Bad Lip Reading delighted fans by taking on Star Wars: The Force Awakens with some help from Mark Hamill as Han Solo, but a copyright claim took it down soon after it went viral.
The channel’s parody of The Force Awakens was like any of its others videos: The dialogue in footage from the movie is replaced with parody audio. Bad Lip Reading’s been doing it for years without much issue. (Plus, Bad Lip Reading is part of Maker Studios, which is owned by Disney.)
But the video was gone (it has since been restored), replaced with a message that reads, “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Dramatists Play Service.” Dramatists Play Service is a company that publishes and handles the licenses of plays for playwrights.
Bad Lip Reading spent part of Friday getting the video back online, telling Variety that Dramatists Play Service had “zero grounds” to make the copyright claim. While the person behind the channel, who remains anonymous, believed it might have been done with ill-intent, Dramatists Play Service said it had nothing to do with the copyright claim.
We are aware of an erroneous claim made by our org to YouTube regarding the video’s copyright and are looking into how this occurred.
— Dramatists Play Service (@DramatistsPlayS) April 7, 2017
We have no claim on any works in the video and will be working with YouTube to get the video reinstated ASAP.
— Dramatists Play Service (@DramatistsPlayS) April 7, 2017
We have notified YouTube that we do not have a copyright claim on this video. We’re super sorry the takedown somehow came from us :( :(
— Dramatists Play Service (@DramatistsPlayS) April 7, 2017
Dramatists Play Service and Bad Lip Reading both worked to get YouTube to restore the Force Awakens parody to YouTube.
Hi everyone — working on getting the video back up. Was apparently some kind of clerical error, but the timing couldn’t have been worse… https://t.co/ryft1CsVMN
— Bad Lip Reading (@BadLipReading) April 7, 2017
@teamyoutube @ytcreators this https://t.co/fZQ3S5aGvQ
— Bad Lip Reading (@BadLipReading) April 7, 2017
Update 6:47pm: The video in question has now been reinstated. According to Waxy, the Dramatists Play Service said the takedown notice was “human error.”
H/T Variety
