Yeah. I've seen enough. Send it. Shut them down.
Hello Internet! Welcome to Film Theory, the show that's been lost in The Backrooms for over
a year now. Please send help. At this point, I'm sure we all know what The Backrooms is,
right? This Creepypasta turned analog horror series created by indie filmmaker Kane Pixels
absolutely took YouTube by storm last year with its haunting aesthetics, its mysterious story,
and its deep lore just begging to be uncovered. And that has actually become a big part of the
franchise, something that Kane talked about in a recent interview with my friend Anthony Padilla.
Oh, is that so? Then why did your characters follow my advice
as I pointed out in a recent YouTube short? I'm not just coping here, am I?
Well, poop. But then again, I can't blame him. What Kane's been doing with the series so far
has worked really well, well enough that it's caught the attention of people well beyond our
little corner of Internet analog horror. Yeah, in case you didn't hear this one,
Kane has actually teamed up with movie studio A24 to make a feature length big
budget adaptation of his Backroom series, with Kane himself directing. That right there, that
is a big deal. A24 are the people behind instant classics like Everything Everywhere All at Once,
Ex Machina, The Witch, Midsommar, Hereditary. My first thought after hearing this news. Wow,
congratulations to Kane. I am so excited to see how this thing turns out. My
second thought after hearing the news, though, are they allowed to do this? See,
while Kane’s series is really original in and of itself. It's based on a viral meme.
Kane didn't come up with the original idea of The Backrooms, and he's openly admitted to that fact.
So it got me to thinking, who actually owns the copyright to The Backrooms? See,
this is an interesting question because we don't actually know who came up with The Backrooms. We
know when and where it was invented, but not who made it. The idea originated in a
thread on 4chan's paranormal themed /x/ image board on May 12th, 2019, asking users to post
images that felt off in some way or another. One reply posted this picture of a large room
with yellow wallpaper, which first appeared in another thread back in 2018. Someone else replied
to this image, writing the caption that would then go on to set the tone for the entire idea of The
Backrooms from that point forward: “The stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the
endless background noise of fluorescent lights.” But here's the thing. By default, all the 4chan’s
posters are anonymous, so we have no idea who first posted the image and who first
wrote the caption. So the whole idea kind of just transcended into Internet Creepypasta
folklore where Kane eventually found it and then used it as an inspiration for his own
series. Now all of that in and of itself is really cool, and it's made for an incredible
community driven writing project as hundreds of people contribute to the lore of The Backrooms.
But the introduction of a film into the mix by an actual Oscar winning movie studio like A24,
that right there, that changes things. Because The Backrooms is no longer the territory of the
Internet Wild West. It's now in a more traditional setting. And as Kane himself has pointed out,
all of this unofficial, unlicensed content can start to become a problem.
He's definitely not wrong. And this problem becomes a lot more tricky when you realize the
Kane’s series could qualify as the same sort of unofficial, unlicensed content. So today I want
to dive into this issue and see if we can work out what's what. If those original posts were,
in fact, anonymous, who actually owns The Backrooms? Does anyone in The Backrooms?
and its Kane’s series and this big budget movie all at risk of copyright infringement?
Is all of this the end of The Backrooms as we know it? Put on your hazmat suits, loyal theorist,
because we're headed to the most terrifying and endless labyrinth of them all: Copyright
law. Before we get started, at this point, I feel like it goes without saying. But just to be clear,
I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. These are just the findings that I was able
to dig up during my research. Also, we're only going to be talking about copyright law as it
pertains to the U.S., not because other countries and their laws are unimportant. But more because
the person Kane and the company A24 that we're talking about here are in the U.S.. Cool? Cool.
So I think the first question we need to answer here is, can an anonymous work be copyrighted? I
mean, it might be kind of hard to just stroll down to the U.S. Copyright Office wearing a
disguise and then filling out some forms without listing names, right? No, actually,
you can absolutely file for copyright protection without filling in any sort of author's name.
But even so, you wouldn't need to in the first place. You don't actually need to
formally register a creative work with the government to get that copyright protection.
You actually get that protection the moment that your work is created,
whether or not you're known to be the creator of the work. The highest profile example of
this in recent years has got to be the anonymous graffiti artist Banksy, who defended their artwork
from being used by a greeting card company by using the copyright protection on set artwork.
