• Disney retracts copyright claim on a YouTuber’s “Steamboat Willie” video, allowing it to be monetizable and shareable worldwide.
• The claim had previously demonetized the video and restricted its visibility and embedding options.
• This move by Disney may signal its recognition of “Steamboat Willie” being in the public domain.
What? No. They tried to do something that’s outright illegal and only stopped because enough people called them out on it.
It’s not illegal to file a false copyright claim, unfortunately.
It’s not illegal in the way it’s not illegal to violate a copyright
You can sue them for it though, or you could if there wasn’t such a huge power imbalance
Sue them for what? Disney can make as many copyright claims with Youtube as they want. There are no laws regulating that. That is purely a Youtube decision.
Damages first and foremost, if you miss out on money because of false claims, there you go. If you lost money and they did something wrong, you can sue for compensation and/or to make them stop
Additionally, if you can prove they’re doing it maliciously and knowingly in an effort to stop you from doing business, tortuous interference.
Legal eagle has a video on it not too long ago, it was about a YouTuber making copyright claims against another YouTuber criticizing them, I think the whole thing was related to elden ring?
He goes into way more detail and different situations, but the takeaway is that there is a theoretical path to do this