Popular Dragon Ball YouTuber Takes Victory Over Controversial Copyright Strikes

One popular Dragon Ball and One Piece YouTuber has really come out with a major victory after being hit with a controversial number of copyright strikes on their videos. Mark Fitzpatrick, also known as Totally Not Mark on YouTube, took to his channel a few weeks ago and revealed to fans that Toei Animation had requested the removal of up to 150 videos that contained material from Dragon Ball and One Piece (and given the long form, full series reviews on his channel, it made up for quite a huge percentage and years of work). But a new update has spelled good news.

Fitzpatrick took to YouTube to update fans on the fact that he had not only won the copyright strike battle against Toei Animation, but also helped YouTube to better push a held policy to potentially help stop the situation from happening to someone else in the future. As now, as he explains, this policy will be applied to copyright for the first real time to allow for some flexibility in the copyright law applicability on different regions. A video would be removed in Japan due to their interpretations of copyright law, but could stay up for fans in the video’s other regions, for example. 

This means that there will be some more flexibility in terms of what videos will remain as videos released in the United States (for directly intended United States audiences, for example) have stronger fair use allowances. Fitzpatrick revealed in the video (in which you can watch in full here) that he was contacted directly by a YouTube representative that helped him figure things out between the United States YouTube team, the YouTube team in Japan, and Toei to reach some sort of understanding. 

As of now, Fitzpatrick is working on restoring all of the videos that were caught in the crossfire but it’s going to be a tough process ahead. It’s a victory for the YouTuber, for sure, and hopefully it’s something that can help other creators down the line. Given the tightness of copyright law in Japan (as they have hammered down their various laws even more so in the last few years), it’s still going to be a long and winding road for many to navigate. 

But what do you think? How do you feel about Toei’s approach to YouTube and copyright law? Let us know all of your thoughts in the comments! 

via Totally Not Mark, Kotaku