Leonard French is threatening to sue Univision -

[mindlessobserver]

Leonard French is a kinda proto-cow I have been following off an on since the Alex Mauer shenanigans. He was the guy who sued the troon for e-fame on behalf of sheisty game dev. Never been much for a thread though as the guy is really very, very boring. There seemed to be some hope when he started claiming to be bi-sexual and hanging out with some weird gender studies chick but alas, still not much.

Anyway, apparently Univision decided to content ID claim his video on the Mueller testimony, and French is saying he's gonna sue em. Again most likely more for e-fame then for any real reason.

 

[Captain Manning]

I have mixed feelings about French, but I'm not inclined to shit on him too hard (yet).

The Mauer thing might have had an e-fame component, but I think it's only fair to point out it was also completely above board. He's an IP attorney in PA. Mauer is in PA. He had a client that was a victim of them. It makes legal sense. I'm glad he did it. That troon needed to be bitch slapped hard.

I was kinda hoping he wouldn't go super lefty after seeing first-hand how disingenuous the gaming press is but, alas, that's probably a fool's hope.

 

[DrearyDoomguy]

Glad to see him pushing back against DMCA abuse, considering that's about the only thing he's good for.

 

[Captain Manning]

Glad to see him pushing back against DMCA abuse, considering that's about the only thing he's good for.

Yeah, he's not horrible with IP issues. I have no trouble believing Univision fucked him. DMCA abuse is all too common and needs to be challenged. This is the same DMCA that allowed some bullshit media company to briefly claim the Mars rover footage from NASA's channel. I mean, come on.

 

[waffle]

he started claiming to be bi-sexual and hanging out with some weird gender studies chick

Oh shit, I seriously thought that was a trany. Especially since he is so vague about their relationship, and I only heard him use weird words like "partner". He's incredibly sensitive about LGBT stuff, as evidenced by his absolute spergout over that Chris Hook stuff (he called opposing counsel gay boys because they were acting like a bunch of fags, and then they proceeded to act like even bigger fags).

I am a lawyer, and from the little I've looked at it French has a meritorious claim against uni-vision, and more big companies need to get slapped in the nuts over DMCA abuse.

That being said, french is a cow who just hasn't been milked yet. He has that weird cow mix of being incredibly sensitive and emotionally fragile, but at the same time holding him self out as a tough guy who you can't fuck with or else. He's pretty much just a cry-bully.

There is also a luly video he posted about a year and a half ago of him getting in a "self defense situation" over some weird road rage dispute or something (memory is fuzzy) where he acted like a total spaz after drawing his gun.

 

[Iron Hamster]

Not sure why he would have to sue them. Just challenge the claim and they'll take him to court.
They'll get bonus points if they use the cackling hen group from NY.

 

[mindlessobserver]

Oh shit, I seriously thought that was a trany. Especially since he is so vague about their relationship, and I only heard him use weird words like "partner".

Was that a tranny? I figured it was some sort of trendy faux lesbian trying to be tough gurl. She had a pretty high pitched voice if I recall so that was the category i ended up filing her under.

 

[Chicken Lo Mein]

That being said, french is a cow who just hasn't been milked yet. He has that weird cow mix of being incredibly sensitive and emotionally fragile, but at the same time holding him self out as a tough guy who you can't fuck with or else. He's pretty much just a cry-bully.

That's pretty common in he troon community, and also in general. There's a lot of examples of "tough guys" who are pussies. Ex: DSP

 

[waffle]

That's pretty common in he troon community, and also in general. There's a lot of examples of "tough guys" who are pussies. Ex: DSP

It's a lawyer thing too, there's a lot of guys who are pencil-necked pussies on a power trip because they now have the ability to fuck with people and feel like a big man through litigation.

There's some maximum I can't exactly remember right now about how the most dangerous type of person is a coward with a gun, it's the same concept.

 

[HeyItsHarveyMacClout]

Univision really could not have fucked up more than they did in this situation. Leonard French is the last person you want to issue a false copyright claim to. Not only is he an IP lawyer, but he is also one of the most famous legal channels on Youtube, and his viewer base is significantly more educated and wealthy than average Youtubers. A call to action from him won't just be heard by little children, but by other lawyers, legal specialist, and professionals who have been waiting for a chance to smack Youtube down for a while. In cases of controversial legal issues, some say that the courts will wait until they have a golden boy case before they'll touch it and set a precedent. This is what happened with Civil Forfeiture. Everyone knew it violated the constitution, and everyone knew it would be struck down eventually. However, the courts didn't want to set a precedent with any gray area, so they waited until a case showed up with an obvious example of police overstepping their boundaries and seizing a good that was obviously not purchased with drug money. I believe Leonard French's case might be such a golden boy case that he could set legal precedent.

