Predictable: The Kelly Kut Kanned!

The best recent edit of Kelly Slater pulled down for breach of copyright… 

The Kelly Kut, a free-time edit project that distilled twenty-plus years of the best surfer ever into a beautiful bite-sized morsel of awesomeness, is no more. A quick trip to Vimeo to give it a watch shows:

Vimeo has removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by Poling Productions claiming that this material is infringing: The Kelly Kut 

I can’t say I’m terribly surprised. It was, after all, completely comprised of “borrowed” footage, and in this day and age it doesn’t matter how creative you are, a DMCA request will take you down in a heart beat.

Poling Productions, founded by Florida natives Jack and Clark Poling, undoubtedly has every right to protect their product. And, honestly, filmers don’t earn shit or get nearly the respect they deserve, so I can understand feeling salty when someone else reaps a ton of positive press employing footage they snaked from your product.

It feels petty, though.

When your website is dead, your company has no social media presence and the video the footage was lifted from is unavailable for purchase, what’s the point of enforcing your rights?

Sour grapes? Envy? Outright dickishness?

I know I’m not being fair, and I’m sure if I asked my lawyer wife about it she could give me ten million totally valid and fair reasons for the Polings to enforce their copyright.

But that doesn’t change the fact that it was a sick edit, a ton of work obviously went into it, and I’m kind of pissed because I wanted to watch it this morning while drinking coffee and trying to come up with an idea to write about.