Youtubers back-pedal in panic following copyright backlash

Youtubers back-pedal in panic following copyright backlash

The Fine Bros are the duo behind the rather popular "react" series' of videos, where they get children, or the elderly or any other variety of people to 'react' to certain stimulus. Sometimes it's old tech, sometimes it's new tech, often it's merely videos.

This format has led the pair to generate more than 13 million subscribers on Youtube, which is no mean feat. They make a good living and want to expand that platform, but the way they've gone about it has caused a PR nightmare for them.

Recently they launched a platform called React World, which would see them licensing their style and platform to other Youtubers around the world to make videos with and make money from - as long as they had a revenue share. While this was all fine and dandy for most, what wasn't was that the Fine Bros. also wanted to enforce this system, stopping anyone from making reaction videos.

They've admitted to taking down similar style videos to their own in the past, even going after older people reacting to things before they launched their own "Elders React," series. They even attempted to trademark the word "react," for Youtube.

Apparently they went after the Ellen Degeneres show too, for having children look at old technology on there. Good luck with that guys.

Still, it looks like they've cottoned on to how bad this would be for their business. They've lost more than 300,000 subscribers at the time of writing, with more tumbling every minute.

You can even see the numbers falling live, here. They've now pulled all videos referencing React World too and seem to just be pretending it didn't happen.