A Strange Star Wars Parody…With Bonus Copyright Fight!

YouTube user Auralnauts (two guys named Zak Koonce and Craven Moorhaus) experiments with sound and music on the videos posted on their channel. Many of them are Star Wars related, but one of them was in the news recently. The video, Star Wars Minus Williams - Throne Room, is a must-see. In a nutshell, it's the Yavin Medal Ceremony without the John Williams score. If nothing else, it really shows the value of Williams' contribution to the saga. The video starts with a short flourish from Gustav Holts's The Planets, and then the scene plays out sans score. When it goes to credits there is a 4 second burst from the original score, which emphasizes the point that John Williams is awesome.



So did you watch it? Go back and watch it!

Anyway, as of this writing, the video has 4.25 million views, and the Auralnauts channel has 205K subscribers. In a story by Wired, it turns out their fun project gained some unwanted attention when

...they received word that Warner/Chappell—the global music publishing arm of Warner Music Group—had filed a monetization claim on their “Star Wars Minus Williams” video through YouTube's Content ID System. That’s right: The copyright holder was claiming ownership of something that wasn’t there. Under the claim, Warner would receive any future ad revenue the video earns, which has been viewed more than 4 million times. The company’s effort to monetize silence transformed the Auralnauts video: Once just a clever gag, it quickly became a flashpoint in the broader YouTube conflict between freedom of expression and copyright protection.

When they posted their video, the audio track was recognized by an automated YouTube system as copyrighted material. Interestingly, the Holst music at the beginning of the video is copyright free, while the two-plus minutes of movie footage itself was not flagged as a concern. It was the 4 second clip of John Williams' score at the end of the video that was at issue.

The article goes into outstanding detail about the ins and outs of the case, describing the complex conflict between users looking to take advantage of "fair use" rule and copyright holders trying to manage their properties, as well as YouTube's attempts to keep the peace. Most recently, YouTube has taken steps to assist the Auralnauts, but the issue is currently unresolved.

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