AES 19: You Have Gyatt To Be Kidding With This DMCA Tax

Greetings, dear reader! Today, I want to bring you a seemingly unusual topic for me to talk about, but it's kind of all the gas nowadays.

Dear reader, have you heard of Skibidi Toilet?

That's right, today I want to talk about Skibidi Toilet, because I think there's an interesting aspect to it that appears to be overlooked by most people nowadays, or children at least. There have been rumours that the creator of Skibidi Toilet—Dafuq!?Boom!—sued a person named Newman for using licensed Skibidi Toilet assets in his video game.

Now, I want to take you on a little journey to my past. When I was 13, I played this game titled "Half Life 2", which was released in the year of 2007. As you might've expected, it wasn't in its prime anymore, but it is a critically-acclaimed title for its revolutionary physics technology (I like buzzwords vomit). Essentially, it's well-known, and I'm pretty sure some of you who are into video games have ever heard of it. Do note that this game is developed by a company we now know as Valve, who owned the biggest video game platform on PC, which is Steam. As we know, Half Life won't be the focus of this essay, because I only want to focus on one particular character from the series. You see, when you booted up Half Life 2 and started a new playthrough, the first thing you'll hear is a monologue, and then, SOMEONE familiar appears before you...

You may want to focus on his face, and it wouldn't take a Poirot to discern it. That is the Skibidi Toilet Guy. Now, what does this have to do with (Garry) Newman? Well, Garry Newman works for Valve, and the video game which he created (Garry's Mod) borrows assets from various Valve games, including Half Life 2. 

So the reality of the situation is that Dafuq!?Boom! actually the one that borrowed assets from another game that borrowed assets, so how did he do it? Well, to answer it is pretty simple actually. A little example I can think of is when you type something on Microsoft Word: Microsoft Word licensed its user elements and all kinds of things, but once you typed something onto it, it becomes yours. This is called transformative work. This law can be exploited too sadly, as ridiculous as it might sound,  like in this case where they tried to sue Newman.

The situation doesn’t end there though, because what happened afterwards? How did Newman respond to this unfortunate situation?

In an unexpected turn of events, Dafuq!?Boom! posted a statement in his Discord server, and I quote: “I’m here to make it clear that I have NEVER tried to cause any harm to Garry and Garry’s Mod. But unfortunately bad people take advantage of this ease, and these people’s content I don’t support and encourage.” He further explained that the people who made the claim against Newman are the content creators behind multiple works of NSFW depiction of Skibidi Toilet back then in 2023. This case was likely a byproduct of an automated DMCA take-down request. If you’re familiar with the world of YouTube, you must’ve heard how a lot of YouTubers are complaining with false DMCA claims because of the inaccurate automated process to file a DMCA claim.

So far, the story hasn’t been updated, so I have to leave it here. Thank you for reading once again.

Bibliography:

1. https://publicrecords.copyright.gov/detailed-record/35763630?ref=404media.co

2. https://x.com/garrynewman

3. Gault, Matthew. "Garry’s Mod Creator Says Skibidi Toilet Served Him With a Copyright Takedown Notice (Updated)". Gizmodo, July 31 2024.