Multinational corporation Amazon copyright claimed one of the more popular The Lord of the Rings channels on YouTube after it reacted negatively to the company’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power San Diego Comic-Con trailer.
Charlie Vickers as Annatar in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2024), Prime Video
Jonathan Watson, who runs The One Ring YouTube channel, shared that Amazon hit his channel with a copyright claim for his video reacting to The Rings of Power Season 2 San Diego Comic-Con trailer. For clarity, the author of this article appeared in The One Ring’s reaction video.
Watson wrote on X, “Gotta start cracking down on those videos you don’t like, huh Amazon? This is 18 DAYS after it was first published…”
Gotta start cracking down on those videos you don’t like, huh Amazon? This is 18 DAYS after it was first published… pic.twitter.com/y8uBaqi3Vi
— Jonathan | ExploringTolkien.com (@torc) August 14, 2024
It’s not surprising that Amazon would copyright claim the video given Amazon Studios boss Jennifer Salke admitted back in 2022 that she and Amazon were censoring reviews for the show that they did not like.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Salke addressed negative reviews, “We all saw it coming, there were no surprises. Having insight into our global audience, we also have insight into the darker sides of how people can manipulate reviews and have other points of view that we wouldn’t support.”
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – AUGUST 15: (L-R) Vernon Sanders, Head of Global TV of Amazon Studios, and Jennifer Salke, Head of Amazon Studios attends “The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power” Los Angeles Red Carpet Premiere & Screening on August 15, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Prime Video)
Salke’s comments to The Hollywood Reporter came in the wake of Amazon announcing they had updated their review system on Prime Video to coincide with the release of the show’s first episode.
Variety reported that Amazon rolled out a “new 72-hour delay for all user reviews posted to Prime Video.”
Variety’s Adam B. Vary and Jennifer Maas explained how it worked, “Each critique is then evaluated to determine whether it’s genuine or a forgery created by a bot, troll or other breed of digital goblin.”
Charlie Vickers as Annatar in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2024), Amazon MGM Studios
Furthermore, YouTuber Ryan Kinel observed that Amazon was not allowing reviews for the show to populate on Prime Video until after the show had been on the streamer for over a week.
He said, ““Five stars with two approved reviews for Rings of Power. Seems normal, right? Seems pretty normal with it being #1 in the United States right now that it would have two five star reviews.”
“Now, of course, if we scroll down a little bit, here, we can see it’s much more than just two five star reviews. Right now I think they are showing something like 44 reviews, which is still laughable. It’s laughable because these are going all the way back to September 2nd, September 5th. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of reviews out there for this thing. But they are so carefully controlling and manipulating this to try and manage the backlash to try and do the damage control. It’s so f***ing disingenuous,” he asserted.
Amazon had also previously coordinated with YouTube to delete negative comments on various trailer and promotional videos for the show.
YouTuber Disparu highlighted this in a video where he pointed out that Amazon’s video “The Earth Needs More Elf Fans” had at one point in time 60,969 views with 606 comments. However, when the video had 309,290 views it only had 287 comments.
Disparu asserted,, “If you just do the ratio of views to views and comments to comments you would have expected 2,567 comments not 287. Which means that if you assume the same comment velocity over time they’ve deleted 89% of all comments that anyone made.”
What do you make of Amazon copyright claiming The One Ring’s reaction video to The Rings of Power Season 2 San Diego Comic-Con trailer?
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