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Ladies and gentlemen, I find it irresponsible when people re-upload content without permission. Sadly, isn’t this what simply happens in Youtube? A video goes viral, and everyone talks about it. If you’re talking theories here, I’ll put it simply: It’s THE agenda. People want to hear things everyone else is talking about.

Media simply feeds that because we need your views, and you’re much, much more likely to view something that you’re interested in, or at least, everyone else is interested in.

So let’s just take something really relevant now: This Friday, the Star Wars Episode 7: Force Awakens trailer will be screened in America, and you can see everything here.

A compilation of fan-made trailers can be found here!

Just a little itch I want to scratch though — I was looking for fan-trailers for Star Wars Episode 7: Force Awakens when I got disgusted.

The trailer that was uploaded first:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plwVRYEQG_I

The same trailer that was re-uploaded on another channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze0t_fMORaw

Will episode 7 of Star Wars bring back “some” of the epicness, from the old school Star Wars movies?

The thing is that once it’s out, everyone on the internet would want to see it. From fake “screening captures”, to fan-made trailers, plenty of non-official content is being created to capture views. This kind of content, which I call opportunistic content, is driven by the opportunity created by any one agenda: in the event of anticipation, there is always a demand for content with related, even if it is unofficial, fake content.

That’s why I’m hi-jacking this agenda for my own purpose. We’re facing a huge problem here and it’s always been here: originality. Production always has a much higher cost than replication. If we want to be responsible viewers, we need to give credit and give compensation to the original creators.

If you just take patents for an example; although they are supposed to protect and grant people their rights to their originality, the reality is that they need to be enforced for the creators to be protected.

Online, there is no such thing. Information, views and credit flows so quickly and en masse, and most of the time we have too little power to direct credit back to us. Larger corporations, with their IP measures like DMCA takedowns and cease-and-desist letters, can bother to use the legal system to procure credit for themselves simply due to the capital they possess.

The common man has the privilege to protect themselves, but no means nor material wealth to exercise this privilege.

With the above example I found a nice fan-made trailer. Don’t look at the content, look at the Youtube details. The one from the first uploader (Lux) was typical of a fake trailer masquerading as a real one: it provided as little information as possible in the description [“Awesome! Great tone to this trailer!

Now I just can’t wait for the real thing!”] (to show sincerity – oh I just obtained this information and I just wanna share it!), and all the markings of an actual trailer.

Furthermore, the uploader has minimal information on him, furthermore enhancing the belief that of the upload is a “leak”.

It’s more than just fandom in the world of trailers sometimes.

Devil’s in the details, and I fell for it hook, line and sinker.

Now, for the second uploader, look at the Youtube description: It’s amazingly detailed. Credits are given to two artists, enhancing the credibility of its status as a “fan-made trailer”. I was sincerely convinced “PGF Entertainment” had made the trailer just by reading its description, to the point I credited them with the creation of the video on Lux’s comments section and accused Lux of stealing content.

How is this important? Well, we see this everyday through advertising. Something sounds like they really know what they’re doing, and sounds like they really are good for you or whatever. We need to protect ourselves first.

We need to find out if the details are real, and judge for ourselves if we can take it as it is. For me, I’ve just become more critical of the details I’m given online.

And you should as well. Protect yourself.