Why Do Some Touhou Project Fanworks Get Taken Down?

Copyrights, trademarks, and patents – what’s in a name? If you’re a YouTube user, you might know a word or two about the former. There are some pretty important differences between all three. To exactly explain these differences in particular:

• Copyright is a form of protection for original works of authorship, applying to literary, musical, artistic, dramatic, and audiovisual creations. The Touhou Project games are motion pictures/audiovisual works in their own right, so they benefit from this. Copyrights last the duration of the owner’s life, plus an additional seventy years after their death. For corporate authorship, that duration is 95 years from publication.
• Trademarks are distinctive names and symbols used to promote and differentiate a product from its competitors. The names of the Touhou Project games and characters are all subject to this. They typically last for 10 years and can be indefinitely renewable.
• Patents protect an idea or original invention for a period of time, usually for a period of 20 years. To date, no Touhou Project mechanic or system has been granted a patent of some sort.

Now that these differences are explained, if you are a YouTube user and a Touhou Project player, you may have seen that the soundtrack albums for the most recent Touhou Project games, including Touhou 19: Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost and Touhou 20: Fossilized Wonders, were removed from YouTube. All in all, these channels were breaking copyright law by reuploading the soundtracks for these games, and most Touhou Project game soundtracks have officially been uploaded by Rightsscale, a distributor for the games’ soundtracks.

When YouTube was first launched in 2005, it was intended for users to broadcast themselves on the web. Unfortunately, a large amount of users ended up ripping their physical media including CDs, VHS tapes, and DVDs, and began using the site as a vehicle for illegally reuploaded movies, television programs, and music, costing the industry roughly half a billion dollars of damage a year. After multiple lawsuits, YouTube ended up securing a partnership with Audible Magic, resulting in the creation of Content ID.

Copyright owners put a lot of effort into making sure their content is obtained by consumers legitimately, and even talk about their efforts in quarterly earnings reports to investors and analysts, and have gone to great lengths to use automation and artificial intelligence to hide pirated content from being found on YouTube. Unfortunately, users are constantly attempting to skirt the system by mirroring the footage, changing the pitch or speed of the audio, or even cropping footage. Google and YouTube engineers are notorious for injecting extra code into Content ID in order to outwit these users.

In the case of Touhou Project music, the real reason videos are getting taken down is because the music is not synchronized with a visual presentation. If you upload the music as is and all you have is a still image for the entirety of the video, that is not considered synchronization. If you use the original songs in a fangame, consider yourself an asset thief or asset flipper and you could fall victim to the same. However, beware of bad actors who impersonate Team Shanghai Alice who try to claim ownership of the music.

In the case of Drillimation, we will never give up the fight against fraudulent copyright claims. We at Drillimation are comprised of just a few human beings, but many mass media giants are comprised of more than that, complete with multiple teams devoted solely to anti-piracy. What can you do in the meantime? As always, make sure your fanworks abide by the guidelines, especially when you use music in videos. If you don’t want to face the risks of Content ID claims, you can use remixes of themes, but you should remember their usage terms.

In the meantime, make sure you keep an eye out on announcements from Team Shanghai Alice, alongside announcements regarding rule changes.