The launch of Galaxy Note 7 went worse than Samsung expected, to put it mildly. After Samsung was forced to order a second recall of the device and permanently discontinued its production, the South Korean company went into full damage control mode. The amount of problems its latest flagship caused worldwide received a lot of attention from the general public and the Samsung Galaxy brand as a whole is obviously suffering because of that. While it’s still too early to make any specific predictions regarding long-term consequences of this fiasco, it’s fair to say that viral videos mocking Galaxy Note 7 and Samsung in general obviously aren’t good news for the company. Unfortunately, they’ve been popping up precisely because of this entire ordeal.
Earlier this week, a Facebook video depicting a Halloween costume made out of smoking Galaxy Note 7 boxes went viral as millions of users jumped at the chance to share this unique creation. Not that long ago, another video making fun of the device’s tendency to explode made some waves in the gaming community. The video was posted on YouTube and showed gameplay footage from a modded version of Grand Theft Auto V. The mod in question replaced in-game sticky bombs with rather accurate 3D models of Galaxy Note 7. Not surprisingly, a lot of people thought the idea was rather funny so the video ended up circulating the Internet for about two weeks.
Well, that ended today, as Samsung filed a DMCA request against the original video and YouTube predictably complied with the takedown notice. While the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is primarily used as a basis for taking down videos which use content produced and owned by other parties in other content, it also applies in this case given how the said GTA V mod accurately depicts a real-life version of Galaxy Note 7 whose design is obviously owned by Samsung. Still, the phone maker is now facing an uphill battle as the same video was already posted by dozens of other YouTube users and can also be found on numerous other video services online. While the company can certainly file DMCA requests against each and every one of them, it’s practically impossible to completely remove it from the Internet.