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Anyone else paying attention to the Fine Brothers "React World" shitstorm that's been going on the last few days? For those not in the know, the Fine Brothers are the guys who do the Kids React, Teens React, Elders React line of videos.

They made an announcement a few days ago stating that they're creating "React World" so that you can pay them the privilege of creating your own reaction videos. And to help enforce it, they're trying to trademark the word "react".

Good summary here: http://digg.com/2016/fine-bros-react-world-licensing even if it does kind of go off-topic near the end of the article, and doesn't hit some of the high points of why people are mad. In a nutshell: people have collectively lost their shit over this latest thing by the Fine Bros.

https://akshatmittal.com/youtube-realtime/#!/TheFineBros

They've lost about 100,000 subscribers in 24 hours. They lost about 5,000 while I was typing up this post.



To put it lightly, they done goofed.

I hold the fine brothers' videos in the same regard as a BuzzFeed listicle, so I'm actually kind of glad this is happening.

I have never thought that the "xxx react" videos were world changing or deep. But I have been entertained by them.
I can't believe with the 40 or so employees they have, they don't have a pr person who could tell them that this money grab would blow up in their faces.

Here's a pretty good breakdown of the situation, without the hyperbole that you'll find in a lot of videos and articles on the subject.

A lot of people are saying things like, "I'm trademarking stick figures." and things like that. React videos have been around a LOT longer than these two tools. It's like Apple stealing other people's ideas and then suing them for copyright violations.

Dave said:

A lot of people are saying things like, "I'm trademarking stick figures." and things like that. React videos have been around a LOT longer than these two tools. It's like Apple stealing other people's ideas and then suing them for copyright violations.

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Now, the Fine brothers say that they don't "own" the genre, and that they only want to protect the "specific elements" of their shows and people copying them beat-for-beat. But that's just not true. They have (or their network partner, Fullscreen, has) shut down reaction videos that look nothing like their shows. They've also called upon their fans to brigade Ellen Degeneres simply for having a couple of kids on her show and having them look at a typewriter and 80's era mobile phone. It's clear that they want a cut of every dollar for every reaction-style video out there. I guess they think they invented the thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_Say_the_Darndest_Things

Having kids react to shit on video has existed since before I was born. Art Linkletter was doing it longer than any of us have been alive except for maybe @Grytpipe-Thynne

I heard about it from this-

-fucking scam.

I won't lie. I was a fan of their work. I liked the React videos. But this shit is underhanded. I had no idea they tried to basically monopolize react style videos. They even asked their fans to attack people like Ellen for DARING to have kids react to technology on her show.


The greatest irony of all this is they've made millions off other people's work. Sure, there's something to be said about transformative work, but literally took someone else's work and had people sit down to react to it. Regardless of how entertaining some of those reacting people were, that's all they did. It was cheap, unoriginal, easy to make content and they made millions doing it. Now, their dirty laundry is airing out and they're paying for it. Good. Couldn't happen to a couple of nicer guys.

Heard about it.
Don't really care, except that I hope it serves as a lesson to others.

--Patrick

I liked the Kids React and Elders React series, and without the Teens React I'd never have known about Rachel Fenton. I can kinda see where they were trying to go with react world, but then, yeah, they got off into the weeds with the whole "And we gotta stop people ripping us off!" thing. And their network partner is clearly shady, even issuing takedowns to other videos directly addressing the React World fiasco.

Also, I don't like Rafi's wierd little hat and his eyes don't converge.

But I'll probably still keep watching their react videos. But I've also been watching plenty of non-finebros reaction videos, mostly cultural ones (Koreans react to... Chinese react to... Japanese react to... Irish react to... etc), and will also continue to do so.

Most people look at content only and could give a shit who is producing the videos.

Someone who isn't me should post a video of someone pointing and laughing like a maniac and title it "Internet reacts to Fine Bros getting run over by a steamroller."

Yoshimickster said:

I heard about it from this-

-fucking scam.

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That fish's runes say
PIOMA
YJXH

And are a mix of anglo saxon and teutonic runes.
Personal pet peeve of mine. heh

I was too lazy to post about this yesterday, but I've been enjoying the car wreck.

How have these not been posted? This made my day yesterday:





(These directly refer to the two videos the Fine Bros posted related to this ill-conceived venture.)

I saw that this morning. Awesome rap. But "may may"?

Tinwhistler said:

I saw that this morning. Awesome rap. But "may may"?

