Comments by "seneca983" (@seneca983) on "Trevor Mahlmann vs Thunderf00t" video.

@TheStarBlack He's a professional photographer and films stuff like this to license it out. The simplest explanation is that he wants money from people who use his footage and that he deemed that this wasn't fair use (whether he's right or not in that regard). Is there anything "between the lines" that speaks against this explanation?
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@spaceduck413 "Mahlmann said he charges $750 for this - those are his damages." Damages can be higher than the normal licensing fee but they're still likely to be much smaller than the cost of a court battle.
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@spaceduck413 "Which is just silly." Mahlmann may believe (whether correct or not) that if he's not willing to take the hit others will not bother to pay him either when using his clips.
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@theultimatereductionist7592 "Dr Mason never hacked any of Trevor's computers." That's not a requirement for it to be copyright infringement.
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@ActionHeinz I suspect he has licensed many of his videos, not sure about this particular one, and charged that same amount.
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"Surely that is commentary" But it's not commentary on Mahlmann's video. It's commentary on SpaceX and SpaceX fans that merely uses Mahlmann's video.
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It's not clear at all that it's fair use.
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@mirozen_ It's fair to not give my opinion more weight but Leonard French (who's an actual copyright lawyer) made a video on this and estimated that the fair use factors somewhat favor Mahlmann. Below this video, he made a comment, pinned by Thunderf00t, that if Thunderf00t was specifically criticizing Mahlmann himself (rather than e.g. SpaceX using Mahlmann's video) then in his estimate that would tilt the balance towards fair use. Either way, this doesn't seem like a clear-cut case and both Mahlmann and Thunderf00t would have a non-insignificant risk of losing in court.
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@mirozen_ I had personally assumed the person/people cheering wasn't the same as the person filming (i.e. Mahlmann). Maybe Leonard did too. If that were the case, then it would seem that Thunderf00t wasn't criticizing Mahlmann but I can't be sure if Mahlmann himself was cheering or not. I'm not sure how it would affect a potential court case if Thundef00t sincerely thought it was Mahlmann cheering but if it also turned out that it wasn't.
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@mirozen_ I don't really know. He is a professional photographer and these videos are his work so they're not "mere" fan videos. He seems to have filmed a lot of SpaceX stuff but he also has other stuff like NASA and airplanes. He does have a Tesla referral code for discounts on his webpage. That might indicate he's a Musk fan though not necessarily as he's presumably getting some compensation for that.
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Multiplying licensing fees when the work was initially used without licensing it first is entirely common.
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"the POINT was that the water on Earth today could cover the Earth if it was more of a perfect sphere" It couldn't even if the Earth were a perfect sphere because even then the water layer would be thinner than a monolayer of water molecules. (Yes, I'm a bit hung up on trivialities but I still had to point out that this point wouldn't be correct.)
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@medexamtoolscom Actually I somehow misread and missed the "the water on Earth today" part.
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@Alexman208GR "French didn't acknowledge that thunderfoot was making fun of the guy so his analysis was incomplete." That might a factor that shifts the balance in a direction favorable to Thunderf00t but it still doesn't make it a clear cut case.
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@MsHumanOfTheDecade "in the second part he is explicitly commenting on elon musk FANS." Yes, which might mean it's not fair use. It would more likely be if he had been criticizing Mahlmann's video instead of merely using it to criticize Musk fans.
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@orbitalvagabond7371 "Mahlmann states that he refuses to watch the video, and thus refuses to watch the context within what the video was used." He refused to watch Thunderf00t's first video about this dispute, not the video in which his clip was used.
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It doesn't obviously suggest a weak case. Cases being settled out of court is the norm.
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"Seems like this guy was upset at getting criticised" Doesn't seem like that at all.
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@MM2isBest At least the first email asking for $750 was before that so at the very least at first this seemed to be about copyright and money and nothing more.
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@Jinkypigs He's in the business of licensing his clips. Thunderf00t didn't criticize his clip but rather SpaceX and SpaceX fans appearing in Mahlmann's clip.
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@phillyphakename1255 "Thunderf00t was criticizing Mahlmann's inclusion of SpaceX fanboys cheering the destruction of a rocket" They just happened to be cheering while he was filming. He didn't put them there as an artistic expression. "He was criticizing the fact that there are enthusiasts who film this stuff and put it on the internet as if it is radically innovative." This has nothing to do with criticizing Mahlmann's work. He's a professional photographer and videographer. He films various things, like rockets, and licenses the films for money. Thunderf00t is free to criticize SpaceX but he isn't free to do so using Mahlmann's work without paying. That's entirely different from criticizing Mahlmann's work itself and probably doesn't fall under fair use.
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@ScrewTSW "Concordia suffered from the exact same design flaw" And what design flaw is that? Those cases seem pretty different to me.
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@ScrewTSW OK, got it. I thought Costa Concordia was a bit different because she capsized because her keel touched the bottom of the sea.
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@srp01983 "Your argument completely misses the ‘transformative’ bit about fair use. TF did not attempt to pass the work off as his own, and did not present it as ‘here’s an interesting clip of SpaceX 9’. He used it to illustrate the central point of his video - that Musk fans fail to see all the faults of Musk’s technology enterprises." But this seems to actually go against the argument for fair use. TF didn't criticize Mahlmann's video, which would have been transformative. He merely used it in his criticism of SpaceX and SpaceX fans.
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It's not SpaceX's IP. SpaceX didn't film that clip.
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I'm not sure that's the case. Thunderf00t didn't criticize Mahlmann's video. He merely used the video to criticize SpaceX and SpaceX fans.
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Did you see Leonard French's video?
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