Jimquisition: Copyright War

[cefm]

Why any government would extend the same broadcast and re-broadcast protections to video game manufacturers that it also extends to live performance events (sports, theatre, concerts) or film/TV is beyond me.

 

[Weaver]

Indeed. Thank God for you, Jim. =w= b

Also, side question;

Who is happy about this!? [sub]Besides publishers, of course[/sub]

I guess if you don't like a specific youtube personality, you could be happy that they are getting the screws put to them, but I don't see one guy/gal you don't like getting burned being worth all the others you may like/don't hate also getting burned.

But rejoicing it as a whole? WHY!?

P.S. You really don't need them, Jim!
You have all of us. ;3

People who hate Let's Players. They believe that they're over paid for a minimum amount of work. Though making it big is liken to winning the lottery as for every person that gets rich there's dozens working tireless who no one will ever hear about. Corporate CEOs make anywhere from 200 to 300 times more than the average worker of their own companies and typically work less than 20 hours a week. There are sports stars that make more than the president. But Let's Players are where we draw the line God damn it! My friend Mandy puts in between 3 to 6 hours a day for over a year now. She has a grand totally of 93 followers and... she could go buy a Big Mac with how much she makes in a day!

Then there's the people who worship corporations as if they are our new pantheon of gods.

I'm a small time youtuber too! Can you PM me a link to your friends channel? I like watching small youtubers

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Maybe it's time for an alternative to YouTube, since the site seems to be becoming rapidly taken over by corporations and Google +. Anyone got any suggestions for a viable alternative video site?

How can YouTube be "taken over" by corporations, when it has always been a corporation, and has belonged to one of the world's biggest corporations (Google) for many years now? For it to be taken over would require it to be non-corporate in the first place.

Although I do find it difficult to be sympathetic with anybody in this whole scenario. The game publishers suck for their short-sighted iron-fist handling of this situation. The YouTube "Let's Players" suck for trying to "monetize" their videos. In fact, the YouTubers suck for simply posting stuff on YouTube in the first place, one of the biggest cesspits on the word-wide inter webs. Google sucks for being Google, in the typical way that they claim to be noble technologists supporting freedom and openness, while turning everything into an advertising delivery platform.

Even Jim sucks for pointlessly looping game footage in his videos for no apparent reason than he doesn't have anything else to show, and game footage is cheap and easy. And that same fucking loop of harpsichord music on the soundtrack every damn week...

Damn, people really are terrible, aren't they?

 

[Aardvaarkman]

This is why we need games to be defined as art.

Can you define art?

A paint company can not claim ownership of a painting that someone makes with their paints. The same should apply to games, as the video content created by a user was created by that user, and not the company that merely provided the tools and materials to create that video.

You're talking about very different things here. Defining games as "art" does not make art into a raw material like paint. In fact, defining it as art makes it much less so. Copyright was invented to protect the arts. So, I'm not sure how defining games as art somehow makes them immune from copyright claims. The fact that they are creative works is what gives them copyright protection in the first place.

As for the argument that the video content was created by the user, that's not completely true - as the user did not create the visuals, art assets or programming of the game. The user is recording the output of the game which was created by somebody else. While the user has some control over the inputs to the game, that's not the same as them creating something new. There are many other factors that go into determining authorship, and whether any particular video is deemed "fair use" under copyright law.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Funny thing is I think that most of the videos are for profit thus need copy right permission, when you are for profit you have to get the license IMO.

No, that's not how it works.

Being for profit is not the only factor that determines copyright infringement. It is perfectly possible for derivative works that are non-profit to be infringing. It's also possible for derivative works that are for profit to be non-infringing.

There are four factor used in determining fair use under copyright law:

? the purpose and character of your use
? the nature of the copyrighted work
? the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and
? the effect of the use upon the potential market.

So, it's not a simple matter of "profit" or "non-profit." In fact, if it were that simple, that would have terribly detrimental effects. Take TV comedy shows like Saturday Night Live, for example. SNL exists to make a profit, yet frequently parodies and satirises pop culture, including copyrighted material. If the simple fact that SNL exists for profit required them to license any material that they parody, they would basically be shut down, because very few of the publishers or artists being parodied would grant them a license to the material, because they don't want to be made fun of. This is an essential Freedom of Speech issue.

This is a pretty good resource for learning more about this quagmire:

http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/

 

[DiMono]

Publishers really need to wrap their heads around the fact that having Let's Plays be freely available online serves to increase their sales by giving them free publicity. In today's world, it's all word-of-mouth that makes sales.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

I think the best option would be to severely punish copyright holders who flag things falsely, make them hire people to troll through videos for copyrighted content.

I think that's in the realm of "be careful what you wish for" because that could seriously backfire. Copyright infringement doesn't just go one way. It's not always the big companies reporting infringement by smaller companies or individuals.

