My latest silent film video on YouTube is Georges Méliès’ Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc), with my original accompaniment. This is quite a nice film for 1900. Ten minutes long, it incorporates a lot of scene changes and makes heavy use of tinting. The quality of the movie as I got it from the Internet Archive isn’t bad for such an early film.

With an old, obscure movie like that, I figured I’d be safe from copyright trolls. No such luck. Stefski and Hutch, a rock band which has no connection to the silent film business, has claimed I’m infringing on their copyright. This is total fantasy. At the moment, there are no restrictions on viewing the video, but this could change. I’ve filed a challenge to the bogus claim; by now this is familiar territory to me. They’ll probably come back and claim they own the movie. Then I’ll escalate, at which point they need to back up their claim, and I expect they’ll fold. Or they may offer some weird rationale for why they own the copyright.

I don’t know what they even hope to gain.

Update: A look at comments on Stefski & Hutch’s YouTube channel reveals that they have made a copyright claim against at least one other Méliès video on YouTube, and their replies use doubletalk to support their claim. Their fake claims are intentional, not an accident of YouTube’s copyright-checking software.

Update 2: September 30: It’s been over a week since I challenged the copyright claim. They haven’t responded in any way. They may just be running out the clock to be nasty rather than concede.

Update 3: October 23: A few days ago Stefski & Hutch’s time to respond ran out without their doing anything. My video is in the clear, but they may be pulling the same stunt on others.