Now, to be fair, this case happened over in Europe, but this sort of anonymous copyright
protection works exactly the same way in the U.S. We actually go into a lot
of detail about copyrights, trademarks and how films like Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey are
Disney's worst nightmare in another video. But the long and short of it: under the Copyright
Term Extension Act for an anonymous work. Anything created in the U.S. has copyright
protection for 95 years after its first published, or for 120 years after its first creation,
whichever comes first. All of this together, then, should mean bad news for Kane and The
Backrooms movie right? Since the original 4chan post was published in 2019, the copyright for
it shouldn't expire until 2114. So if that's the case, Kane might want to take down his
videos for the next couple of decades, right? Well, maybe not. We've established that anonymous
works are protected by copyright, but our next question here is whether or not this sort of
4chan post can even be copyrightable in the first place. Short answer. Yes. Long answer. Eehhhh It's
complicated. Copyright protects original works fixed in any tangible medium of expression.
Basically, if you make something original and creative, you own the copyright for it:
book, movie, music, architecture, YouTube video or my personal favorite pantomime.
Now the bar for originality and creativity are pretty darn low in the eyes of the law. So the
original picture from The Backrooms absolutely qualifies. Whoever took that picture of the room
and posted it 4chan created the image. So check there for originality. And they were
exercising some level of creativity in the choice of the subject, how it was framed,
the choice to do it at Dutch Angle, etc.. Same thing for the separate person who wrote
the caption. Obviously it's original insofar as they came up with the ideas and they wrote them.
And there's no denying that it's brimming with creativity, setting a bleak scene and creating
a captivating horror scenario. It also passes the bar and gets copyright protection. However,
even if the picture and the text are separately protected by copyright law, it's important to
remember the scope of said protection. First of all, even if it's found that
something is directly violating the copyright of the post, it's going to be difficult for the
original authors to come forward with a case. The original 4chan posts have long since been deleted,
along with any potentially identifying information like IP addresses. And these authors are going
to have a difficult time proving that they were the ones who originally made the post.
Secondly, even if they could prove their ownership, it's probably not even worth the legal
hassle. Though you don't lose copyright protection on your work if you don't enforce that protection,
how vigorously you protect your work is factored into a court's judgment on the
matter. For example, if you took a photograph and wrote a caption for it that was then widely
circulated across image boards, YouTube, Twitter, and dedicated fan wikis for years.
And you never took any action until real money came along? Yeah, the judge is going to take
that into consideration. Anything you might win in damages might not even be enough to cover the
legal fees. Thirdly, sure you can copyright individual works, but you can't copyright
ideas. Just because someone takes a picture of a creepy room with fluorescent lights and yellow
wallpaper doesn't mean that they're the only one with copyright to that aesthetic and that no one
can ever take another picture of a creepy room with fluorescent lights and yellow wallpaper.
The copyright protection of this original Backrooms photograph is limited to this
single photograph. So, yeah, if Kane wants to use this exact specific image in his series or movie,
sure, that might be a problem. But he clearly hasn't done that. He's created entirely new
imagery for his videos. And as for the text, sure these two sentences and the way that they
express their ideas are protected by copyright. But the ideas themselves, they're not protected.
Even something specific, like the word Backrooms, which Kane took from the post to use as the name
of the series wouldn't be protected here. Why? Well you can't copyright names, titles, words or
short phrases. That kind of stuff falls under the domain of trademarks. Another thing that we cover
in more detail over in that Winnie the Pooh video. Additionally, the word and idea of a Backroom;
you know, a room in the back of a business or office or whatever, has existed long before that
4chan post. So it's not exactly something you can just decide is yours because you took a picture
or thought of a spooky story. Obviously, Kane lifted the general vibe of The Backrooms from the
original image and caption: the yellow wallpaper, fluorescent light, liminal spaces, all that jazz.
He also took the general idea of The Backrooms being huge and full of weird stuff. And again,
just to clear up any ambiguity here, Kane admits that he was very much inspired by the post.
Other than that though? not a whole lot here sticks. Plenty of ideas are
reminiscent of content from the original Backrooms post or the Backrooms wiki;
People in Kane's series fall into The Backrooms in a way that seems visually similar to noclipping.