Univision didn't own the copyright - The copy striked video was Leonard French's live commentary on the Robert Mueller investigation. Not only was the footage not owned or even filmed by Univision, it was created by CSPAN with the sole intention of being released into the public domain. Once something is in the public domain, you can do quasi-anything with it. You can reupload it without changing anything, you can make non-transformative edits, and you can even change it in such a way that you gain a copyright on your new IP (such as creating a commentary video or making a documentary). However, no matter what you do with the work you cannot gain a new copyright over the original piece. Univision, by issuing this DMCA, said that they owned the original video and that French was specifically harming them by publishing his video. This was either willful negligence (at best) or malicious abuse to maximize profits.

Univision made a "mistake" with content ID - As French says in his video, what likely happened was that Univision has their own footage of the Mueller case and the Youtube algorithm falsely identifies the CSPAN footage as theirs. Youtube then has an automatic filter that flags videos and sends a warning to a channel whenever they detect content that's substantially similar to theirs, and then allows them to say "This is fair use, leave it up," "This is not fair use, remove it," or "This is not fair use, leave it up but give me all the add revenue." Univision, by law, is required to accurately report when content is and isn't fair use. This ideally means that they should be forwarding all their copyright claims to their legal department and have them decide what action they take against the video. It was blatantly obvious that Univision didn't do that, and more likely than not they had the automatic response to all copyright flags set to "not fair use/give us all the revenue." This is not legal. Just because a car drives by in the background of a 20 minute video blasting Travis Scott does not mean that Sony owns all the money made by the video; similarly, even if Univision did own the copyright to the Mueller testimony, just because he used their footage doesn't mean it's not fair use. It is Univision's responsibility to filter out what is and isn't fair use, and by copyright claiming all videos, they are directly profiting off of creators' hard work.

French lost maybe 5 dollars on the video. So what? - French describes this situation as "death by a thousand cuts." Sure, this one video getting claimed probably did not substantially financially harm him, but if video after video gets claimed even though he is well within fair use, then that does become a financial burden upon him. On the other side of the coin, Univision's negligent policies are wrongly profiting them. 5 dollars a video may be a drop in the bucket for an international corporation like them, but if they've claimed hundreds or thousands of videos that they shouldn't have, then that money really starts to add up. I think everyone here can agree that false copyright flagging is a huge problem on Youtube. It wrongly robs creators of profits from their hard work, and it stifles innovation and creativity by making channels say to themselves "should I even bother putting all this time and effort into this if Univision is going to copyright it anyways?" This may have only marginally hurt French and this may have negligibly benefited Univision, but by allowing this to continue we as a society as a whole are suffering.

I think that if Leonard French peruses this case to the fullest that this might be the most consequential lawsuit in Youtube history. One, this is a slam dunk case and French has next to no chance of losing. Two, even if French gets a settlement from this then it sets a precedent that other content creators can use in the future to give them leverage over big companies. If the result of arbitration/mediation is that Univision has to pay the original amount taken from the video + $10,000 (arbitrary number set for example), and tomorrow you get flagged by Univision, then you and your lawyer have a base line for compensation when fighting this strike. Third, if this does go to trial, not only is French going to win, chances are he's going to win big and set a precedent and get punitive damages. This would be huge because in cases like this in the future, one would not have to go through an expensive legal process, they would be able to file for summary judgement which would basically say "Hey, this case is identical to Leonard French's and he won. Plz give me my damages plus punitive moneyz" and chances are the judge would award it. Either way if he settles or goes to court, this would massively increase the risk of corporations indiscriminately flagging videos. If even only one in a hundred videos are falsely flagged, and the average payout + legal costs for a false DMCA is $10,000 then the expected payout of indiscriminately flagging videos would be 99*($5) - 1*($10,000) or -$9,505 per hundred videos. That only goes up as the ratio of incorrect DMCAs increases and I'm willing to bet that it is far higher than 1:100.

