How much LP footage did Anita Sarkeesian "steal", exactly?

NuclearKangaroo

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LifeCharacter said:
NuclearKangaroo said:
the post i was quoting HAS the proof she used LP footage and without giving credit, but well, heres the link again
Her using LP footage is not proof she didn't play the games herself. It's proof she didn't record herself doing it, and even that's iffy since she could have just preferred the LP footage over the footage she made herself.
150k dollars, and she didnt even record her own gameplay?

and dont you think its suspicious she didnt credit those LPs? also as if she was HIDING the fact she didnt play those games?
 

NuclearKangaroo

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LifeCharacter said:
NuclearKangaroo said:
150k dollars, and she didnt even record her own gameplay?
Having lots of money doesn't mean she has the time or enthusiasm to play through an entire game to get a five second clip for her thirty minute video, and then do it again and again and again. Using other's footage is a practical choice since she seems to have a huge stack of games to play through and people keep whining about how she's not making videos fast enough.
you are right, its not like people PAID her to do a proper research

oh wait, they did

either way she is a scam artist, you cant half-ass something as simple as playing video games if people gave you so much money to do a PROPER research

LifeCharacter said:
and dont you think its suspicious she didnt credit those LPs? also as if she was HIDING the fact she didnt play those games?
No, I don't because I'm not looking for a conspiracy theory. It was a poor thing for her to not credit them, but it's not evidence in the slightest sense. Unless you have some actual evidence, you need to either drop all pretenses of honesty and integrity, or drop the idea that Sarkeesian hasn't played the games.
so you want a statement signed by her arguing she didnt play those video games? how convenient

tell me, if she didnt have the time or enthusiasm to play through those games, why did she hide that fact? why didnt she put a disclaimer saying:

"sorry in the 6 FREAKIN' MONTHS since my last video i didnt manage to gather enough time or enthusiasm to play through these games, therefore i have used LP videos from the following authors as evidence to sustain my claims"

you can draw conclusions from the existing evidence
 

NuclearKangaroo

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LifeCharacter said:
And using other people's footage in no way disallows her from conducting proper research. She doesn't have to record herself doing it for it to exist. People also paid her for her videos, which she can't make if she has to spend hours slogging through a game she's already played through for the sake of getting a single clip for them.
for 150k looking at videos someone else made and not credit them is not proper research

LifeCharacter said:
so you want a statement signed by her arguing she didnt play those video games? how convenient
I want actual evidence. I'm sorry that such a request is too difficult for you to meet. I thought things like integrity and standards were something you supported, but I guess I was wrong.

you can draw conclusions from the existing evidence
You certainly can, just don't expect anyone who isn't predisposed towards believing Sarkeesian's the anti-Christ come to steal all your games away to believe it, because it's based on nothing but a conspiracy theory.
the thing is that if she did play those games, the implications are absurd

- she got 150k dollars to buy games and recording equipment
- in the HUGE hiatus between each of her videos she didnt have enough time to play and record her own gameplay
- she at no point credited LPs, with the clear intention of making the audience believe she actually recorded that gameplay

you expect me to believe that actually happened? that someone got 150k, had 6 months of free time, and she didnt have enough time or enthusiasm to record her own gameplay and prove her claims?

and lets not forget she has gone on record saying she is not a gamer, or are we going to ignore that piece of evidence as well?


is it outrageous to believe someone who is not a gamer, that in 6 months didnt record the gameplay she had to, didnt actually play those games?
 

WhiteNachos

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IceForce said:
So which is it? Either she's playing the game(s) wrong (but definitely still playing them herself), OR she's NOT playing them and "stealing" the footage instead.

It can't be both.
It can be a mix of both. Some of it stolen some of it shot herself.
 

Rayce Archer

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The_Kodu said:
Rayce Archer said:
She didn't steal any. Video of someone else's work does not belong to the individual who records the video. Or to put it in real-world terms, video of a MLB game doesn't belong to the players, it belongs to major league baseball.

Publishers "own" footage of their games and permit its use by tacit noninterference. Lets Play-ers don't own any of it, even what they record, and neither does Anita.
Already gone through this multiple times. Lets Plays count as transformative works so yes the recording is owned by the player. The art assets, mechanics and even code of the game is owned by the publishers but the performance is owned by the player.

In MLB the league organises the deals etc and pays them. In the same vein any pro gaming event footage is owned by the league organises not the players as the league organised the matches and recording.

Captcha knows why people are on about Anita.
Emperor's clothes
Just being transformative does not guarantee a work protection under fair use. It simply protects new components of that work. So the narration and any other original content are fine. But does the footage count?

