‘Pixels,’ Adam Sandler’s Latest Film, Used By Copyright Troll On Vimeo
Pixels, the new film from Adam Sandler, was a complete flop with critics and at the box office, as the Inquisitr has previously reported. Now, reports are coming in that Pixels has found new life — with anti-piracy firm Entura International, known to have worked with Pixels distributor Columbia Pictures in the past.
According to a report from Kotaku, DMCA takedown notices were served to Vimeo (and actioned by Vimeo) for several completely unrelated videos that happened to include “Pixels” in their titles. In fact, so complete was the carpet-bombing that Entura even served a takedown request for the official Pixels trailer, which was included on the complaint as “Pixels Official Trailer (2015) – Adam Sandler, Peter Dinklage.”
As a post on TorrentFreak indicates, included in the takedown were independent videos from as far back as 2006. The “infringing” video, also titled Pixels, was directed by an independent filmmaker and made entirely with his own material. The Pixels from 2006 has been replaced by Vimeo with a simple takedown notice.
The list, meanwhile, goes on. Also included in the notice were school projects, personal projects, an official video for the Belgium-based electronic music Pixels Festival, and more.
“Life Buoy is my project for my degree at the National University of Arts from Bucharest,” said creator Dragos Bardac on his website. “The film was made in mid 2010 and it is a music video for the song Life buoy by the band The Pixels. I used a mix of stop motion animation techniques in order to tell the story.”
A video titled Pantone Pixels was also caught in the complaint; another personal project, from 2011 by Rob Penny of Austria.
“Originally I was going to make an abstract image from the pixels but then I realised that a load of Pantone swatches are pretty abstract anyway and it would be much more interesting to create something personal.”
“Pantone Pixels [is] a personal project that took me a very long time.”
Another Pixels, an award-winning short film from 2010 by Patrick Jean, has been viewed millions of times. Perhaps worst of all, this Pixels served as an inspiration for the 2015 Pixels. As Deadline reported in 2010, Columbia Pictures and Happy Madison (Adam Sandler’s company) were in talks with Jean to develop the 2015 Pixels, and Happy Madison had bought the rights. Oddly, only the older Pixels has been served with a copyright violation.
Setting an anti-piracy firm on the short film that inspired the feature and gave it the name Pixels seems a poor way to behave. Hopefully, Entura and Columbia Pictures will admit their mistake in this case but given past experience it seems unlikely.
[Photo by Grant Lamos IV/Getty Images]