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" Gabriel telling God he created Genesis" makes up for it.

I wonder if the Late Show licensed the Tonight Show.

Oh no I don't because that's fucking absurd.

If they hadn't been actively sending out bullshit takedowns on people it wouldn't be a thing but these two CREATIVE guys deserve everything they're getting.

I wonder how much this will actually end up hurting them in the long term. Subscriptions are dropping, but they still have over 13 million subscribers. And despite that, their video view numbers have held steady at 3-4 million per day. Anyone know how important subscribers are versus video views, in terms of Youtube money?

drifter said:

I wonder how much this will actually end up hurting them in the long term. Subscriptions are dropping, but they still have over 13 million subscribers. And despite that, their video view numbers have held steady at 3-4 million per day. Anyone know how important subscribers are versus video views, in terms of Youtube money?

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It's not just youtube money, though. Even if they only lost 200K subscribers (which is about where they're sitting at right now), the controversy still hurts because they do sponsorship deals. They recently did a recent "kids react to the avengers trailer" or some such. You think they didn't get paid for that?

Do you think sponsors are going to be as hot to sign up if the brand appears damaged?

They're going to have to do some serious damage control (above and beyond their "update" video) in the next few days, I think.

drifter said:

I wonder how much this will actually end up hurting them in the long term. Subscriptions are dropping, but they still have over 13 million subscribers. And despite that, their video view numbers have held steady at 3-4 million per day. Anyone know how important subscribers are versus video views, in terms of Youtube money?

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It can be important. To be subscribed means you get e-mailed whenever they put up a new video. So basically, there's a heavy correlation between subscriber numbers and views.

I'm not nearly in the same league as the Fine Bros (naturally) with my paltry 3200 subscribers, but any video I put on my channel without notifying subscribers (I can uncheck the box to send the email) is lucky to break 20 or 30 views (and most of that is from here). If I do notify my subscribers, however, I can usually break one or two hundred views within the first couple weeks, more if the video is actually Space Engineers related. I don't send out subscriber notifications for most of the "Halforums Edition" gameplay videos though because most of the people who subscribed to me don't care about that (as referenced, they want Space Engineers), and 50 e-mail updates about Left 4 Dead videos would probably have chased most of them off.

Views beget ad views, which begets ad profits. It's much more important for the Fine Bros than for me, I think, because I get 90% of my views (And therefor ad money) through people doing keyword searches, whereas I'm pretty sure a much larger chunk of theirs come from subscribers clamoring for the next "Somebody reacts to something in current pop culture" video.

I mean, I'm a subscriber to both their channels. I don't plan to unsubscribe over this because I like the content. But losing even 10% of a channel's subscribers is not a trivial thing.

oh, and watching this counter is fascinating.
http://www.livecounts.x10host.com/?channel=Fine bros

They're still losing like 5-10 subscribers every 3 seconds.

Tinwhistler said:

It's not just youtube money, though. Even if they only lost 200K subscribers (which is about where they're sitting at right now), the controversy still hurts because they do sponsorship deals. They recently did a recent "kids react to the avengers trailer" or some such. You think they didn't get paid for that?

Do you think sponsors are going to be as hot to sign up if the brand appears damaged?

They're going to have to do some serious damage control (above and beyond their "update" video) in the next few days, I think.

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Yes, I'm aware of the paid sponsorship, which is why I brought up the view numbers, which have largely stayed consistent. I feel like the Fine Bros attract the type of viewer who don't really pay much attention to things like this, and the viewership numbers may or may not reflect that. If such is the case, advertisers may not care much until shit really hits critical mass. Right now it feels like an Internet tempest in a teapot. I guess time will tell.

The Fine Bros make hardly any money through views on youtube. They have a media company of over 40 employees, that kind of overhead isn't getting paid with youtube bucks. The vast majority of their income comes through corporate sponsorships and paid promotional content (which they never disclose), so this kind of backlash of negativity can definitely hurt them.

You know what they could do to cement their "ownership" of the trademark? What they could do that doesn't involve the court system? They could continue making highly-entertaining videos such that the viewing public automatically associates their name with the idea of the "react" video, and the idea de facto becomes "theirs." No litigation needed. Also, we get lots of entertaining videos. Everyone wins.
Buuuuut nope.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

You know what they could do to cement their "ownership" of the trademark? What they could do that doesn't involve the court system? They could continue making highly-entertaining videos such that the viewing public automatically associates their name with the idea of the "react" video, and the idea de facto becomes "theirs." No litigation needed. Also, we get lots of entertaining videos. Everyone wins.
Buuuuut nope.