Often individuals, or small businesses, have their copyright infringed by larger companies. This is especially common with photographers, who are often self-employed or have very small businesses, but have their photographs used without permission by larger companies. These large companies have a lot more money and lawyers. So, if what you propose were to pass, it's highly likely that an authentic copyright claim by an individual photographer would get punished as a "false claim" by the courts, simply because the larger company has the legal firepower and resources to defend their actions.

So, in that case, the actual victim would be the one who is punished.

 

[JoJo]

I think the best option would be to severely punish copyright holders who flag things falsely, make them hire people to troll through videos for copyrighted content.

I think that's in the realm of "be careful what you wish for" because that could seriously backfire. Copyright infringement doesn't just go one way. It's not always the big companies reporting infringement by smaller companies or individuals.

Often individuals, or small businesses, have their copyright infringed by larger companies. This is especially common with photographers, who are often self-employed or have very small businesses, but have their photographs used without permission by larger companies. These large companies have a lot more money and lawyers. So, if what you propose were to pass, it's highly likely that an authentic copyright claim by an individual photographer would get punished as a "false claim" by the courts, simply because the larger company has the legal firepower and resources to defend their actions.

So, in that case, the actual victim would be the one who is punished.

Excuse me? You must have quoted the wrong person, I never said that...

 

[Danial]

That sound you hear is the sound of the people who own and run Blip doing Snow angels in money. No really, the worse YT gets the more people will just move to things like Blip.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Excuse me? You must have quoted the wrong person, I never said that...

Sorry, I just fixed that. It's The Escapist's weird forum software, where it keeps a buffer of previously-quoted text in the text-entry field. So in trimming the quotes, the wrong author was attributed, instead of Desert Punk who wrote that.

 

[LadyRhian]

The problem here is that the publishers want to have their cake and eat it too (never quite understood that figure of speech, but whatever)

It basically means that they want to consume their cake, but at the same time they want to physically have it in front of them.

Ah, so having the cake refers to still possessing it after they have consumed it? That makes sense, thank you

The actual original version was "eat your cake and have it." which makes it clearer. Just like "I couldn't care less" has morphed into "I could care less" which implies that you actually DO care, where as the first implies your caring=0.

The problem here is that the publishers want to have their cake and eat it too (never quite understood that figure of speech, but whatever)

It basically means that they want to consume their cake, but at the same time they want to physically have it in front of them.

Ah, so having the cake refers to still possessing it after they have consumed it? That makes sense, thank you

That saying would make a lot more sense if it was reversed... "They want to eat their cake, and have it too." which to my mind is much more clear. I wonder if some idiot messed it up in the retelling many many years ago, and it just stuck the way the idiot retold it.

Pretty much

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Guys, can we PLEASE get Jim into the oval office or something? Already a proven leader with millions of loyal viewers ready to vote him in, what's the holdup?

I would imagine that Jim not being born in the United States would be a significant holdup.

 

[Signa]

This is why we need games to be defined as art.

Can you define art?

Yes. Kinda. As nebulous as the definition is, art is always created from the need to express, create a product, or masturbate[footnote]figuratively speaking of course[/footnote]. Anything you already define as art will fall into any combination of those categories.

A paint company can not claim ownership of a painting that someone makes with their paints. The same should apply to games, as the video content created by a user was created by that user, and not the company that merely provided the tools and materials to create that video.

You're talking about very different things here. Defining games as "art" does not make art into a raw material like paint. In fact, defining it as art makes it much less so. Copyright was invented to protect the arts. So, I'm not sure how defining games as art somehow makes them immune from copyright claims. The fact that they are creative works is what gives them copyright protection in the first place.

A LP video is still a form or expression, and a bit of masturbation. They might be doing it in a playground of someone else' design, but the viewer of the LP will not have the same experience that the game maker built, packaged, and sold. At that point, it's a new piece of work; derived from another. And because of the nature of LPs, the new product will always be a lesser piece of work than the original, because the viewer will be unable to experience it in the way it was intended.

At the very least, if you want to claim infringement, then the original content creator needs to post their own LPs so that the current LPers are infringing on that property.

 

[furai47]

Removing videos because they have trailer footage and the like? I can absolutely understand people getting upset.
However I feel like this was meant more for those people who do complete game walkthroughs and just comment once in a while. I mean don't get me wrong doing LPs is fine but when you play a game without knowing it inside out it's not the case of your content earning you money, it's the game.
Which brings me to this: don't basically all the major game publishers and developers explicitly state that you are not allowed to use their content without permission in their EULAs? I'm sure I've read it in at least a dozen just this year.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Some copyright monopoly is needed to sustain basic industry activities, but it shouldn't be EVER be called "intellectual property".

Why not?

"Intellectual property" is an umbrella term, and copyright is just one form of it. The term also covers things like patents and trademarks. It is a useful term, because it reduces the misuse of words like "copyright" being used to refer to the other forms of intellectual property.

But maybe you could explain why this term should not EVER (in all-caps) be used?

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Funny thing is I think that most of the videos are for profit thus need copy right permission, when you are for profit you have to get the license IMO.

No, that's not how it works.

