LucasFilm Rescues Darth Vader Fan Film From YouTube Copyright Fight

A Star Wars fan named 'Toos' told Newsweek he'd spent $150,000 of his own money on a fan film about Darth Vader -- and what happened next:
Before the camera started rolling Toos said he contacted an employee at Lucasfilm [and] claims Lucasfilm gave him permission on two conditions: he couldn't crowdfund and he couldn't monetize the fan film on YouTube. Toos agreed to those conditions and shot for three full days in September. They ran post-production up until the release of 'Vader Episode 1: Shards of the Past' on December 20. Star Wars fans, a notoriously tough group to please, had overwhelming praise for the video, which gathered more than six million views in one month and 40,000 likes.
On January 14, music group and corporate collective Warner/Chappell filed a copyright claim against the video. After filing the claim, the company (publisher for the Walt Disney Music Company) began to collect ad revenue for Toos' video by claiming that one of the songs used a rendition of 'The Imperial March'... If Toos attempts to appeal and Warner/Chappell refutes his claim, he could get a copyright strike on his channel and lose complete ownership of the video...
Fan response on Reddit has been massive, with the post about Star Wars Theory and the strike reaching over 90,000 upvotes... In a new video on the StarWarsTheory channel, Toos told his fans that the claim on his video had been lifted due in part to the intervention of LucasFilm.'They stepped up and told Disney or the other company that this wasn't okay, that this wasn't going to stand.'
Newsweek points out that Disney doesn't own Warner/Chappell. 'The music group merely licenses their music' -- and has been accused of making erroneous claims before.
They're the same group that claimed they owned the music rights on a YouTube clip from Star Wars with all the original music removed.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.