--Patrick

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To be fair, I have seen some videos (mostly from east Asia) directly copying the Fine Bros' presentation style, right down to the art assets and title boards. There ARE people "ripping them off." But clearly whoever they put in charge of dealing with it tried to do a scalpel's job with a steamshovel, and thus the backlash.

I know that React is kind of an epithet right now, but during all this I just now learned that 4 of the kids from Teens React already spun off to do their own thing - Rachel, Labib, Ethan James and Jeannie now also call themselves SQUASH, and they have 62,000 subscribers 0_o now if only I could figure out what the videos were actually about, or discern a connecting theme... oh who am I kidding, I'd watch Rachel read a goddamned phonebook cause I'm a dirty old man like that.

The Fine Bros have backed down.

https://medium.com/@FineBrothersEnt/a-message-from-the-fine-brothers-a18ef9b31777#.4u23fds9o

A message from the Fine Brothers

Hello,
We’re here to apologize.
We realize we built a system that could easily be used for wrong. We are fixing that. The reality that trademarks like these could be used to theoretically give companies (including ours) the power to police and control online video is a valid concern, and though we can assert our intentions are pure, there’s no way to prove them.
We have decided to do the following:
1. Rescind all of our “React” trademarks and applications.*
2. Discontinue the React World program.
3. Release all past Content ID claims.**
The concerns people have about React World are understandable, and that people see a link between that and our past video takedowns, but those were mistakes from an earlier time. It makes perfect sense for people to distrust our motives here, but we are confident that our actions will speak louder than these words moving forward.
This has been a hard week. Our plan is to keep making great content with the help of our amazing staff. Thank you for your time and for hearing us out.
Sincerely,
Benny and Rafi Fine
*This includes “React,” “Kids React,” “Elders React,” “Lyric Breakdown,” etc. Please note: It takes a while for the databases to update, but the necessary paperwork has been filed.
**Content ID is YouTube’s copyright system that automatically flags content that looks like or sounds like copyrighted content. This mostly flags videos that are direct re-uploads of our videos (which is what the system is built for), but if you know of a video that has been claimed or removed incorrectly, please email us with “false claim” in the subject line.

Translation:
"Oops, this backfired big time, and our past shit is coming out! We need to save face now before we lose all of our audience!"

Well I'm glad that this is finally all behind us now and I can finally put more care points into more important things like Flint's water and Donald Trump.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

Well I'm glad that this is finally all behind us now and I can finally put more care points into more important things like Flint's water and Donald Trump.

--Patrick

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I'm all for putting Flint's water into Donald Trump.

Ravenpoe said:

I'm all for putting Flint's water into Donald Trump.

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Not the other way around?

bhamv3 said:

Not the other way around?

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And contaminate the water MORE? Those people have been through enough.

I bet they do it again but just don't announce it to the world this time.

phil said:

I bet they do it again but just don't announce it to the world this time.

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That's exactly how I read this line:

"but we are confident that our actions will speak louder than these words moving forward"

Tinwhistler said:

They're going to have to do some serious damage control (above and beyond their "update" video) in the next few days, I think.

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Called it!

They're down 300K subscribers this morning, and the online counters show them still dropping.

Even after their 'apology', they're still losing subscribers at the rate of between 1-2 per second.
They could lose another 100K before the day is out.

Tinwhistler said:

Even after their 'apology', they're still losing subscribers at the rate of between 1-2 per second.
They could lose another 100K before the day is out.

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Some genies you just can't put back into the bottle.

Well, at least until the internet collectively forgets, which will happen.

Ravenpoe said:

Some genies you just can't put back into the bottle.

Well, at least until the internet collectively forgets, which will happen.

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I thought it probably would have already, honestly. I am kind of surprised the surge is still going this strong.

The loss is finally starting to level off. 20 per minute or so instead of the 60-100 of yesterday.
They haven't quite lost 400K subscribers (378K as of this morning). I'm not sure that they will unless they stir up the hornets nest again.

Hey @GasBandit, have you seen this?

something happened a couple hours ago to make the rate of unsubs increase again. Dunno what.

Was about 10 per minute this morning. It was over 60 again last I checked. They're at 425K lost.

ThatNickGuy said:

Hey @GasBandit, have you seen this?

Spoiler

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Mai Waifu