Twentieth Century Fox is known for protecting its intellectual property, including names of the movies. So when a portal offering free fitness programs appeared to use names of popular movie and TV-series, the studio sent a takedown request. However, the request turned out not legitimate, because the programs the studio targeted has no connection to the popular movies of the same name.

It is not a secret that copyrights and trademarks allow copyright owners to make sure their content is not being abused. However, they can also be used to censor other content creators, and this is exactly what happened to legitimate videos that were pulled offline just because of being named “Pixels”.

Now the situation repeats. Twentieth Century Fox sent a takedown request to Darebee, a service offering free fitness programs. Fox’s legal department complained about programs named after popular movie and TV-titles: “Buffy,” “Fight Club,” “Archer” and “Avatar.” Darebee admitted that the workouts were indeed inspired by Fox’s movies, but stressed that the website doesn’t profit from them.

So, the website doesn’t agree with the request, but it still decided to remove most of the questionable programs to avoid further problems. This makes sense – if they don’t make money on programs, it doesn’t worth getting in trouble. But the “Avatar Upgrade” workout remains available, because it doesn’t even refer to the Cameron’s movie. Instead, it refers to the avatars people use on the Internet. Darebee explained that people have avatars in the digital world and try to improve them any way they can, and the same can be done in real life by going through a program with the same name. This explanation also makes sense.

Darebee believes that some copyright owners (not pointing fingers) go too far in their protection efforts, which can hurt other content creators. With the help of many volunteers, the free service continues to publish free fitness workouts, though it had to remove the “Archer,” “Buffy,” “Die Hard” “Predator” and “Fight Club” programs just because of their names thanks to Twentieth Century Fox. However, a new “Fighters Club” program has just been published, so the names are not the programs themselves, and hopefully, the situation can be fixed.