Since I’ve had a lot of people message me and ask why the project was removed, and what’s up with it being double featured, I’ll address the situation.
The day my project Double Exposure Kit was originally featured on Videohive (Jan 18th), I got an email letting me know that not only were they removing my project as the featured file, but removing it completely from the market. One of the reviewers saw my file and thought it too closely resembled the HBO series intro True Detective. When they saw that I used “true detective” as a tag, they said that the work was obviously a copy of the intro and breaking the copyright derivative rules.
As you could imagine, I was pretty upset. To go from the featured file to the project being completely removed in the same day was pretty disheartening.
I’m not even going to mention other projects on Videohive that truly are blatant ripoffs of the True Detective intro and are using “true detective” as a tag that weren’t removed.
I responded to them that I felt it was unique as far as the general market of what you see for double exposures. I showed them my inspiration album and storyboarding process for the project. I explained that I had no malicious intent with using “true detective” as a tag, it’s just that double exposures are so widely recognized from that show, buyers are actually searching for it in the market (via Google keyword research). It’s no different than using “oscars” in my Awards Show project, that’s how search works.
After about 5 days of no response, one of the team members, Mark Brodhuber, finally got in touch with me. He was great to work with. He explained that although it wasn’t exactly like the intro to True Detective, since the intro is very minimal with double exposures and my project was very minimal with double exposures it too closely resembled the intro. He basically said that he would be happy to add it back in if I could make significant changes to the project and make it more stylized.
I responded that it would be difficult to do what he was asking since my project is more of a kit to create double exposures and not an intro. I also told him I was very disappointed in being singled out for this project, as the market for double exposures is looking for a minimal, elegant look.
After 5 days of no response, he apologized for the late response and said that since he didn’t realize the project was a kit and not an intro, he would be happy to add it to the active library without significant changes – and that I had to remove “true detective” as a tag. I agreed, removed about 6 designs I created with the kit, and updated the preview video to better show how the kit worked rather than showing examples of results with the kit like the original.
I also asked if it were possible to have it re-featured since it only had about 23 hours of exposure on the featured section. He said he would do his best to get it back to the featured spot, but couldn’t make any promises.
3 days after submitting the updated project for review, it was accepted and back in the active library – as well as being back on the featured section. I wasn’t going to complain that it wasn’t at the #1 spot for featured anymore, I was just happy to get it back in the market and at least get some extra traffic my way.
Which brings us to this week, it being featured again. I’ll be the first to admit I was really hoping they would remove one or the other for fairness to other authors – I don’t want to be looked down upon or look like I’m being favored, I was a level 7 author before I had my first featured project, and I’ve worked extremely hard to get where I’m at and help as many people as possible.
I hope you can all understand where I’m coming from, I’m just a one dude operation who loves making templates for people. Overall I’m happy with the outcome and Mark did a great job of helping me out and getting it back on the market.
TL;DR I also wish they would remove the double featured spots, and it’s my project.
