funny that the "architect" reached out trough discord of all things instead of a cease and desist trough post or email, modern architects really are gaming hard these days

This cease & desist would also have to imply that it's illegal to take a picture of any building made after 1990

If I was an architect and some people built a "replica" of a building I designed in Minecraft, I'd be honored to tears. This architect guy has either an iron block for a heart or the intelligence of a stepped upon peanut.

two words: [Fair Use] Anyone who sues someone over an artistic representation needs their heads examined

imagine little timmy building a house in minecraft and getting swat raided because of architects.

Imagine having nothing better to do as an architect than suing some juicy Minecraft boys having a blast.

The guy suing is the physical embodiment of a Redditor

I would love to see actual architectural plans derived from the minecraft buildings. Like, the walls are composed of segments of meter thick walls, no diagonals, strange materials like a meter cube of pink wool, etc.

That dude is just what happens when a smartish person is also a troll. I went to school for legal studies and have worked with lawyers for years, his weird little case wouldn’t be picked up by any lawyer and if it did, it would be thrown out right away

Imagine being an architect, and genuinely believing your building design can be perfectly recreated with a pile of one meter cubes.

Let's not forget that the PDF he sent also says that it only applies to TANGIBLE things. Since nobody can physically touch the buildings in Minecraft (only a digital character controlled by the player can) architectural copyright laws cannot even apply to digital media such as video games.

It's refreshing to see how you methodically handled the troll with evidence, maturity and factual justification, all while keeping it entertaining to watch. Great video!

One of the issues of living in a litigious society. Everyone wants easy money and will attack anyone legally for any reason. A good chunk of lawsuits are always frivolous and pointless.

Let's not forget that a video game depicted the Notre Dame cathedral to such an intricate level that its model was used in restoring the cathedral after the fire.

Don't try to sue a gamer. They are some of the most spiteful creatures on the planet and have far to much free time on their hands.

you guys are doing amazing work, keep it up.

Did they sue every photographer that has ever taken a photograph of those buildings. If not, then fair use in art means that they don't have a legal leg to stand on in court.

We must now visit every building this architect designed, create a 3D model of their internals and externals and then put them for free to download on the internet

I don't watch all of many videos. You did very well with this. Thank you for the smiles.

I hadn't even heard about your project or the channel but this was a thoroughly entertaining exploration of silly legal threats.

Imagine the judge hopping on the server to see if they were telling the truth.

As an artist, I immediately knew that that lawsuit wasn't gonna fly coz of "Artistc depiction" in copyright laws since any and all benign depictions of public objects (including buildings) is basically a free space for artists and no amount of lawyering artistic rights since it is included in the law of Freedom of Speech

Me and my father work in AC industry, so we spend a lot of times inside other peoples homes or on construction sites, people are ususally very nice to us and we to them BUT there is one little exception, architects, they are one of the most narcissictic, arrogant people i've met in person (if they dont send a middle man like they usually do, because youre a construction worker, lowest of the low and they meeting with you is a stain on their pride). I first didnt belive my father when he told me architects can be a real bitch, next thing i know we made holes and holdings for copper pipes preapering to set them in when middle man comest saying "Sir architect (no shit called him that), didnt like the design and the location of the outdoor AC units so he asks them to be moved, he will send you a new draft soon." to which im suprised because the pipes COULDNT GO anywhere else other where we prepared to put them aalong with the AC units. Long story short he was a bitch that never left his home, didnt talk to anybody besides the middle man, and because of his education though he ate the world.

This reminds me of when Activision was under threat of lawsuit by Fomula One for depicting a recreation of one of their stadiums in MW2022, so they were forced to remove that map from the game. However that building was in Singapore so I wonder how the copyright law works there.

Usually, if somebody says "See you in court" they're not serious. It's weird how far people will go to blackmail people trying to have fun.

As an architect and also a Minecraft builder, this is quite embarrassing. If someone recreated my projects into Minecraft I'd be glad and honored. Either way, great video man keep up the good work!

He’s going to be telling this story to his grandkids. “Did I ever tell you kids about how I was sued by actual architects over a block game?”

That "or are we?" followed up by the VSauce theme was golden. I love that meme. The high ground meme too. 🤣🤣

as a real civil engineer once said: "it had to be the architects"

Honestly 50/50 on this guy being a troll. I wouldn't be surprised at all if this guy was so self righteous he felt like he had the authority to sue on behalf of all architects everywhere

Having one of your buildings immortalised in minecraft would be one of crown acheivements if I was an architect. Not only would my mark on the world exist in the form of a building existing out there in the wild, but that very existence is further acknowledged by its existence in a computerised depiction if the world further hammering home that point that something of me will be left behind when I die. How can they not be flattered. I dunno

At the start of this video I thought "wait a minute, surely you can't copyright something a tourist could take a picture of, its gotta be be the plans themselves that are what's protected" I am glad I was close enough to the answer.

