YouTube takes down Shirish Kunder’s viral film over copyright complaint
A screenshot of the video from YouTube
Within a week of its online release, Shirish Kunder’s viral short film titled ‘Kriti’ has been removed from YouTube over a copyright complaint by Nepali filmmaker.
Kriti, a psychological thriller starring Manoj Bajpayee, Radhika Apte and Neha Sharma was released online on the video sharing platform by Kunder’s team. The initial reactions to the short film were more than favorable, with the film going viral on social media and clocking in over 1 million views on the first day itself.
However, a day later, Nepali filmmaker Aneel Neupane had claimed that the film was copied from his short film titled ‘Bob’. His film had been online on Vimeo and YouTube since December 2015 and May 2016 respectively.
The independent filmmaker, who lacked backing from a big production house, took to Facebook to share his ordeal and requested other users to compare for themselves. Within a day, thousands had shared Neupane’s post after finding glaring similarities in the film’s plots and dialogues.
Initially, Kunder retaliated to the plagiarism accusation by posting that it was impossible for him to copy Bob since he had never seen or heard of the film. But, as Neupane’s post started getting more and more traction on social media, the director sent a legal notice to the Nepali filmmaker asking him to apologize for the false accusations and take down his film.
In the notice Kunder mentioned that since his script was present with a few people, and if Neupane’s claims about similarities are well founded, then it’s the Nepali filmmaker who stole the idea for ‘Bob’ from his script.
However, before Neupane could do anything, YouTube’s team responded to his earlier copyright claim and took down Kunder’s film on Tuesday. Users searching for the film are now greeted with the message, ‘This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Aneel Neupane’.
While the independent filmmaker is celebrating his victory over an influential Bollywood director, Kunder’s team has reached out to YouTube in a bid to get the video online.
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