Update: Inanna Sarkis has now removed the video from her YouTube channel.
Original Story: YouTuber Inanna Sarkis has been called out for filming a shot by shot remake of a short film created by two lesser known filmmakers, with her thinly concealed attempt at copying their idea being exposed on Reddit and leading to calls for her channel to be shut down.
Filmmakers Tyler Falbo and Eric Vega took to Reddit in order to seek support after discovering that their short film ‘Eviction Notice’ had been copied by Sarkis, who boasts a significantly larger amount of subscribers. Sarkis’ video only features a few deviations from Falbo and Vega’s initial concept, with it otherwise being a complete unabashed rip-off of the original video. However, Sarkis’ video has attracted over 760,000 views from her 316,000 subscribers, while Falbo and Vega’s video has just under 270,000 views from their 10,000 subscribers.
In a post that swiftly reached the front page of Reddit, Vega wrote: “Hey Reddit, we need your help. We are small time youtubers who have recently discovered someone with 300x as many subscribers has made a near shot by shot rip off of one of our videos. The video has nearly 3x as many views as ours.”
Here’s the original video, as filmed and acted by Falbo and Vega:
And here’s Sarkis’ incredibly similar version:
It wasn’t long before the internet worked its magic and began flagging Sarkis’ video, with Redditors working in unison to report it for copyright infringement. The video still remains online at the time of this writing, with it not being certain if YouTube will acknowledge these reports and issue a takedown notice.
Sarkis does note that the video was “inspired” by Falbo and Vega’s short film in its credits, but despite this acknowledgement it still quite clearly oversteps the mark between a homage and a rip-off. Considering how swiftly YouTube acts to remove videos from the site that have received takedown notices from high-profile companies, it will be interesting to see how fast they move to address the reports issued by its community.
Sarkis states that she is an “actress, writer and director” on her Facebook page, with her credits including this year’s horror Happy Birthday. Her videos generate hundreds of thousands of views, with her having also built up a considerable following on Instagram, amassing over 1.7 million followers. She was also considered a “Vine celebrity” before parent company Twitter shut down the 6-second video platform.
