The Corona horror movie

Saturday, February 29, 2020

A friend sent me a link to a little video clip “World’s shortest HORROR movie”.

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A nice joke in the context of the world-wide Corona panic that is currently causing lots of revenues to some people. I like it. But who made it?

The link is a post on Facebook by a user Claudia Mo/毛孟靜, dated 19 February at 08:32. But using Ecosia I found the same post on YouTube.

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I read about Robert B. Weide and Larry David. I asked on YouTube “Is this really directed by Robert B. Weide and produced by Larry David? Any offical sources?”

I asked this on YouTube, and only afterwards I saw that my question was answered in a comment to the Facebook version

Above comment is just a screenshot of Facebook’s description of the movie. A simple and clean reference to the source would have been:

Based on an excerpt from the Korean movie “The Host” (2006), director Bong Hoo Ho. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Host_%282006_film%29

So this little video clip is itself an artwork. The author selected a short excerpt from a longer movie and presented it in a new way, causing a smile to thousands of people.

But unfortunately the author remains anonymous. He or she has to remain anonymous because her work is illegal: it uses copyrighted work without permission of the copyright holder. Even if she would have mentioned the source correctly, she would risk being filed in a lawsuit and having to pay enormous fines.

What a pity! Life on earth would be so different if we changed copyright as I suggest in The Lutsu manifesto!

Facebook hinders sharing with the outside world. When you publish content on Facebook, you cannot share this content (in a reasonably easy way) with people who don’t have a Facebook account. This is why Facebook is a virtual “golden cage”. Once you enter the cage and get used to its advantages, you become reluctant to leave the cage because this would require you to renounce from the advantages.

Facebook and YouTube encourage sharing other people’s work without honouring the author. They hinder sharing your source. Of course you are free to do this the description of your upload. They decline responsibility in case it turns out that you uploaded illegal content. But they will profit from copyright in case your uploaded content turns out to be valuable. Because by uploading to their site, you agree to their conditions, which gives them the right to use your work.

Live streaming brings even more power to FB and YouTube. For the users this is a convenient possibility used to share snapshots of their lives with their friends. But imagine that something really important happens during that live stream. Something with historical value. Something the whole world wants to watch. The original author does not even have a copy of their work! So who is going to make a lot of money by selling copyright?

If you feel with me, consider joining The Lutsu manifesto.