Whoever does social media for Sidewalk Magazine, a UK-based skateboarding outlet, is having a seriously bad day. Reddit users in uproar over the magazine’s alleged theft of a band’s music video has resulted in a takeover of their Facebook page.
As Music Feeds reports, Los Angeles group The Moth & The Flame recently completed their video for new single ‘Young & Unafraid’ and uploaded it to YouTube last week, where it managed to amass a few thousand views.
According to the Daily Herald, The Moth & The Flame are readying their major label debut and they tapped skateboarder Neal Unger, a senior citizen who took up skateboarding late in life, to feature in their video, pulling off some sick manoeuvres.
Readers, who can check out the video below, will agree that Unger does a pretty good job in the clip. The folks at Sidewalk Mag certainly seemed to think so, because they allegedly took the clip without the band’s permission and uploaded it to their Facebook page.
While it only managed to accrue a few thousand views on YouTube, once posted to the Sidewalk Facebook page, the clip amassed over 3 million views, as well as plenty of traffic for the skateboard magazine.
The clip posted to the page had no link to The Moth & The Flame. It was posted without a link to the original video or any reference to the band. The magazine even allegedly cut the band’s name out of the beginning of the video.
Without anywhere to turn, the band took to Reddit to share their outrage. “I never post but today this magazine ripped my band’s YouTube video. They edited out our name from the front of the video. They posted a link on Facebook to funnel people to their website,” they wrote.
“It’s gotten 2.7 million views today. Meanwhile our YouTube video has gotten about 150 views today. There are no links to us or our YouTube video on this post. We are really happy people are liking this video! But it sucks to see millions of people watching it and not connecting it to us or the star of the video.”
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“We’ve reached out to them two hours ago asking for proper links and credit. No response yet,” the band continue. “Mainly we just want people to see the real video… Not sure what to do.”
Sidewalk‘s Facebook page has since experienced a siege of angry fans and citizens with a good moral compass posting angry and disappointed comments on behalf of The Moth & The Flame, with many bombarding the site’s posts with links to the original ‘Young & Unafraid’ clip.
“PLEASE take down the video you stole from The Moth & The Flame and publicly apologize for your illegal actions and unprofessional attitude about copyrighted materials,” wrote one commenter in one of the more subdued missives posted to the page. Sidewalk is yet to issue an apology.