This would lead to one of three options for companies, 1) Continue to flag videos indiscriminately, This would quickly become unprofitable so companies would not do this for long. 2) Companies will have their humans/legal department review all claims and correctly identify fair use and non-fair use. This would be a significantly better system than what's currently in place for consumers. Videos that are fair use will be left monetized, and videos that are not fair use will correctly have their ill-gotten gains sent to the IP holder. However, this is expensive and not even 100% accurate, so chances are companies would not do this. This leaves us with option 3) Companies will only flag blatant IP theft and nothing more. Under this system, if you went and uploaded sections of a movie or a song without any commentary or transformative content, then chances are the studio would flag you. However, things like memes, reviews, and remixes would not be touched because the companies would say "the algorithm can't tell if this is fair use or not. We can automatically claim it at which case we are open to a host of liability, or we can send it to human review/our legal department which is expensive. If the algorithm says that a video is not fair use with anything less than a X% confidence, then just ignore it." This would greatly increase creativity, profitability, and confidence on the platform, and just generally lead to a freer internet.

Or none of this could happen and the mouse "donates" a fuck ton of money to the judge's charity and he rules that Leonard French is a twat. Who knows. In an ideal world, this lawsuit would be a huge win for consumers.

 

[DragoonSierra]

Univision really could not have fucked up more than they did in this situation. Leonard French is the last person you want to issue a false copyright claim to. Not only is he an IP lawyer, but he is also one of the most famous legal channels on Youtube, and his viewer base is significantly more educated and wealthy than average Youtubers. A call to action from him won't just be heard by little children, but by other lawyers, legal specialist, and professionals who have been waiting for a chance to smack Youtube down for a while. In cases of controversial legal issues, some say that the courts will wait until they have a golden boy case before they'll touch it and set a precedent. This is what happened with Civil Forfeiture. Everyone knew it violated the constitution, and everyone knew it would be struck down eventually. However, the courts didn't want to set a precedent with any gray area, so they waited until a case showed up with an obvious example of police overstepping their boundaries and seizing a good that was obviously not purchased with drug money. I believe Leonard French's case might be such a golden boy case that he could set legal precedent.

Univision didn't own the copyright - The copy striked video was Leonard French's live commentary on the Robert Mueller investigation. Not only was the footage not owned or even filmed by Univision, it was created by CSPAN with the sole intention of being released into the public domain. Once something is in the public domain, you can do quasi-anything with it. You can reupload it without changing anything, you can make non-transformative edits, and you can even change it in such a way that you gain a copyright on your new IP (such as creating a commentary video or making a documentary). However, no matter what you do with the work you cannot gain a new copyright over the original piece. Univision, by issuing this DMCA, said that they owned the original video and that French was specifically harming them by publishing his video. This was either willful negligence (at best) or malicious abuse to maximize profits.

Univision made a "mistake" with content ID - As French says in his video, what likely happened was that Univision has their own footage of the Mueller case and the Youtube algorithm falsely identifies the CSPAN footage as theirs. Youtube then has an automatic filter that flags videos and sends a warning to a channel whenever they detect content that's substantially similar to theirs, and then allows them to say "This is fair use, leave it up," "This is not fair use, remove it," or "This is not fair use, leave it up but give me all the add revenue." Univision, by law, is required to accurately report when content is and isn't fair use. This ideally means that they should be forwarding all their copyright claims to their legal department and have them decide what action they take against the video. It was blatantly obvious that Univision didn't do that, and more likely than not they had the automatic response to all copyright flags set to "not fair use/give us all the revenue." This is not legal. Just because a car drives by in the background of a 20 minute video blasting Travis Scott does not mean that Sony owns all the money made by the video; similarly, even if Univision did own the copyright to the Mueller testimony, just because he used their footage doesn't mean it's not fair use. It is Univision's responsibility to filter out what is and isn't fair use, and by copyright claiming all videos, they are directly profiting off of creators' hard work.

French lost maybe 5 dollars on the video. So what? - French describes this situation as "death by a thousand cuts." Sure, this one video getting claimed probably did not substantially financially harm him, but if video after video gets claimed even though he is well within fair use, then that does become a financial burden upon him. On the other side of the coin, Univision's negligent policies are wrongly profiting them. 5 dollars a video may be a drop in the bucket for an international corporation like them, but if they've claimed hundreds or thousands of videos that they shouldn't have, then that money really starts to add up. I think everyone here can agree that false copyright flagging is a huge problem on Youtube. It wrongly robs creators of profits from their hard work, and it stifles innovation and creativity by making channels say to themselves "should I even bother putting all this time and effort into this if Univision is going to copyright it anyways?" This may have only marginally hurt French and this may have negligibly benefited Univision, but by allowing this to continue we as a society as a whole are suffering.