I think you'd have a hard time defending that in court, if it came to it. First off there's portion-of-usage, or what is commonly known as the "heart of the matter." In other words, does the derivitive work (which I would argue is what a let's play is) contain a distinctive portion of the original work? This is debatable in most cases, but with Let's Play videos it certainly isn't since by definition they show the whole game.

Further, you have the issue of nature-of-work. Most modern video games are protected by clauses in the EULA which preclude fair use by your acceptance. For instance in the EULA for Spore, the user cedes not only rights to any creature they create but any video or still images they create in or from the game. Even if your work IS transformative, you don't magically overcome a signed contract just by playing and recording a game, which is WHY you signed said contract in the first place.

Finally I don't think the intent of a Let's Play is transformative. They have no academic value (except maybe Tresspasser, lol), they don't support a broader journalistic initiative, and as recordings of a game being played they really don't modify the original work from its core intent or nature. The best analog to a let's play would be a guitarist in a signed band shooting cell phone video of himself during a concert. Yeah he's playing the music, and yeah he's recording the video, but that doesn't change the studio owning his footage.

Note that this is not especially meant as a criticism of Let's Play videos so much as an observation that no, as much as they might wish it, Let's Play-ers have no exclusive rights to the video they record. Similarly, the TVWiG videos MIGHT count as transformative since they are ostensibly scholarly or journalistic works SUPPLEMENTED by recorded examples of the content being criticized. This would be true even if Let's Play videos were transformative (again, I don't think they are) meaning that Anita still hasn't stolen anything except where bound by contract and restricted by the creator's decision to take legal action. Which of course nobody will because nothing says "I'm sexist scum and I make games about hating women" faster than suing someone for making a video accusing you of being sexist scum and making games about hating women.

Wait shit, Ubisoft would totally still go for that.

What this really comes back to is the whole "Waaaaah Anita Sarkeesian is complaining about games and she doesn't even play them" argument which is variably fallacious depending on whether we consider TVWiG an academic or a journalistic series.
 

WhiteNachos

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BarbaricGoose said:
And I don't know who this thunderf00t person is, but he must have some kinda bizarre obsession with her if he honestly watched "40 or so" LPs just to "Prove" she used other people's recorded gameplay. (I can't even make it through one--that's some dedication.) Even if she did, and I'm not saying she did, what's the big fuckin' deal? You think anybody would be able to tell who's gameplay footage it is without the original LP commentary? No? Then no harm was done.
He's not the one who found out that she copied other people's Let's Plays, someone else did because they saw the original ones first and thought hers looked familiar.

40 LPs may sound like a lot but in his case all he has to do is to skip to this one part of the game that's less than 3 minutes, since most people just walk straight past the women. Thunderfoot does seem a little off though.
 

BarbaricGoose

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The_Kodu said:
Except you're claiming credit for someone elses work.

Also again you claimed removing the audio would stop it being recognisable. Except the actions present and in more modern games the presence of gamertags or the like.
Okay, that video had nothing to do with my point. I honestly don't know how much more clearly I can say this, but I must not be getting the point across, or you're just not understanding. Maybe re-read my earlier my posts? Because I'm hardly saying anything new at this point..

You're not claiming credit for anyone's work by doing this; if you delete the audio, all their "Work" is gone. Playing a game, completing objectives, shooting things and going places that hundreds of thousands--if not millions--of other people have done in probably very similar ways does not qualify as any sort of artistic work. I mean, that sounds like some truly awful exhibit that would pop up in a modern art museum.

And on the subject of Gamertags: did you see any Gamertags in Anita's video? I didn't watch it, but I'll be honest, that does present an interesting conundrum. Even if there were tags in the video, you'd be hard pressed to make the case that anyone is being hurt by using someone's LP footage without their LP audio. Now, if you didn't see any Gamertags in Anita's video, the point is moot anyway.

So I say, again, if you scrub away the audio, there is no way to discern between LPer gameplay footage and gameplay footage that any asshole could've recorded, and any asshole is free to use. Even if the footage looks similar, it's being used in totally different ways. It's not like she (allegedly) stole the footage, and started making her own LPs with it--THAT would be pretty shitty, I admit.
 

JSRevenge

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Here's the rub:
Plagiarism is not illegal, but copyright infringement is. The first question that arises is: are Let's Play videos copyrighted works? Probably. Reading through the Wikipedia entry for Copyright, it seems that the Berne Convention Implementation Act made works after 1989 inherently copyrighted without the need to register a copyright. However, if these derivative copyrighted works (the LP videos, for those I've lost already) are then used again under Fair Use, I don't see that as being a problem, legally.
 