This is what I imagine mr krabs doing if he cared enough about the law to know how to sue

If this guy ever does proceed to court, please use the sand castle analogy seriously. Ask the court if a child who makes a representation of a real castle out of sand is liable for damages.

The problem is, that copyrighted buildings are often only covered in a few different ways. Readily found in public view buildings might have a copyright but only enforced or claimed in the event that someone tries to build a building themselves in the world that copies that architecture. Pictures, artistic representations, etc even in commercial use settings, aren't covered unless it's used to build another version.

I swear in 50 years you won't be able to look at something because storing it in your memory is considered copyright

"Well, you see judge, they built what looks like a low resolution Lego version of the building I own in a video game. Therefore they owe me." Good luck with that one...

As an actual law student, I can say that this video would be really useful in your defense, if there were such a real case of copyright architecture infringement.

They have no case, if you do get taken to court any half decent lawyer can get you off, might even be able to counter sue and get money from anyone who tries to sue you.

6:38 Love that you use the Palmer residence from Twin Peaks as the example 🙂

I can imagine a 3 year old placing 4 blocks of stone next to each other then this guy bursts into their room and sues them

I study architecture and play a lot of minecraft, the only time you can't represent a building without the autor approving it is in real life as a public infrastructure, some architect even copied other architect work as their house without ever getting in any trouble

The amount of sheer enlightened thinking in the first minute of the video give me hope for humanity.

Welp....your sense of humor, and ability to use big words and form logical arguments while being (mostly) polite, are INTACT. You attracted a first-time viewer enough that I clicked on this video. EDIT: I've never played Minecraft.....and I watched to the end. 🤣💯👍👍

"Yes your honor, I'm suing this individual for creating my building in minecraft" Judge: "case dismissed"

Imagine crying to a judge that people are building in a block game.

I was pretty sure the copyright on a building just protects it from perfect replication. The copyright holder can choose to make the exact same cookie cutter home a hundred times, but a different agency cannot make the exact same cookie cutter home. Neat video.

Got very surprised to see drone shots of Pachuca, Mexico, at 5:53. Beautiful city

as someone who has studied architecture I would be flattered if I saw my work not only in real life but in a video game

This gets even funnier when you realise searching for laws in cases like this is what you do in introduction to law class at university. So a "lawyer" in his first year of law school would put this guy under in like 5 minutes if you give him time to look for the pages in his law book

All Mr. “Strange” had to do was “Hey, I designed this building, I love what you guys are doing, could you put my name in a sign?”

6:40 Those shots of Passau look amazing!

The guy could surely only sue for the buildings which he designed, and considering I don't believe that he's an architect at all, that's none of them

"I'm sorry but this concern is outside the scope of technical support. Please have your attorney send a notarized Cease and Desist letter to the PO Box of our legal department (or the owner of the project / whoever owns or rents the server). Please also bear in mind that impersonation or counterfeiting of official legal correspondence is in and of itself a crime. This conversation is over. Thank you and have a nice day."

Thank you, guardian of Nerd's, i subbed to you because of this.

imagine being mad at a guy sitting in front of a computer screen playing a block game.

I remember when Abe said "no more shall the lowly architect have to worry, from this day on criminals will be punished to the full extent of the law for the heinous act of recreating buildings in minecraft", what a powerful quote.

He didn't want to tell you which building was his because BTE probably managed to build it better than him 😂

Nice. Killin' it!!

I hear that Rome Total War music. Respect to you my good sir.

ok so the architect is willing to sue you for building structures from the real world out of pixelated blocks? man, this society gets dumber every day.... Edit: Thanks for the likes!

If I was rich enough, I would buy every building that did this to you and give you permission to build it. Unfortunately, because of covid, my human trafficking business really fell off quick and I'm not as baller as first promised.

Boy, wait till that "architect" gets a load of Google Earth..

Legally speaking, you cannot prevent the replication of your work in a different medium, so long as it does not function as a market replacement. Nobody is going to use the minecraft version as a reference for the building, it's scale or its actual floor plan, therefor, the architect would lose in court. It's like if you made a statue, then somebody did a sketch of the town square that includes your statue in the shot. You can't sue them or stop them from producing said artwork. It's called "fair use".

