WE WOULD LIKE OPINIONS ON THIS! (Patreon)

Brother E just messaged me this, regarding full length reactions here at THE GOOSH. With both One Piece and Yu Yu Hakushu coming up soon, I'd like to get you guys' feedback, as we make decisions here as a community. It's a long read, but please take the time if you have a few minutes. I'll post both Brother E's post, as well as my response. We could also post a new poll about this, given this level of information, if you guys like.  :-)

BROTHER E'S POST: 

 Hey Curtis,   I always appreciate the hard work you do for us when you spend so many hours editing videos and just setting up content to provide for us. It makes me feel bad that you have to go through all that labor. I’ve seen plenty of Patreons similar to yours where the content is Anime Reactions. The only difference has been they show full length episodes as opposed to editing them like you do. I really would want you to consider starting Full Length Reactions as opposed to editing, not so for the content itself, but more so for you being able to do more things at your own leisure. Now I know you’ve always had a stigma about not going into full length videos but I think with the information I’m about to share with you may convince otherwise.  

So I was doing a little research about how Patreon works with handling copyright issues and the DMCA. I see that Patreon is VERY lenient with what is considered Fair Use. It states that you can upload any copyrighted content onto Patreon as long as it’s not directly hurting the original content creators’ profit. Which in this channel’s case it doesn’t since people are paying to support you for making content rather than paying for each individual video. 

Another piece of information I picked up on is that with anime in particular. The only people who have the rights to file any sort of copyright claim are the Japanese companies who originally owned the content. Now the good part about that is these Japanese companies are filing these claims that abide by ‘Japanese Copyright Laws’ which are more inclusive than American Copyright Law. From what I’ve understood with American Copyright Law is that you’re still within your fair use as long as you’ve had claimed to purchase/pay for any of the copyrighted material you’re providing on your platform and as well as the audience of people whose paying for YOUR content. Which they are since they pay behind the Patreon Only service that is setup in your channel. So by those standard alone since you provide content with the fair use laws in the country you reside in, which isn’t Japan, any copyright claim a Japanese company files should be nulled immediately.  

Lastly Patreon says they support and trust content creators since they’ve been aware of the unfairness of YouTube & Other Companies that take advantage of the DMCA and their policies. So Patreon states they want to help Content Creators avoid any Copyright Claims and plus support the creators with protecting the rights of their content. Patreon is also doing its best to help users understand how to properly provide a counternotice but even going a step beyond that, pointing users to discounted legal support if they want a lawyer to review a counternotice:  

“We also forward them the DMCA notice we received and specific instructions on how to send a counter-notice. Sending a counter-notice carries a lot of legal risk for creators, so we have partnered with attorneys who represent creators to offer a guaranteed flat rate of $350 for a counter-notice review to take some of the uncertainty out of the process. If you aren’t using an attorney, then counter-notice instructions can be confusing, so we’ve made every effort to simplify them.”  

Unlike YouTube, Patreon does support Content Creators and the content they post up such as yourself. You got to appreciate Patreon for taking this step, though it really demonstrates (yet again) how out of step with reality the DMCA is today.   

With all that given there shouldn’t be any reason of not transitioning into Full Length Reactions. The legal support system for doing it is there, the amount of time saved from editing on your part is abundant & the content provided to us is more. Doing such a transition into full length isn’t as risky as we originally thought. So hopefully reading through this and just picking up on some of the information I provided for you will make you have consideration into starting Full Length Reactions. Nevertheless at the end I enjoy your content and your work ethic. 

MY RESPONSE:

Actually, My Friend, I'm aware of those things. The reason I've continued doing things the way I have is I believe cutting them up strengthens my Fair Use case. However, I agree with you that there is still a strong case to be made for full length still being covered, especially since everything we do here is behind a paywall.  

I'll tell ya what, let me post what you wrote - plus my response - up at THE GOOSH, and let's get a feel for what everyone else thinks.  :-)