YouTube has removed a controversial North Korean propaganda video after a videogame publisher in California filed a copyright claim that the clip had used some of its material.
The video, which posted to North Korea’s official YouTube channel Saturday and collected more than 70,000 views before getting taken down, recounted a dream sequence of a man imagining a North Korean rocket descending onto a fictitious American city and setting it ablaze.
The videos contained Korean subtitles, which, according to The Telegraph, read, “Somewhere in the United States, black clouds of smoke are billowing. It seems that the nest of wickedness is ablaze with the fire started by itself.”
It’s intense. It’s scary. It’s effective social media.
But the footage wasn’t original; it was ripped from a cutscene belonging to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, a popular first-person shooter game released by California publishing company Activision in 2011.
On Tuesday, Activision filed a copyright claim to have the video taken down. According to the BBC, it was removed shortly thereafter.
Not surprisingly, North Korea did not respond to our request for comment.
Photo via The Watched Videos/YouTube
