YouTuber Allen Pan, who published a video in which he gave a snake robotic legs, went mega-viral Tuesday after calling out CNN for clipping his footage without licensing.
“Watch a billion dollar news company use my footage without licensing it,” Pan said in response to CNN posting his content. Pan’s rebuttal has received over 400k likes, astronomically beating the original tweet by CNN, which is less than 10,000. (RELATED: Some Guy Tweeted A Pic Of An Airport Beer Menu, And The Port Authority Got Involved)
Watch a billion dollar news company use my footage without licensing it https://t.co/2N7W7e2k9d
— Allen Pan (@AnyTechnology) August 16, 2022
Pan further elaborated that he charges $500 to license, a rate he called “a drop in the bucket for CNN.”
Some users rushed to the comments to justify CNN, claiming the outlet was within its rights to clip the creator’s content.
“It’s for international news reporting, I don’t think they’ve done anything that’ll get them in any trouble,” an account commented, calling the footage “fair use.”
Pan replied to this critique, asserting that CNN’s clipping would not fall under fair use.
“Fair use would imply an insubstantial amount of the work used without impact on the value,” he said. “Imagine if they ‘reported’ on a new movie by embedding a 12 minute video edited from bootleg footage that included the twist ending.”
Fair use would imply an insubstantial amount of the work used without impact on the value. Imagine if they “reported” on a new movie by embedding a 12 minute video edited from bootleg footage that included the twist ending.
— Allen Pan (@AnyTechnology) August 16, 2022
Pan’s original video “giving snakes there legs back.,” posted Saturday, has reached nearly 3 million likes on YouTube.