing your existing post next time? As for the bot resistance, they’re trying to make it so LLM Crawlers can’t just read everything on their website without permission since they’re known to ignore robots.txt. As a preventative measure, they lock their articles behind an account requirement. They do have some paid articles, but alot of them are free.
Jesus Christ, I feel so disconnected with whatever this is. It’s information after information after information, and I don’t feel inclined to be parasocially latched onto it. Whatever it may be, legally doxxing online accounts is a worry. It’s one thing for the identities of online accounts to be revealed due to something like a criminal investigation. But in this case, it’s a lawsuit that’s setting precedent for future legal proceedings…
I edited because I did not want to derail the topic of the post. I should have said that in the edit so that you could do so as well.
Ah, I assumed so.
You should bookmark https://archive.today/ for future use lol
2 Likes
That was about fair use, and so is this in a way. Ethan debated xQc on this (don’t watch, it’s cringe) where Ethan argued that watching content on a livestream isn’t fair use, and using the same title as the original video is a deliberate attempt to siphon viewership and revenue the original video would’ve gotten.
Ethan’s content nowadays is unfortunately about drama with other content creators and apparently, the divided fanbases on reddit are encouraging their community to post restreams of his content with alternative links so that Ethan can’t profit from viewers watching his content.
Ethan is not a legal expert, but he’s actually pretty good when it comes to fair use. He copyrights his content before he streams because it’s super easy to use other people’s content without permission, so he makes it easier for himself to sue for copyright infringement. For the subpoena to go through, the lawsuit must go to the alleged defendants, which would involve Reddit de-anonymizing them.
Obviously, this is not good for privacy, but in the online creation space, there is a universal agreement that siphoning views (and even profiting from other creator’s work) is bad (JJJacksfilms used to make a whole series about this on SSSniperwolf). And regardless of this being a privacy issue or free speech issue, it has always been possible to subpoena someone online.
This is the same guy who went down a manhole and ate chicken nine years ago.
OK, as an attorney, I have to step in here because there’s a ton of misinformation floating around in this thread right now.
First off, I just want to say Ethan Klein is a scumbag, and that part is indisputable. But a lot of you are making a lot of incorrect assumptions about what’s actually happening here, especially when it comes to the copyright case.
There are two separate issues at play, the copyright infringement situation, and the unmasking of Reddit mods.
Let’s start with the copyright issue. I honestly don’t think this is going to make it to a jury. The evidence here is so overwhelmingly in favor of the plaintiff that I fully expect the judge to grant a motion for summary judgment. That’s how strong the case is against these three individuals. He is just automatically going to rule in Ethan’s favor, and this is never going to make it to a jury. Copyright cases are always handled on a case by case basis, and while it’s true that the law can be a bit gray on it, this is by far the most open and shut copyright infringement case I’ve ever seen in all my years of practice.
Now, the reason copyright law can be so gray is because the outcomes can hinge on specific details. For example, in Ethan’s previous case against Matt Haas, Ethan didn’t use the entire video, and he made it transformative. He did take a pretty significant portion of it, but not the whole thing, and the judge specifically pointed that out. In fact, Ethan will likely be able to refer back to that case for precedent here.
When it comes to copyright, one thing you can do that will pretty much guarantee you lose your case is to play the entire copyrighted work. It doesn’t matter how much you talk over it or how transformative you think you’ve made it, if you use the entire work, it’s a violation.
Many react YouTubers get away with this because lawsuits are expensive, and sometimes there’s a sort of unwritten “gentleman’s agreement” where the copyright holder lets it slide for the free publicity. And also, there are DMCA laws, which is kind of a middleman to protect that. But the entire work was played. And that’s a problem.
Now, here’s where it gets even worse. These individuals specifically told their audience to watch their version of the video instead of Ethan’s, so that Ethan wouldn’t get any revenue. That’s malicious intent.
Not only will they likely lose the copyright case and face damages, but because of that malicious intent, the judge will likely award punitive damages and it could be as high as $150,000 per defendant. This is not a gray area, not up for debate. They played the whole video and deliberately encouraged people to watch their version instead. It’s blatant infringement.