But Kane has never once used the word no clipping to describe that process in his
canon. Sometimes strange noises that sound like a party can be heard in Kane's videos,
which could be a reference to the party goers from the wiki’s canon.
But again, Kane has never brought the actual party goers or their lore into his world. Even ideas
like the size of The Backrooms in Kane’s series aren't 1 to 1 with the original post. Sure, Kane's
Backrooms are big, but it's never one specifically mentioned to be 600 million square miles like the
original post described it. Pretty much the only things that Kane took from that original post are
the yellow vibe, the idea of falling into and getting lost and the words “The Backrooms”.
Most everything else in these videos are entirely original creations of Kane's, the organization
Async and their goals, project KV31 and the portal into The Backrooms, the Bacteria Monster.
Sorry, the Lifeform Fellow… Sure. Well, anyway, that was still Kane’s. The long and short of
it is that he's more than in the clear to make a film about the original story that he's crafted.
But see, Kane's not the person I'm worried about in this episode. After all of this research into
copyright law, the quirks of anonymity and who owns what in this circumstance,
he's going to be fine. He's well within his legal rights to partner with A24 and make this movie,
and I'm excited to see what comes of it. No, I'm more worried about us.
You, me, and all those small creators out there. What concerns me now is what that,
this movie, is going to mean for the sorts of crowdsourced online horror stories that The
Backrooms represent. I fear that this could spell disaster for these sorts of stories. Why? Well,
because even if Kane and A24 are in the clear to make their Backrooms movie,
they're likely going to want to protect that film to the letter of the law.
Now, don't misunderstand me. I don't think that Kane is going to be going after people for making
their own original Backrooms content. I don't think he wants to do that. He has been nothing
but a kind and thoughtful guy every time that we've interacted. And even in that interview
with Anthony, he explained his thoughts on the whole communal ownership of ideas thing.
That right there, that is a great way to look at projects like The Backrooms. No,
the problem here isn't going to be coming from Kane, it's going to be coming from the studios.
Making the jump from online video to major motion picture involves a lot of money. A LOT of money.
In budget, sure, but also in potential returns from movie ticket sales and merch.
If you go and look up the highest grossing media
franchises of all time, you'll see that the lion's share of their revenue actually comes from the
merch. It's true for Pokemon, Star Wars, Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh, Minecraft. And if this
Backrooms movie is a hit I could absolutely see this sort of thing happening here too.
Just imagine: Hazmat guy action figures, Lifeform Fellow plushies. Kane may or may not be interested
in this part of the show business, but the Hollywood producers he's working with definitely
are. And that means that they're going to want to protect their IP vigorously so they're the ones
making that money. I mean, this exact scenario has happened before. You'll remember Slender Man? He's
a pillar of online Creepypasta folklore. And just like The Backrooms, everyone felt like they owned
a part of Slenderman. And at the beginning, things definitely operated that way. That's why you saw
so many free, low budget indie projects centered on The Slender Man: Slender the eight pages,
Marble Hornets. But once the idea of Slenderman became a phenomenon and caught the attention of
larger media companies, when real money started to get involved, things changed.
Eric Knutson, the original creator of Slender Man, had to step up to stop shady, low quality content
from destroying his idea. He became more involved in for profit projects like Slender The Arrival,
and eventually he sold the rights to the character entirely to Mythology Entertainment,
who went on to block independent crowdfunded movies from release and then made their own
big budget film with Sony Pictures. Again, I cannot stress enough how much
I don't think Kane wants this to happen, but when you're dealing with Hollywood,
this sort of stuff becomes inevitable. What then, do we do here, loyal theorists? If The
Backrooms film is successful, I don't want there to be some sort of gold rush of all these major
movie studios trying to take their claim on any and every viral creepypasta in Internet folklore.
Does anyone really want or need the EA funded Jeff the Killer game? a Universal Studios Ben
Drowned movie? A Lavender Town Netflix miniseries? I don't think so. Thankfully,
there are ways to protect yourself, your work and your favorite content creators using the
exact same copyright laws that got us started down this road in the first place. First and foremost,
if you create something and post it online, make sure you sign it, make sure that it's
attributed to you either with your real name or an online alias that you can prove is yours.
