Hitler “Downfall Meme” gets taken down

http://openvideoalliance.org/2010/04/hitler-downfall-meme-gets-dmcad/?l=en

by borism • 16 years ago

49 43 16 years ago

Odd. I remember reading that the director was impressed with what people ended up making of his work, and laughed about it.

noonespecial• 16 years ago

The director probably has about as much to say about the use of the end product as the janitor. Witness OK Go.

RevRal• 16 years ago

Yeah. http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/01/the_director_of...

BigZaphod• 16 years ago

I don't think Hitler would take kindly to hearing this news... It's a shame we'll now not be able to see his reaction.

timcederman• 16 years ago

I think this is the third thread I've run across in the last few minutes where the top voted comment (by a lot) is some witty rejoinder, rather than an actual interesting comment or consideration.

Not saying it should/shouldn't be like that, just making an observation (far be it from me to dictate to the community how it should act), and am surprised to see it on Hacker News.

volare• 16 years ago

This is a reasonable comment. I'm further surprised to see you being down-voted.

apphacker• 16 years ago

When I ever see such a witty statement, I chuckle, and then I downvote. I think our brains are somehow hardwired to click upvote buttons when something makes us laugh even though it contributes nothing else. I don't know if the upvotes of wit have done good things for fark, digg or reddit, but now I spend more time here than there so I downvote. I think that's how memes begin, and I'd hate to see memes on HN. This article is about the death of a meme, and I am glad to see it go.

Keyframe• 16 years ago

http://vimeo.com/11086952

tvon• 16 years ago

also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBO5dh9qrIQ

CrazedGeek• 16 years ago

Just in case you haven't seen one of these, this one's a decent example: http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththegl...

protomyth• 16 years ago

Wonder how many people bought the actual DVD because of all those videos?

antidaily• 16 years ago

/raises hand. (well, rented)

cynicalkane• 16 years ago

Bought a copy for my dad for Christmas because he was such a fan of the Hitler videos.

splat• 16 years ago

It's always seemed odd to me when the owners of the media from which some internet meme is based destroy the videos that made them popular in the first place, given that it would be completely unknown without the meme. The artist's biggest enemy is not piracy but obscurity.

LiveTheDream• 16 years ago

The artist's biggest enemy is not piracy but obscurity.

RyanMcGreal• 16 years ago

http://openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2002/12/11/piracy.html

iaskwhy• 16 years ago

I had the chance to see it at the theater on the release day long before all this parody videos were created. It's an amazing movie, the best featuring Hitler in my opinion. The theater was pretty crowded and lots of people cried during the movie. I'd say Bruno Ganz's performance shares a big part of the responsibility for that effect, one of the best actings I have ever seen. You should all watch it, really.

JacobAldridge• 16 years ago

The Downfall - Das Boot double is an epic day, and well worth the investment. It's tough reading subtitles for seven-something hours, but the hollowness of war feeling I was left with...

mortenjorck• 16 years ago

I probably never would have given the movie a second look if I'd never seen Hitler banned from XBox Live, World of Warcraft, and so on.

In all seriousness, the actual film has become one of my favorite WWII movies. I think the Hitler meme works in part because it's recontextualizing such a magnificently, disturbingly well-executed scene, which in turn gives anyone who appreciates good film a good reason to seek out the original.

ctkrohn• 16 years ago

First saw it back in 2008 as a parody of the whole subprime CDO meltdown. Hitler shouts "But S&P said these were AAA! Now Goldman says they're only worth 70 cents on the dollar!" and so forth. Not too long after that, it came from Netflix. Great movie.

jordanb• 16 years ago

Downfall was an incredibly powerful movie and that meme was wearing the impact off of its best scene. I could see the creators ignoring the fact that it's making the movie more popular and demanding a take-down as a matter of principle.

plorkyeran• 16 years ago

The director loves the meme.

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/01/the_director_of...

rit• 16 years ago

Isn't today his birthday? (Random factoid lodged in my brain)

fbu• 16 years ago

20 April 1889

Well done, Sir !

KirinDave2• 16 years ago

Is the article trying to suggest this is fair use under parody, at the end?