Now, moving on to the second issue with the Reddit moderators. This is where things get a bit more complicated. Ethan is trying to unmask the mods because they allegedly conspired with streamers to manipulate views away from his video. While privacy isn’t guaranteed, anonymity is to some extent, and there’s legal precedent where judges weigh the line between free speech and something that could be considered criminal. And I will say for the most part, judges do tend to heavily pushback on that. They really don’t like unmasking. Those snark subreddits however definitely walk a fine line when it comes to harassment and things that aren’t protected by law. So, that part of the case will be interesting to watch unfold.
I people don’t like Ethan (I’m not his biggest fan either). But I need to clear up the misconceptions here, regardless of whether or not Ethan played some mind games with users to trap them, these three individuals absolutely broke copyright law. This isn’t a free speech issue. It wasn’t fair use. The bigger question is what’s going to happen with the Reddit situation.
3 Likes
Pretty much this. I’m not familiar with Ethan’s content nowadays, whatever drama or Isreal/Palestine controversies he’s been involved with, but every lawsuits involving Ethan that I’ve seen historically is always related to copyright and fair use, not free speech.
It’s about as rock solid as a case can get. That’s why I always emphasize the importance of the DMCA and the danger of using an entire copyrighted work. Most of the time, a DMCA takedown is enough, but if someone wants to go scorched earth, they can skip right over that and head straight to a lawsuit.
I work in entertainment law, and while copyright is its own lane, there’s plenty of overlap. I bring up YouTube reactors because I see this happen all the time with music videos. And I’ve also seen artists drag reactors into court those reactors lost every single time. The deciding factor in all those cases was they played the full work. Even if they added commentary and tried to make it transformative, using the entire video is a massive strike against fair use.
Now, these cases are rare, because lawsuits are incredibly expensive and most of the people being sued couldn’t realistically pay damages anyway. But if a band has enough time and money, they’ll win. Most of the time they don’t pursue it. Because sometimes they have deals with the reactor through the record label, or it can be free publicity, yada yada. Or sometimes you just end up, losing more in fees, than what you would recover. (that is very circumstantial though)
And in this particular situation, it’s even worse, the reactor admitted they were acting as a market substitute. That adds malicious intent, which means they’re looking at punitive damages stacked on top of everything else.
So if you want to react to something, I can’t stress this enough, use snippets, use anything that could be considered contextually ok, but for the love of God consult a lawyer if you need to, and never, ever, ever, under any circumstances use the entire work.
2 Likes
This is definitely the most on-topic question anyways. The weird thing is that it seems like there is 0 actual copyright case against the subreddit moderators, who seem to have nothing to do with the 3 streamers who made the reaction videos.
I am not a lawyer, but I would hope there is not a law saying people cannot share a link to potentially copyright infringing content, which is hosted on a different platform, and posted by somebody else entirely 
2 Likes
If there’s copyrighted material posted on a different platform that’s not uploaded by the copyright holder, I can share a link to the material without being sued because I’m not the one violating copyright laws. I can share a scene of a movie I found on YouTube that’s uploaded by some random person without permission and we could all watch it before the video gets taken down.
If the goal was to drive traffic away from Ethan’s channel, his streams would have to be uploaded elsewhere without his approval. He’s suing the moderators who uploaded his content to different platforms, not the users who shared them.
I’ve seen some of his detractors calling it an attempt to stifle free speech and criticisms against him, but at the same time, the system around reaction content is broken, where YouTubers can upload other people’s content, provide meaningless commentary (if any) and call it “fair use”.
Well this is not my understanding of the case. There are two distinct groups of people he is going after here.
-
The three people (“Frogan, Kaceytron, and Denims”) who uploaded (yes, likely illegal) reaction content of his streams
-
The moderation team of r/h3snark, because users there “shared the Denims video as part of a thread about Klein’s Piker essay”
If these groups are not related then it does not make any sense for him to go after the second group by subpoenaing Reddit and Discord, and it is clearly just an attempt to stifle free speech.
It’s copyright infringement when done with intention. The allegation is the content creators conspired with their mods to drive traffic to their platform and profit of the original creator’s work. Sharing copyrighted material on reddit is usually organic and the mods could have this plausible deniability. But if there’s evidence of this being true, it means multiple parties were complicit, not just the creators.