Youtube is a wacky place. It started out so small but it has certainly grown throughout the years. As mentioned in my article on Lucas Kendall from Time Force, there was a time when you could use youtube to catch up on TV episodes you missed, even if like me you had to settle for finding the episode in three parts as opposed to one full-length Twenty minute episode. With every classic season of Power Rangers now available on DVD and on Netflix, finding a specific episode is hardly a modern issue. However that is not the real issue I want to address. I took the liberty of locating a video on a big PR event from last year by Andre Meadows also known to Youtube people as "Black Nerd." His videos are a true delight and I love his charismatic style. I love the humor and passion he puts into all his videos. I consider him one of my greatest inspirations. This video was published on May 9th 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP9Cwz6L1k0. Now is this a anti-Hasbro article? Absolutely Not!
However what I want to question is what Hasbro is currently doing on Youtube. Many Power Ranger videos are being blocked these days. Two Channels that seemed to be clear are strangely titled Power Rangers Official and Legendary Power Rangers. I suspect though I can not confirm that they are being operated by Hasbro. After all they do have very "On the Nose" Names. Their content is very basic. They have Morph collections, Theme Song collections, battle collections and so on. Also these videos are ridiculously long. Some as long as an hour, some even longer. Now as for me I don't want to see what I can easily see while watching a basic episode. When I look for a Television Franschise video on YouTube, I look for something unique, something I can't always see on Television. A great way to make something like this on Youtube is to make a Music accompanied scene-by-scene montage. These are the types of videos that are being blocked. To advance my position I studied up on the United States Fair Use Doctrine on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use. Now of course I cannot speak for every type of video that's on the internet, I really can't. However the videos that I do remember which are now blocked are in my personal opinion, Transformative as in the scenes used were set in a way that was creative and grabs my attention well and it's not the same as watching the original product. Also it's little moments, so that hardly qualifies as the "heart" of the work. These are two very strong defenses based on my research. Anyways these are character videos, couple videos, and Season videos. Clever and talented people on Youtube are being affected by this. People like Revolution Chick, d26126620b, and Angelina Moore, among others. If per chance Official and Legendary are not working directly on Hasbro's service than I would say they are the more-likely Copyright Infringers. Anyways I think Hasbro should be following more of Andre's suggestions. Trying out new projects with PR or doing more fan research as opposed to putting a lot of focus on blocking Youtube videos. Well this is all just my opinion, and I thought it was worth bringing up. Hasbro owns Power Rangers right now and I do hope that over time they will do something really neat with it, I just hope soon they'll stop focusing on Youtube so much!
Very well-researched and well-reasoned position. Hope the right parties take heed.
What an insightful article. I hope you send messages to all the appropriate places cited in your article. You have legitimate concerns, they deserve attention, and contacting those others will draw attention to your excellent blog. You are becoming a real activist!! Way to make the world better. Power Rangers will be proud of you!