I think that if Leonard French peruses this case to the fullest that this might be the most consequential lawsuit in Youtube history. One, this is a slam dunk case and French has next to no chance of losing. Two, even if French gets a settlement from this then it sets a precedent that other content creators can use in the future to give them leverage over big companies. If the result of arbitration/mediation is that Univision has to pay the original amount taken from the video + $10,000 (arbitrary number set for example), and tomorrow you get flagged by Univision, then you and your lawyer have a base line for compensation when fighting this strike. Third, if this does go to trial, not only is French going to win, chances are he's going to win big and set a precedent and get punitive damages. This would be huge because in cases like this in the future, one would not have to go through an expensive legal process, they would be able to file for summary judgement which would basically say "Hey, this case is identical to Leonard French's and he won. Plz give me my damages plus punitive moneyz" and chances are the judge would award it. Either way if he settles or goes to court, this would massively increase the risk of corporations indiscriminately flagging videos. If even only one in a hundred videos are falsely flagged, and the average payout + legal costs for a false DMCA is $10,000 then the expected payout of indiscriminately flagging videos would be 99*($5) - 1*($10,000) or -$9,505 per hundred videos. That only goes up as the ratio of incorrect DMCAs increases and I'm willing to bet that it is far higher than 1:100.

This would lead to one of three options for companies, 1) Continue to flag videos indiscriminately, This would quickly become unprofitable so companies would not do this for long. 2) Companies will have their humans/legal department review all claims and correctly identify fair use and non-fair use. This would be a significantly better system than what's currently in place for consumers. Videos that are fair use will be left monetized, and videos that are not fair use will correctly have their ill-gotten gains sent to the IP holder. However, this is expensive and not even 100% accurate, so chances are companies would not do this. This leaves us with option 3) Companies will only flag blatant IP theft and nothing more. Under this system, if you went and uploaded sections of a movie or a song without any commentary or transformative content, then chances are the studio would flag you. However, things like memes, reviews, and remixes would not be touched because the companies would say "the algorithm can't tell if this is fair use or not. We can automatically claim it at which case we are open to a host of liability, or we can send it to human review/our legal department which is expensive. If the algorithm says that a video is not fair use with anything less than a X% confidence, then just ignore it." This would greatly increase creativity, profitability, and confidence on the platform, and just generally lead to a freer internet.

Or none of this could happen and the mouse "donates" a fuck ton of money to the judge's charity and he rules that Leonard French is a twat. Who knows. In an ideal world, this lawsuit would be a huge win for consumers.

It would really only matter if it gets turned into a class action suit. Which it very well might depending on discovery. If discovery turns up something that says Univision didnt do a fair use analysis on ANY of the videos they have claimed from multiple creators then they might be fucked.

The thing is its only going to make corporations stand up and listen. Its not gonna stop the Mundane Matts who have nothing to sue over unless someone is willing to flush money down the toilet. The real change will only happen if Youtube gets held accountable for facilitating these kinds of abuses and I dont see Youtube getting sued over this.

 

[DrunkJoe]

False DMCA on an IP lawyer, brillant move Univision. I do hope he takes them to pound town in the courts. The boring IP youtube lawyer could set an amazing precedent.

 

[mindlessobserver]

False DMCA on an IP lawyer, brillant move Univision. I do hope he takes them to pound town in the courts. The boring IP youtube lawyer could set an amazing precedent.

Which is why I am eagerly awaiting this one. Question is whether or not he includes youtube in the lawsuit. Let's also not forget the DMCA has a sort of SLAPP provision built into it. If you use the DMCA improperly and force someone to defend their copyright by suing you, then they can be awarded fees and costs. French could still get a payday out of this, even if the ultimate damages award is 5 dollars.

 

[DrunkJoe]

Which is why I am eagerly awaiting this one. Question is whether or not he includes youtube in the lawsuit. Let's also not forget the DMCA has a sort of SLAPP provision built into it. If you use the DMCA improperly and force someone to defend their copyright by suing you, then they can be awarded fees and costs. French could still get a payday out of this, even if the ultimate damages award is 5 dollars.

I find him boring and cringy. I barely got through like 1 video when that tranny went crazy. Funny now he is the hero we need.