Over $100,000 has been raised as of May 26 to pay for the legal fees of the couple behind h3h3productions, a Youtube channel that is being sued by another Youtuber for Copyright infringement.
Hila and Ethan Klein of h3h3productions announced their legal struggle with a Youtuber named Matt Hosseinzadeh in a video posted Wednesday May 25 called “We’re being sued.”
The Kleins used clips from one of Hosseinzadeh’s videos in a reaction video that was posted to the Klein’s second youtube channel. In the reaction video the Kleins are critical of Hosseinzadeh, who regularly posts comedy sketches and parkour videos on his channel; MattHossZone. The Kleins said their defense will be that using the clips constitutes fair use.
The lawsuit could take up to two years to play out, and it will cost them up to $100,000 to defend themselves, Ethan said in the video announcement. “It’s been hanging over our lives like a cloud these past months.”
“We can’t ask [our viewers] for more money,” Ethan said in the video on Wednesday. Despite that Philip Defranco, the Youtuber behind the Philip Defranco Show, created a profile on GoFundMe.com on Wednsday (hours after Ethan and Mila posted their video) asking people to contribute money to help the Kleins pay for their legal fees. Only 21 hours after the profile was up, it surpassed its $100,000 goal.
In the announcement video the Kleins show snapshots of the lawsuit served to them by Hosseinzadeh. The claim states the infringing video posted by the Kleins consisted of a majority of content produced by Hosseinzadeh, and that combined with the videos thumbnail would lead viewers to believe that Klein’s video was actually a video of Hoesseinzadeh’s.
Ethan asserts in his video that the 14 minute video, which has been removed from youtube due to a complaint filed by Hosseinzadeh, only contains 3 minutes of content from Hosseinzadeh’s video. The remaining run time of the video consists of banter, criticism and reactionary commentary from the Kleins.
The legal battle between the Kleins and Hosseinzadah could set a high profile precedent for how infringement cases like these are decided on Youtube in the future.