Nukekitten

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The_Kodu said:
Except it also does protect the performance too.
E.g. you can see the same play done by multiple companies and while the play is copyright of the author (unless it's public domain) the performances are not copyright of the playright.

The act of playing the game causes that footage to count as transformative and that performance to be it's own copyright entity as such.
The factors to be considered for fair use as defined under USC 107 must include:

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

In the case of Anita's use of let's play footage she's using a small segment, that in no way substitutes for the purpose of the original, for an educational purpose.

The LPs may very well constitute a fair use argument - but it seems to me her argument would be at least as strong. No-one looking for the Let's Play video seems likely to find her criticism of gaming to serve their purpose just as well.

It is not simply the act of playing a game that makes something transformative. That's why it constitutes fair use to take small clips of anime, for instance, and comment upon them.
 

somonels

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When was the gta video? Don't reply or quote. Use of plagiarized footage was raised and proven since the beginning, if not since the first video then certainly the second. The extent being between yes and all. Have the sources been cited and credited since? I don't know, never cared to look back.

But good effort, you just forgot to reference:
 

Nukekitten

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The_Kodu said:
The day schools use Anita's work as factual material and teach it as such is the day I'll eat my damn hat. Her stuff isn't even actually educational. It's more error than substance. The only use it has and should ever have is in a history class to show why 3rd Wave Feminism eventually took over because 2nd wave is batshit crazy.
If we start allowing educational/research/that general line of fair use to cease to be a defence when someone happens to pour ridicule on someone they disagree with, I suspect that fair use will last about as long as it takes the first comedian to be hired by a law firm. Vim seems to me no reasonable substitute for consistently applied principle.

And that's about all I'm going to say on that particular line. I don't agree with many of the things Anita says, but I'm not going to advocate pillorying her simply on the basis I feel she's bad at her job.
 

Charli

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Yeah I see successful careers built upon stolen and passed around footage all over youtube. I really could give a shit. I don't agree with quite a number of things Anita spouts, but really what's one more ripper-off youtuber.

Should she have had more class with the money donated to her documentary series? Sure.

But frankly that's for the dung heads who gave the money in the first place to moan about. Not all the people dedicating their spare time to ripping her life to shreds for the gall of having some not very complimentary things to say and dodgy practices.


I. Do. Not. Give. A. Scooby.
 

NuclearKangaroo

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LifeCharacter said:
NuclearKangaroo said:
for 150k looking at videos someone else made and not credit them is not proper research
I don't believe citations are part of the "research" process. Certainly they're a part of whatever that research is being used to create, but not citing something has zero implications on the actual research being done.
looking for proof is not part of the research process...

what?

LifeCharacter said:
the thing is that if she did play those games, the implications are absurd

- she got 150k dollars to buy games and recording equipment
- in the HUGE hiatus between each of her videos she didnt have enough time to play and record her own gameplay
- she at no point credited LPs, with the clear intention of making the audience believe she actually recorded that gameplay

you expect me to believe that actually happened? that someone got 150k, had 6 months of free time, and she didnt have enough time or enthusiasm to record her own gameplay and prove her claims?
I expect you to have evidence for your beliefs. Her being too lazy to play through a game again for a short clip is only evidence that she was lazy. Her not crediting the LPers is only evidence of bad behavior. None of it is evidence she didn't play the games and unless you have something else to use as evidence but still want to keep slandering her I suggest you never even pretend you believe in integrity, ethics, or standards, because you appear to have none.
she was paid 150k to be lazy...

oh ok, shes a scam artist then

theres absolutely no way she comes out clean, almost every single scenario paints her as a scam artist one way or the other

LifeCharacter said:
and lets not forget she has gone on record saying she is not a gamer, or are we going to ignore that piece of evidence as well?
Bullshit. I've seen that video and, unless you're predisposed towards hating her like all those obsessed with her apparently are, that is not what she said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcPIu3sDkEw

"im not a fan of video games..."

"i would like to play video games, but i wouldnt want to go around shooting people and ripping out their heads its just gross..."

i cant imagine what goes through your mind, i cant imagine how can you to listen to that statement and not come to the conclusion that anita is not a fan of video games, that she is not a gamer

your argument is indefensible


LifeCharacter said:
is it outrageous to believe someone who is not a gamer, that in 6 months didnt record the gameplay she had to, didnt actually play those games?
If you want to pretend that you stand for integrity and standards, yes. Because you have none if the only evidence you need to accuse someone of something is a conspiracy theory based around bullshit misrepresentation and a lack of care about alternative explanations for anything.
i didnt know integrity and standards meant i couldnt draw my own conclusions based on the evidence present at the moment, thats a new one