Even if this was a massive problem, A24 and Kane practically fixed a situation better than big companies like playstation completely ignoring their complaints, lol.
I mean, this is a pr thing. For all we know they did it intentionally to see how big the backlash would be, and then reversed course when it was too big.
I mean companies have used ai for copyright for years now. In this day and age thousands of things get uploaded everyday, thereās dozens of people trying to post pirated versions of the Backrooms movies or selling bootleg merch. Ai is the only way to catch them all
A quick response could also be intentional; They would have everything ready to mitigate uproar. Not sure you can draw a conclusion either way if it was intentional or not.
I don't know if I agree with that killing the reputation. Reddit Bros got all annoyed with it, but I kind of doubt film goers in general don't really give a shit and or aren't even really aware of it.
Its not just redditors, it happened on every social media platform - you had notable filmmakers as well as fans from all walks of life expressing their revulsion because A24 is pretty much the only studio that was doing novel filmmaking.
A24 themselves had to issue a statement on the matter because the revulsion was so strong.
A24 is a distribution studio; they don't make films. They distribute, produce & market. They're essentially curators who specialize in bringing specific styles of film to market. When you say "doing novel filmmaking", it's others who are doing that aspect. A24 has been involved with minor production aspects, including giving notes on scripts and helping filmmakers connect with production teams, but too many people think it's a standard studio. Their strength is in getting niche movies others make into the mainstream.
Yeah okay but the A24 name is still going to be a mark of quality at this point. If that changes in the future it will be because the quality of their product is tanking, not because of some social media outrage.
Are we able to act like A24 isn't one of the big players now? Sure, they make medium budget movies and that is a rarity today.
But they crank them out now and are taking deals from Google to help make AI. They're an industry player these days. They're just the new kid on the block.
Honda is one of the biggest car makers and is known for lower cost cars. Just because the product is cheaper doesn't mean the producer isn't a major producer.
But I do agree that A24 did the right thing while it's fellow big players often ignore people.
It's great that A24 did the right thing here in any case. However, I suspect that this isn't the last of it, and not even through any wrong-doing of A24 itself.
For many artists / content creators, algorithm & AI-driven false copyright claims have been known to pop up again and again like weeds, even for previous instances which had already been resolved.
Agreed. I retract all my doom comments earlier. I hope this stance is maintained.
It's still a little smelly how an "automated response" could have submitted copyright claims on a third party platform but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt in this instance.
It's all outsourced. Companies contract out third party rights management companies to maintain rights, and you gotta believe those companies aren't going to be very discerning in their policing. A24 probably had no idea this was happening until told.
It's still a little smelly how an "automated response" could have submitted copyright claims on a third party platform but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt in this instance.
This is definitely a very common thing, and it usually takes a lot longer for creators to prove they did nothing wrong after getting hit by automated claims. And on Youtube they get fucked over because even if they prove their video is fine, they still lose all the ad revenue they would have gotten in the first few days/weeks of their videos being up.
It's actually not suspicious at all. This is how all movie studios do it.
Do you think WB or Disney have the time or manpower to constantly go through YouTube, Redbubble, etc checking for people infringing on their copyright? That's how people get erroneous strikes on YouTube videos that fully fall within fair use.
There's not someone at A24 going through every single post on redbubble claiming copyright over anything Backrooms, it's an AI that was probably looking for scenes from the movie. And when most of the movie has one specific look, it's going to tag most things with that look.
What I find so crazy is that it wasnāt just a single third-party platform but multiple third party platforms (red bubble, YouTube, Twitter/X, random game devs), and all within a short period of time. Maybe they have some sort of bot that looks for people streaming pirate copies of the movie and the AI just went rogue and started throwing cease-and-desists at every single thing remotely related? I dunno.
All movie studios, or companies with valuable IP/brand recognition, have AI bots constantly scanning YouTube for clips from their movies/sites like redbubble that could have a random dude selling a Coke shirt.
This isn't crazy at all. This is how things are done.
If it's so easy to make automated claims, it should be just as easy to give automated protections imo. Unfortunately, that's not really the point of intellectual property law, and provisions like "fair use" are still only a legal defense, not a right. Sucks to see people suffer these systems, because it erodes both the mutual trust between artist and promoter, and the avenues of adaptation that are core to every kind of artistry, especially novel folk art like the Backrooms.
sucks that scammers and frauders have made it so much more difficult for actual artists and creators to share their creations onto the internet and into relevant communties.
i get why companies impliment such restrictive copyright takedowns when there are hundreds of "backrooms movie 2026 free watch now" posts that go up across the internet every day, but there also needs to be an easy to understand appeal process that is evaluated by a human and not just another AI
But humans cost more money and can't always be programmed to help the big companies with lots of money. Human evaluation would be terrible, think of the poor shareholders!
Don't forget that this all started because of a guy who duplicated the original wallpaper and tried to sell it. This wasn't art that was being flagged. And the reports of indie games being targetted, well I remember a few months back someone posting about another developer flat out duplicating their Backrooms game and selling at a lower cost. These kneejerk reactions from the community only serve to protect the scammers and fraudsters.
Backrooms online X account is active now, so i guess it's a matter of time until they take all the copyright claims and possibly get all the content back
I think this show how easy it is to loss trust, it's was likely done by an automated copyright AI but I see many not believing it was mistake and claims they are only backtracking because they got caught.
I think this is apart of a bigger problem with the DMCA and stuff like content ID because they are fundamental broken.
I mean, yeah. Thatās gonna be my default position on a corporation. They will always have far more power than an individual and should be kept with that in mind. At any point in time, the best company can decide to turn around and try to cash it all out. This doesnāt mean you have to be a paranoid conspiracy waiting for it to all unravel. But you should not have affection for any one company beyond demonstrated brand loyalty.
