Joe Vargas, host of The Angry Joe Show, has slammed CBS after his Star Trek: Picard review was blocked worldwide on YouTube as the result of a questionable copyright claim.
CBS filed the claim over Vargas’ use of two 13-second clips from the publicly available Picard trailer in his 40-minute video review.
Based on the screenshot, it appears that Vargas was discussing the clips while they were on-screen and Vargas argues that this should constitute fair use – a provision in copyright law that allows copyrighted material to be used without permission from the copyright holder for transformative purposes such as commentary and criticism.
This was also a manual claim which means someone at CBS or working on behalf of CBS decided to block the video rather than it being an automated decision by YouTube’s algorithm.
The takedown of Vargas’s review comes days after digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation slammed YouTube for failing to make fair use a priority and forcing YouTubers to cut out valid fair use clips from their videos.
It’s also the latest of several examples of large corporations using YouTube’s copyright system to censor or claim the revenue on reviews and commentary of movies and TV shows.
Last November, multiple YouTubers reported that their videos about Batwoman were being claimed by Warner Bros. Television. And YouTube videos about the infamous Captain Marvel motorcycle scene, where the character assaults a man and steals his motorcycle after he tells her to smile, were also blocked after copyright claims from Disney.