Um... Your defense is simple... Does your building have round or curved surfaces? Guess what Minecraft DOESN'T have... Round edges. Therefore any structure contained in Minecraft is squared off and is subject to artistic representation protection by law.

Let’s not forget the “Humanly habitable” part (5:20). Humans cannot live in what amounts to a bunch of empty facades inside a video game, as impressive as those facades are.

This video should be all you need to crush any jury’s doubts

...Shoulda mailed them a box of Legos.

if they take this to court, the countersuit is gonna fund you guys for years

Considering the fact that there are numerous architects, architecture students and people looking to become architecture students (including myself), who found out their love for architectural satisfaction by building in Minecraft through all that their creative minds could think of, without hitting paywall after paywall and be faced with the prospect of building entire workstations, I'd say a lot of architects these days would be honored to find their own designs replicated in Minecraft, where they, themselves, started. I certainly would.

“…or are we?” [Vsauce music] beautifully done lmao

I can almost guarantee that this copyright law was put into place to prevent architects from stealing building designs from other architects. Example being an architect builds a building in NYC, another architect can’t take the design and make a complete copy of said building in LA. I don’t think the lawmakers in 1990 were writing this law intending to prevent people playing cube game from having fun.

If for some reason, building a similar looking structure in minecraft for archival reasons *wasn’t* fair use, I suggest you guys paste a massive p***s at the location of every building you are told not to build.

I like to think that this is an "architect" that makes nothing but those hideous grey squares of concrete and consider every single one of them a masterpiece You know, the ones that look like *every single Minecraft beginner home* But IRL

If the architect can sue over this, then every single picture, drawing or any media with that building in it should not be allowed. This is stupid.

Imagine doing something really big of a real life structure so well someone tries to sue for doing so well on the art

So, placing ingame-blocks in the right order in a virtual Block Game can get you sued?

If someone actually sues you over one specific building, remove the building and replace it with a giant block looking like a pixelated building and make it clear with a sign who made you do this (with name, and company, and anything).

2:35 always nice to see some lost room rep.

Imagine being so miserable, you threaten a minecraft project for works that arent even your own

One of the few examples where "We have investigated ourselves and found that we are not guilty" happens to be entirely accurate.

Assuming this was even a legit threat, they didn't mention what THEIR building was to ask for it to be removed and I'm pretty sure that you can't, idk, sue for copyright over other people's copyrighted material to try to gain a profit for yourself lol.

As I understand it in the US there are instances where you need to name a responsible party and sue before insurance pays out to cover medical bills, that cookie lawsuit screams "I needed to name someone responsible for my insurance to pay for my medical bills"

"On behalf of all architects" Two Words: Craft Bukket.

If anything, this just proves you guys did an incredible job replicating the real life building 😂 edit: k this comment thread is cursed

No one should be able to sue for recreating a building in a game. It's literally a non-issue.

dude’s a wholeass troll 😭

when they started defining the building in the pdf as well, it says HABITABLE. these buildings aren't habitable because they're virtual and cannot suffice as a literal home.

It would be funny if that architect still tried. That case would be yeeted faster than an empty soda can.

I'm imagining a judge taking one look at this case, looking at the people trying to sue you for playing a video game that is essentially a block stacking simulator, and saying, "Are you f*cking serious?" and then literally throwing them out of the courtroom.

4:23 That tiny bit ov Vsauce vibe XD

If your court case turns sour, then there's gonna be a class action against Google Earth for the same thing.

If this guy is an architect and is seriously threatening to sue. Then he's a fucking goon.

The downside of being able to sue anyone for something as easy as getting hurt in their home while trying to kidnap someone, summs up: the American law system needs to be changed

Now add a statue of the architect in the center of a nice lava garden. There is a guy doing a replica of Chernobyl in 7 days to die. That game uses mad shapes and textures. I look forward to seeing the end result of that project. I only just saw this video today so I'm really looking forward to this now too.

I like how he is tells you to remove all buildings built after that date. As if he somehow owns the rights to all of them...

"noooo! You can't build this in a funny little block game!!!!!!"

imagine living such a sad pitiful and empty life that you need to sue people over a pixelated block game

Y'all know there are dozens of Minecraft Disney Parks recreation servers that use actual copyrighted imagery and audio but are protected because it's in Minecraft. My lawyers will not be in contact...

Its also good to note that absolutely none of these buildings are considered "Humanly Habitable" because any heating, electricity, food, plumbing, and anything else is literally just a collection of colored pixels on a screen. You cant spend a life and raise a family in these buildings for what feels like very obvious reasons.