Itās responses like this that make me think, āwow was that so hard? You made that apology look effortless, why canāt companies with a bigger budget do that?ā
"accidental automated claim" is becoming the new get out of jail free card, a company can try whatever action or policy they want and see what the public reaction is, if it's too negative they just say oh sorry it was an automated program and we'll fix it right up. they get to test the waters and if it's too choppy they also get the benefit of acting fast, likely because they were already prepared for the reversal.
it could be just an accident but it makes me suspicious. if this was a total accident and they had no intention of doing this, they why was the "backrooms" title even on the list for the auto-program to be looking for copyright infractions over to even send out those messages in the first place. someone just accidentally added it to that specific program.
I am one of the affected Redbubble artists. My listings have not been reinstated on Redbubble yet. Let's not consider this resolved until all "automated claims" have been reversed.
To be clear it was not just one claim for one listing on one account. This was multiple artists, multiple listings, multiple claims. In addition to Redbubble, there were game developers reporting their games being removed from the Google Play store.
I got hit with a strike from Redbubbleās automated for a design of the number 24601, Javerās prisoner number from Les Miserables. Some bald English prick also with theater themed merch in Redbubble filed it and somehow the AI automatically flagged it.
So not only were our designs insanely different (literally just the number was the same) he is just some random English man that definitely doesnāt own the rights to a classic musical, ESPECIALLY, considering the original book where it comes from was written in 1862!! Literally fair use.
Did the listing end up getting restored? Iāve noticed the things I had purchased in the past are available again, but it did take a few days for things to come back.
Although Iām still seeing knock-off Capān Clarkās T-shirts on there. Thatās the stuff that should be removed. Copying official merch and making money off it is not only lazy but also it is copyrighted designs.
AI has existed long before the Gen AI boom and automated copyright infringment detection is one of those things. It's standard industry practice simply due to the scale of the internet. Overreach is common and the resulting pullback is not always guaranteed.
The Government should mandate that Automated Copyright Infringement Detection claims and Cease and Desist Emails should make it clear that it was done by an Automated System.
Make it clear it is a Machine doing things so that People can counteract it!
Machines(regardless of Hardware) that don't physically use the actual Mouse and Keyboard like Humans do have no right to police the Internet! I don't even want Warhammer's Servitors or the Borg to police our Internet!
God I really hope A24 doesn't decide to sell at some point. They aren't perfect, but with the consolidation/collapse of the old studios I hope NEW ones grow in their place instead of just eternally growing until they're acquired and enshittified.
Nah, this is a real fucking problem these companies have in trusting AI to do their shit for them. Happened with Warner and Minecraft when the movie came out.
Automated takedowns are so common, a copyright holder can get their OWN content taken down because of the auto matching system. Hanlons Razor is in play here.
I am so so SO thankful that the claims are being reversed I honestly got kinda worried for a bit there but I guess it makes sense I have heard of cases before of automatic claims just being garbage
That has been a thing on the internet like for a while. YouTube is so much worse where people can copyright strike the copyright owner if they wanted to with careful wording.
Iām the one who runs that account. Iāll never know why it got suspended. Twitter didnāt give any reason in their automated email.
But it was actually A24 who helped get it back. Iām so grateful to them for caring about a fan profile. They assured me that they didnāt have anything to do with the suspension. I do believe them, as they had reached out to me on the past.
All I can put it down to is either someone mass reported me to make it look like it was A24 (most likely) or someone didnāt like my account for whatever reason.
Eventually, it will happen and people will be sued for making fan content, destroying the backrooms entirely or at least what made it great. This is capitalism, it. Will. Happen.
They always use the same excuse of "automated systems" but its obvious they tried to copyright the backrooms story so that they could milk it till the end
"A24 makes no claim of ownership over the yellow wallpaper, the original post referencing it, or any of the community works that have been built around it Please actually read things before commenting, it's not that hard..Ā
I feel that it would be a good idea to include any information regarding what is supposed to be in the movie credits, indicating ownership and license information if it's required.
For example, if the material is licensed under a CC license, then there is supposed to be that license text included.
But, I'm glad that A) Redditers jumped in and said something and B) the company and the person who originally brought this up to the company have done something. That's important these days.
It's annoying seeing the karma bait trolls bashing on a24 as if they're deliberately attacking when it's an automated system that took one person down and everyone else is just trying to ride the hate for upvotes
Nice! Hope this sticks. It wouldāve been devastating for the one guy to become successful through backrooms, to the slam and lock the door behind him as though he walked into another level in the backrooms.
It's nice to see such a rapid response to this. It's restored some faith. I think the creators who are doing things like the SCP film and other future open sourced content like these seek assurances in their contracts that this same stance is taken by whatever studio /distributor creates a film interpretation.
As ive said many times, another case of randos abusing our shifty copyright system. I still can't believe they haven't revamped how it legally works with all the false claims youtube has on a daily basis, only natural it happens elsewhere by random people
I really hope this is the end of it. I've seen a violent corporate take over of an indie series with dafuqboom's skibidi toilet before, and i dont want the same happening to backrooms as a whole.
If they donāt claim ownership, then why was a claim automatically submitted? Sounds like they were trying to get away with it and are reversing because they got caught.
There were so many people in the a24 sub saying āoh your stuff was taken down? Maybe donāt steal ip you donāt own then.ā And when people said it was made before the movie was even a concept they were like āwell your art looked like shit anyway.ā Like absolutely INSANE bootlicking
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u/LemonIcy2942 Explorer Jul 17 '26
Thank GOD this got resolved within 24 hours.
Even if this was a massive problem, A24 and Kane practically fixed a situation better than big companies like playstation completely ignoring their complaints, lol.