Fine Brothers spark fury with YouTube trademark attempt

Disaster in the making:

The creators of one of YouTube's biggest channels have sparked fury over plans to trademark and license a popular video format.

The Fine Brothers produce a popular series of "reaction videos", in which people watch online clips and respond.

On Tuesday, they revealed a scheme to let other video-makers use assets from their version of the format.

But they have faced a backlash from viewers for trademarking "react" - a term widely used by other creators.

More here: user link on www.bbc.com

Also watch the subscriber count decrease in real time here: user link on tfbsubscribers.github.io -- also includes many more details

Well, well

Copyright and Trademark law abuse. Go figure.

After watching a re-upload of their original "React World" video, what p***es me off the most is how they presented it as "You can make your own reaction videos! You just have to be licensed by us" and then after the initial backlash, they backpedaled it with a half-assed apology that was actually just "you misunderstood us" instead of "we were wrong".

Of course it doesn't matter to me one way or another, I never followed them or watched their videos anyway.

EDIT: Oh wow. The more I read, the worse it gets. They actually rallied their followers on Facebook to harass Ellen Degeneres because she made her own "kids react" segment. Now I think the Fine Brothers may actually deserve this crazy amount of flack they're getting.

I have been following this a bit lately.

To the best of my knowledge, it appeared that the Fine Brothers' egos had gotten the best of them. Their original announcement was framed as some "historically significant moment" in which they were going to change the world. It came off as if they expected people to license all reaction videos through them or else be in violation of copyright, which is a ridiculous idea and I was skeptical at first that this was their intent.

When they did the half-apology / clarification (likely backpedaling) video, they had an angry tone and tried to frame the situation as a misunderstanding. I was inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt until I heard what they did with the Ellen show, saw the trademark filings, and found out about the copyright takedowns they had against other YouTube channels that did other reaction videos.

While I don't want to see them completely destroyed as a business, an example needs to be set here that trademarking general terms and using a position of fame and wealth to bully smaller entities is not acceptable. I do hope they eventually bounce back from this but not before they are made to understand how wrong they are.

This looks an awful lot like the YouTube equivalent of patent trolling.

It's not patent trolling in the commonly-occurring sense but it's akin to that, yes.

From what I saw, it's an overtly anti-competitive move that employs both heavy-handed use of trademark enforcement, broad definitions of said trademark, some loopholes in the law (allowing the trademark as long as it passes through the public opposition phase unchallenged - this is where they really messed up by making the announcement), and vague language that would lead some creators to believe that they had to license any "reaction" video, which obviously wouldn't be enforceable.

Typical Internet mob mentalities seem involved, which means personal attacks and other meanness not relevant to the actual issue. The Fine Brothers might learn more of a lesson if people wouldn't act like middle school children in the process.