Seems like it wasn't really qualifying. Taking 5 minutes wholesale out of a movie and overlaying text is a tough sell for "parody", which typically involves shorter duration.

I hope someone challenges this ruling. It'd be interesting to see if we can expand what parody is.

smallblacksun• 16 years ago

Artists like Weird Al use entire songs for parody, so I don't think a 5 minute clip would be too long.

InclinedPlane• 16 years ago

Artists like Weird Al get permission from the original artists, they also don't use any original material, typically. For what it's worth.

hugh3• 16 years ago

I think what prevents this from being "parody" is that the thing being copied is not the thing being parodied. A "Downfall" parody video about Star Trek isn't a parody of Downfall, it's a parody of Star Trek, or maybe a parody of Star Trek fans.

Similarly, when Weird Al Yankovic ripped off Nirvana to make fun of Nirvana he didn't need to get permission to do so, but when he ripped off American Pie to make fun of Star Wars Episode 1 he did. (For the record, Weird Al nowadays always gets permission from the original artist anyway.)

mikecane• 16 years ago

See, the thing is, I don't know German, so how can it really be a theft of the movie if the original English subtitles aren't there for me to understand it? Doesn't comprehensibility figure into this at all?

KirinDave2• 16 years ago

It doesn't seem to.

tokenadult• 16 years ago

"parody", which typically involves shorter duration.

Length of the excerpt has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not a use is parody. Length of an excerpt compared to length of the whole work has something to do with whether or not a use is "fair use," and thus permitted without permission.

Similarly, parody is one purpose for adapting a copyrighted work, which is also a test of "fair use," with rather generous legal protection. The book Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs

http://www.amazon.com/Dave-Barrys-Book-Bad-Songs/dp/08362144...

is an example of use that is fair use even though some of the quotations from some lyrics did NOT receive permission from the copyright holders--as is explicitly noted on the extensive credits page of Dave Barry's book.

joshu• 16 years ago

So this is basically the DMCA protecting us from an unfunny copypasta meme? Awesome.

shalmanese• 16 years ago

I always wonder what the hidden backstory is behind these kind of things. Is it:

a) They were not aware of the downfall stuff on youtube until this point and, when they discovered it, they were horrified and promptly removed them

b) They were aware from the beginning and hated it from the beginning and it's taken them 2 or 3 years to work through the process of taking them down

c) They were aware from the beginning and they loved/tolerated it but something changed their mind recently and now they want them removed

d) It's not actually the film company filing the notices but some elaborate 4chan troll

e) something else

There are no boring hypotheses that I can think of. Every hypothesis has something weird associated with it so I'm really curious which it ends up being.

BoppreH2• 16 years ago

It seems the videos were removed automatically. Maybe only now Youtube's software caught that up and the producers forgot to tell that they want to keep the videos.

But that's just a wild guess on how things work there.

arantius• 16 years ago

http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en...

Specifically: What happens when Content ID identifies a match?

If Content ID identifies a match between a user upload and material in the reference library, it applies the usage policy designated by the content owner. The usage policy tells the system what to do with the video.

So, I'd highly suspect that just now the content owner set the policy. I can't believe that the filter is multiple years out of date, and just now catching up. They wouldn't all be flagged at once, if the processing was that slow.

dacort• 16 years ago

Wonder how quickly somebody is going to create one about the downfall of the downfall meme...

BoppreH2• 16 years ago

Bam. It's already here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fAQKa8rU_4

metamemetics• 16 years ago

There are some copies of the popular ones with less views still up. This was the best one IMO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUjaW4ZtdN0

slillibri• 16 years ago

This is actually pretty sad, since the director of "Downfall" approves of the usage. http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/01/the_director_of...

pw0ncakes• 16 years ago

Das ist ein nukular buttfail.

The "meme" is a major advertisement for the film, and free for them. I know a lot of people who have rented or seen Der Untergang whose first exposure to the film's existence was the Hitler spoofs.

It's not my fault that the media corporations can't figure out a way to make money off the new distribution mechanisms.

Hitler “Downfall Meme” gets taken down

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