Being for profit is not the only factor that determines copyright infringement. It is perfectly possible for derivative works that are non-profit to be infringing. It's also possible for derivative works that are for profit to be non-infringing.

There are four factor used in determining fair use under copyright law:

? the purpose and character of your use
? the nature of the copyrighted work
? the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and
? the effect of the use upon the potential market.

So, it's not a simple matter of "profit" or "non-profit." In fact, if it were that simple, that would have terribly detrimental effects. Take TV comedy shows like Saturday Night Live, for example. SNL exists to make a profit, yet frequently parodies and satirises pop culture, including copyrighted material. If the simple fact that SNL exists for profit required them to license any material that they parody, they would basically be shut down, because very few of the publishers or artists being parodied would grant them a license to the material, because they don't want to be made fun of. This is an essential Freedom of Speech issue.

This is a pretty good resource for learning more about this quagmire:

http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/

Parody and clearly exempt satire can use parody so it can be above board.

The nature of these works is for profit hardly free speech. You can talk about it without showing it. Thats just my feeling on it.

I'd rather have a system based off profit if there is no revenue then there is no harm. Tho fair use would still be needed under such a system just much less vague to stop laywers gaining money from the system.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

This is why we need games to be defined as art.

Can you define art?

Yes. Kinda. As nebulous as the definition is, art is always created from the need to express, create a product, or masturbate. Anything you already define as art will fall into any combination of those categories.

OK, So how does that make video games like paint, which is a consumable material? You argued that video games should be defined as art, so that they would be more like paint. But few people define paint as art, so I'm not sure how that argument makes sense. Defining games as art would make them much less like a raw material, and more like, well, art.

A LP video is still a form or expression, and a bit of masturbation. They might be doing it in a playground of someone else' design, but the viewer of the LP will not have the same experience that the game maker built, packaged, and sold. At that point, it's a new piece of work; derived from another.

But how much of a new work is not clear. This is one of the problems with copyright law - the lines are very blurred. Part of creating new works is how "transformative" the works are. Somebody significantly transforming the work for the purposes of satire, parody, criticism, political speech or analysis is much more likely to gain protection than somebody simply recording themselves playing a game with little meaningful commentary.

Also, somebody could make a derivative work that is blatantly infringing. For example, a car dealership using footage from Grand Theft Auto to promote their business, without any critical or transformative value, whose only purpose is to profit from the work of the original artists.

And because of the nature of LPs, the new product will always be a lesser piece of work than the original, because the viewer will be unable to experience it in the way it was intended.

Not necessarily. Sometimes experiencing something in the way it was not "intended" can be better than the original. Take, for example, Unskippable. I get a lot more enjoyment from watching the Unskippable videos than I do from experiencing the original cut-scenes as intended by the game publisher.

Also see: ironic enjoyment, hate-watching, many cult movies, and "so bad, it's good." No art or creative work is fixed in the way it is used or perceived. The idea of authorial intent as primary has long been discarded as an important concept in art theory, and has never been less important than it is today, when many "mash ups" and derivations transcend the original.

figuratively speaking of course

Why does the masturbation have to be figurative? I'm pretty sure there's a lot of literal masturbation going on, too.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Parody and clearly exempt satire can use parody so it can be above board.

Which is exactly what I was saying. You can't base it just on profit, because there are plenty of profitable uses which are also valid parody and satire.

The nature of these works is for profit hardly free speech. You can talk about it without showing it. Thats just my feeling on it.

Which works are you referring to specifically? It seems a little unfair to lump everything together. Sure, for every 1,000 useless and derivative "Let's Plays" there might only be one that's original and creative - but why should that one original piece of art suffer because of the other 1,000 morons?

I'd rather have a system based off profit if there is no revenue then there is no harm.

So, money is the only important thing? What about things like defamation or moral rights? Not everybody is all about the money. There can be infringing uses that are emotionally or personally harmful that are not financially harmful.

A very current example of this might be something like The Beastie Boys vs. Goldieblox, which was not about financial damage to The Beastie Boys (they hardly need more money at this point), but rather the wishes of Adam Yauch for the band's work not to be used in advertising, because it cheapens their legacy.

Another example might be somebody posting another person's artwork online with the simple intent to bully or harass the artists. Not that y this I don't mean actual parody or satire, but straight-up using someone's work, and then calling them names because of it. No financial harm, but possible life-long emotional scarring. Which is worth more - money, or people's dignity?

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Which brings me to this: don't basically all the major game publishers and developers explicitly state that you are not allowed to use their content without permission in their EULAs? I'm sure I've read it in at least a dozen just this year.

They can say whatever they want in their EULAs. That doesn't make it legally binding. The US and most modern countries have laws the supersede a lot of the boilerplate written into such statements.

The publisher can claim you need a license to use their footage all they want, but they don't have a leg to stand on if your usage falls under fair use or other protected categories. It's not that much different than somebody claiming in a contract that they have the right to kill you if you sign the contract. It's not legal, no matter how they state it.