(via Gothamist via Henry Hargreaves)

That Star Wars on the 6 Train video we posted the other day was made by — surprise! — Improv Everywhere. The group’s creator, Charlie Todd, saw the fine folks at Gawker.TV rip his video from Youtube and host in themselves — thereby sucking out his ad dollars with a giant straw of snarkiness (they call his video “an upgrade”).

On Tumblr, Charlie Todd fights back:

So Gawker.tv posted about my Star Wars Subway Car video today, but instead of embedding my video from YouTube like the rest of the Internet does, they ripped it from YouTube and uploaded it to their own site without permission. So I get no credit for any of the views of the video on their site. How nice! Also, by uploading their own ripped version of the video, they can prevent me from seeing any AdSense revenue and focus on making their own money from the ads surrounding the post. Awesome! And they link to Buzzfeed at the end of the post rather than, you know, linking to the group that made the video they ripped off. Cool! Oh, and to top it off, they throw in a little snarky comment about this being an upgrade from our previous antics. Sweet!

Thanks Gawker.tv! It’s such an honor to have you take my content in full and use it for your own benefit!

After reaching out and requesting they update the post with a little credit and a YouTube embed, Gawker.TV complied. “For now,” Charlie wrote this morning, “the Rebel Alliance has won.”

Long story short, content creators beware. Gawker media might eat your souls and monetize the memories. But they’ll spit them back out if you ask nicely!