basically, i think the entire thing - as tends to happen on the internet - has been outrageously misunderstood. this, basically, is the reason i stopped reading my facebook feed. something gets misunderstood, and it gets shared in the wrong context. then, it gets shared a million times in the wrong context. the number of people that bother to do research or think about it is basically zero. so, the end result is not that millions of people are brought to some higher understanding, but that millions of people are badly confused. it's a great example of how the internet has amplified the fact that we're all thoughtless cretins (even while providing us with the tools to transcend it).
what i think they were trying to do was create a franchise. it was less about mcdonalds suing burger king, and more about opening up a starbucks on every corner. what they were trying to do was create a "* reacts" video for just about anything you could imagine, and have it all use the same format.
so, they have their existing reacts franchises. what they wanted to do was allow that concept to explode by allowing others to use what they actually have trademarked - their logos, their music and the other aspects of their format that make them unique. so, you'd have somebody in the north doing "inuit react", somebody in russia doing "russians react", somebody in africa doing "zulus react" & etc - all in the relevant languages, for the relevant markets, and all being fast-food type franchise spin-offs of the copyrighted burger.
there are reasons to criticize this. but, what has gone viral is just factually wrong. yet again. can somebody drop me a line when they can find something viral that isn't factually wrong?
the error was that those few seconds of the video where he talks about copyright, and which really have almost nothing to do with the actual idea expressed in the video, should have been completely edited out. not because they're horrible; because they should have known that people would be too fucking stupid to get their heads around it.