That way, people know that this was your work from the second that you uploaded it.
It is unambiguously yours and your creative rights are protected by copyright. I mean,
that's why they're there, after all, might as well put them to use. And on top of this,
make sure that you're posting to platforms that respect those rights and don't have
anything shady hidden in their end user license agreements that somehow transfer any ownership of
content posted there to their website. You'd actually be surprised how many
fairly large websites have clauses like this, and that is really not cool. Next,
if you can create your own characters and use your own ideas, obviously those will always belong to
you and no one's going to be able to use that content without your approval. That being said,
it can be difficult. So third, if you do want to build off of something that already exists,
make sure that what you're building off of is either in the public domain or it's basic enough
that what you contribute will clearly be yours. What am I talking about? Well, some of it's
obvious you want to write stories about ancient mythology, folklore, fairy tales,
stuff like Thor or the Baba Yaga or The Little Mermaid, you are almost certainly in the clear
as long as what you write isn't taken from other modern interpretations of those same
ideas. Other things that you should be good to use are urban legends and cryptids, stuff like:
Bigfoot, Mothman, Bloody Mary. No single person owns those ideas,
and you could just make some incredibly unique stories using them as jumping off
points. This also applies if you want to create something using basic ideas to build off of,
like with The Backrooms. Take the same idea that Kane used as the basis for a series and then build
your own ideas on top of it, away from Kane’s. You don't need to use Async or project KV31 or
the Lifeform Fellow to tell a compelling story about The Backrooms. All you gotta do is take
an idea that you like and change it enough that it becomes your own thing. Great example of this:
The Enderman from Minecraft. They were originally spoofs of Slenderman. I mean, the name alone makes
it pretty darn obvious. But over the years, the Enderman have had their own quirks and lore added,
they've become completely unique from their slender origins. You can do the exact same thing;
using ideas that you like and then changing them enough to make them yours and yours alone.
So all of that protects you and your work. But what if we want to protect the collective
works? Stuff like the incredible community driven lore that's popped up around The Backrooms? Well,
we have the perfect template to look to with the SCP wiki. If you somehow don't know, the SCP
Foundation is a collaborative writing project where users submit articles about fictional
objects, locations and characters, all inspired by elements of horror, sci-fi and urban fantasy.
A lot of this content is similar in tone to The Backrooms. Once an article is approved to go up
on the website, though, anyone is free to take the ideas from that article and add it to their own
work, both on and off the SCP website. Everything published on the SCP wiki is done through the
Creative Commons attribution-sharealike 3.0 license or CC-BY-SA for short.
That means that anyone is free to make content based on SCPs. They can even make money. But
they have to credit the original authors and then also publish their work under that same
sharealike license. That means that yes, anyone from an indie game dev to a major
movie studio can profit from the SCP wiki and their articles, but the ideas that they add
to the SCP must also be free for anyone else to use, publish and profit from.
Though this might not work for everything, this is an awesome system for these sorts of
collaborative projects. And maybe the single most important thing to keep in mind about
all of this: support the independent writers and artists that you love so they can keep
creating. Read the work of these creators, share them with your friends, help spread the word.
One of my particular favorites that I haven't seen reach the same level of success is The
Backrooms or SCP yet are the short stories by the Reddit user SearchAndRescueWoods. They have
a series about these mysterious staircases just appearing out in the woods and their
connections to missing persons. It is great. Remember, the next Backrooms, Slenderman and
SCP Foundation is out there somewhere just waiting to be discovered. So please share
some of your favorites down in the comments. And check out what everyone else is posting
down there. I know I'll be excited to see what you guys are saying down there because
who knows? Maybe one day it'll appear here in a theory. Until that day comes though,
remember! It's all just a theory. A FILM THEORY! Aaaaaand I know that I mentioned this video a
couple of times in this episode, but if you want to learn more about copyright and trademark and
how it is shaping the creative landscape as we know it, that Winnie the Pooh horror movie episode
is on the left. It is a very cool discussion about something that is very scary to Disney
right now. Or if you're tired of legal stuff and just want to catch up on the latest Backrooms
lore. Our latest lore video is over on the right. As always, my friends, I'll see you next week.