The Pokemon Company is pretty well known for being aggressive when it comes to its intellectual property, even if it means lodging a strike against its very own fans. And that’s precisely what has happened overnight, with the YouTube channel for Pokemon Reorchestrated — remixed orchestral scores of Pokemon music — being terminated at the company’s request.
Image credit: Pokemon Reorchestrated Kanto Symphony Kickstarter
The saga kicked off earlier this month when Braxton Burks uploaded videos of Kanto Symphony to the Pokemon Reorchestrated YouTube channel. The Kanto Symphony was a crowdfunded project to produce orchestral scores based on the Pokemon music that began in 2011, and the orchestral covers had been made available on Spotify in January.
Despite getting the approval of the original publishers for Kanto Symphony — a requirement before the music can be listed on services like iTunes, where the album is still available for $16.99 — that didn’t stop someone from The Pokemon Company from filing two takedown notices to have the videos deleted.
It was on February 8 that Burks voiced his fears of what was about to come:
So @Kamex_55 raised a good point: that the removal of Kanto Symphony might be part of a larger crackdown on fan content. I really hope not.
— PKMN Reorchestrated (@pkmnreorch) February 8, 2016
Fast forward a week to another takedown notice from The Pokemon Company. The strikes had tallied up and, despite Burks saying that the corporation had not issued any reasons or pinpointed what part of the offending material was copyrighted, that was enough for YouTube to take down the channel entirely.
Well! It’s official. The Pokémon Company issued another takedown. As of now, the PREO YouTube channel has been terminated.
— PKMN Reorchestrated (@pkmnreorch) February 16, 2016
In all honesty, it’s things like this that make me want to never produce video game covers again.
— PKMN Reorchestrated (@pkmnreorch) February 16, 2016
At the same time, I love video game music, and Pokémon, far too much to let go of that.
— PKMN Reorchestrated (@pkmnreorch) February 16, 2016
The YouTube takedown hasn’t affected the music’s availability on other platforms and he added that the music was “100% legally licensed”. “Not knowing what I did wrong — having my licensed music removed from YouTube without an explanation — left me feeling disheartened and disillusioned by a company that’s currently celebrating the 20th anniversary of the original Pokemon games.”
“It’s hard to feel included in that celebration,” Burks added. Fans are also speculating that the takedowns could be related to The Pokemon Company’s intentions to release their own material on or around February 27.
Comments
11 responses to “The Pokemon Company Just Killed Another Great Pokemon Fan Project”
I hate reading about these “no reasons given” bullshit situations.
Cant believe youtube allows takedowns with no reason given
Depending on the circumstances I understand why they do it. If a copyright holder files a takedown notice and YouTube does not comply or investigate then they are at risk of losing their DMCA safeharbour protection and can end up liable for hosting copyright infringing content. Due to YT being a content provider, the number of claims it gets is phenomenally larger than most other places which is why they use automated tools that can unfortunately be abused.
But… no reasons given? At least say HOW it breaks copyright so that the person can attempt to defend/correct things themselves.
Sounds to me like a few Battlefield server admins are also the YouTube administrators…..
Applaud him for raising the crowdfunding $
Applaud him for getting it on iTunes
Applaud him for getting it on Spotify
Reckon he’s put his foot in it releasing it on Youtube, come on son.
I remember reading about the original Pokemon Orchestrated months before it was out and feverishly waited for it to be released so I could buy it, and have since bought all the others he’s done.
They’re such great quality and well worth a purchase for any Pokemon fan. Automated take-down systems simply can’t work when they take out the human element, let alone when he had a license agreement with the Pokemon Company.
Don’t support big fat greedy companies and this wouldn’t happen!
Uhm. Lodge an appeal? If it’s actually protected by copyright’s fair use exceptions, you should get the channel restored…
Could have sworn I read another article earlier today that said there was an additional broadcast licence that they didn’t get before putting it on YouTube, and that was the reason for the supposedly valid takedown notices.
That’s a capital D douche move. “Hey, I know we have some arrangements in place and a working relationship, but it looks like you’re missing some paperwork, so we’d like to advise you of your error by bombing your entire channel into oblivion and obliterating all your potential revenue from it, related to us or not.”
I assume these are the kinds of people who believe they should be allowed to stab in the neck any wait staff who take down their order incorrectly.