YouTubers Realise Trademarking ‘React’ Was A Bad Idea, Firmly Backpedal

YouTubers Realise Trademarking ‘React’ Was A Bad Idea, Firmly Backpedal

The internet duo Fine Bros managed to briefly steal Donald Trump’s mantle as the most-hated thing on the internet last week, when they revealed supervillain-style their plan to trademark the word “React”. Following the bad, uh, response to the plan, they’re cancelling everything.

The Fine Bros made their substantial internet following mostly by taking the time-honoured reaction genre to YouTube, with videos following the format [DEMOGRAPHIC] REACTS TO [THING]:

YouTubers Realise Trademarking ‘React’ Was A Bad Idea, Firmly Backpedal

The pair basically assumed that they owned the format, and oh-so-generously came up with the idea of licensing their unique style to other YouTubers, in return for a share of any revenue. To enforce this, they took out a trademark on the word “REACT”, along with a helping of similar phrases such as “Teens React” and “Elders React”.

Naturally, the internet was not amused, and has spent the last few days variously anger-blogging, anger-vlogging and unsubscribing from Fine Bros Entertainment™.

In a post yesterday afternoon on Medium, the Fine Bros retracted their plans for YouTube domination, and apologised to their three remaining fans:

We’re here to apologise.

We realise we built a system that could easily be used for wrong. We are fixing that. The reality that trademarks like these could be used to theoretically give companies (including ours) the power to police and control online video is a valid concern, and though we can assert our intentions are pure, there’s no way to prove them.

We have decided to do the following:

1. Rescind all of our “React” trademarks and applications.*
2. Discontinue the React World program.
3. Release all past Content ID claims.**

In addition, the previous announcement videos, along with anything else related to REACT World, has been taken down. This is much like nicely asking the horses not to bolt once they have already escaped the stable; whether the gesture is enough to restore any tiny amount of faith remains to be seen.

In the meantime, their subscriber numbers continue to fall.

[Medium]


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

It’s the most popular NBN speed in Australia for a reason. Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Gizmodo, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.