The Big Picture: Copywrong

[Christopher Parker]

I'd just like to point out that in many cases it isn't the publishers but Google to blame for this. Take Angry Joe's situation, for instance. Both his good and bad reviews were taken down because of the Youtube system for auto flagging copyrighted materials. Hell, some of his videos went down because of trailer footage (public domain by definition, I would have thought), and some of them went down because he used music that he's purchased from a company who specialise in music for Youtube videos - they'd added their music to the autoflagging system not because they wanted to stop people using their music, but because other people were putting up false copyright claims on their music on Youtube videos. They had to screw over their customers temporarily to protect those same customers from being screwed over more permanently by random assholes on the internet.

My point? Youtube's copyright protection policies are at fault here more than anything else. Sure, Nintendo and Sega have been jackasses lately (there's a reason why Total Biscuit won't do any videos regarding Sega games), but the lion's share of blame belongs to Google for their shit DMCA system. Hell, I can bring a video down that I don't like by claiming copyright, even if I don't actually have any right to it. They can dispute it, but if I dispute their dispute, they have to actually go to court, and most Youtubers won't bother.

 

[gargantual]

In the essence of how copyright always reminds me of this old article by Brent Silby I feel the point that has been cited by many from an art perspective even Greg Tito, and that Kirby Ferguson guy with the "Everything is a Remix" does bear a bit repeating. Oh well. Here's the link

http://www.scribd.com/doc/9628578/Who-Owns-Music-by-Brent-Silby

 

[Jigero]

Well, I'm not against copyright. Guess why?

I'm an artist.

And copyright law prevents my work from getting stolen.

But it really doesn't, theoretically it should, but in reality it only protects as much as you can defend it and 9 times out of 10 if some one steals your work it will most likely cost you more to protect your work then simply just letting it go.

And if you're really unlucky, thanks to the clunkiness of copyright law just hope you don't run into some one who is able to turn the law on you and use it against you.

Yea sure Copyright law works some times but it's exceedingly rare. Copyright has done far more to fuck over artists then it has to protect them.

 

[Don Reba]

Maybe market forces are the wrong thing to produce culture. We are fine with science being publicly funded, because the results of basic science are hard to monetize and because dissemination of science benefits us all. Isn't culture in the same position?

Canada publicly funds much of its artistic output, and it is doing quite well. USSR publicly funded all of it, and created a lot of great content - in fact, Russian artists are still scratching their heads about how to produce anything good without public support.

 

[Seldon2639]

But to begin with what makes a great artist is subjective. Second I'm pretty sue "whatever they want" Includes fan projects like this, and as you can see, they can't do it without being greeted by lawyers.

That's kind of the thing, though. The ability to make "whatever they want" should be about creative ideas, their own concepts, even if it's somewhat similar to other works. What it shouldn't include is "using someone else's characters and world for your own work just because you like them."

If someone wants to make a game about a dystopian fifteen-minutes-into-the-future with an allegory about global warming/fossil fuels and a somewhat douchey main protagonist whose background is fraught with mystery and doubt, they can do that. What they can't do is call him "Cloud" who works with "Barret" and "Avalanche" against the evil "Shinra" and "Sephiroth" all of whom use "Materia."

And what's funny is that it's not that hard to take a fan work and turn it into a wholly creative effort. Look at Fifty Shades of Grey, it was a fanfic for Twilight originally. Are you really claiming that possibly great artists likely lack the originality that the writer of Fifty Shades of Grey had?

And while it's true that everything is a remix, there's a lot of difference between "has similar musical styling" or "Neil Gaiman wrote a book about a young orphan boy who discovers he has magical powers prior to J.K Rowling, but they were both writing something similar to T.H White's The Once and Future King" or even "OMG compare The Hunger Games to Battle Royale" and what we're talking about when we talk about real copyright infringement. The cases where the author of Battle Royale sues Suzanne Collins are vastly outnumbered by the cases where the makers of Mass Effect sue to stop someone selling Mass Effect merchandise without permission. The times when Neil Gaiman sues J.K Rowling are dwarfed by the times that it's absolutely, positively, copyright infringement ("He's So Fine" vs. "My Sweet Lord").

 

[Something Amyss]

It could be because I have a bad habit of writing my response as I watch the video.

Well, as I've both been there and done that, I can't hold it against you.

Well, I could, but it'd be wrong.

Stop quoting me, you make me feel stupid... But in all seriousness, thank you for the corrections. This is largely the fault of Google/Youtube, if not entirely, and they really need to sort themselves out. Or at least hire some people to do the bots' jobs. Come on Google, you could probably singlehandedly solve the unemployment problem!

Thanks for the laugh and/or ego boost. >.>

The only reason I think Google won't hire people is that the point of the automated system is explicitly to save money. In fact, most of of their apparent over-compliance with law (which leads to these overzealous actions) are likely to avoid having to spend money dealing with copyright claims at all. It's about the reason I can think of. I don't think Google has any antipathy towards their users. Maybe they do, but I have trouble seeing that as the thing.

When we remove that, expedience seems to be the primary reasonable model.

Which is sad, because I think everyone loses here.

 

[Strazdas]

You admited you dont know copyriht laws and thats fair enough, but the comment about "written based on what was capable back then" was only true - back then.
Copyright laws were rewritten every couple decades, making them WORSE every iteration. in fact the latest iteration that created this main problem and literally robbed libraries of public domain movies (you can re-copyright public domain to an extent), was created solely because mickey mouse would have went into public domain, because god forbid americans actually own thier culture and not some shady corporations.

Also copyright does not prevent stagnation - it encourages it. Copyright are monopolies and monopolies kill innovations. we have reboots and remakes because we have licensing. if those properties were in public domain, as you say, every kid could make a shitty spiderman movie, therefore to make movie that really attract attention you would have to make SOMETHING NEW.

Now i dont say get rid of copyright laws completely and all. I say limit them to 15 years maximum and strick fair use enforcement. Lets be honest here, if you created a movie or a videogame and you havent turned profit in 15 years, you are not likely to ever turn profit. And if you did. good. now let others do the same. And fair use is fair use, obviously, and lets player's fall under fair use. Noone watches lets play's for the prerendered cutscenes. We watch them for the commentary first, the gameplay the youtuber is creating second, and everything else i just supplementary.

Actually in one of my lets plays i have put the cutscenes between "missions" as seperate video from the gameplay video. results? the cutscenes had 5 times less views even being in the full playlist. people just skipped them.

Or it doesnt have to change and we're all gonna get shafted eventually. The people in control are making too much money. They don't care about us and so I don't believe they will ever do anything out of the kindness of their hearts, which is what Mister Chipman here is hoping they'll do.


Copyright law benefits the shareholders and the publishers. Why would they allow them to change? That would be like publicly hanging the goose that lays the golden egg. To them, anyways.

Music industry didnt want to allow change. look what happened. We are coming to a point where sharing games and movies onver internet is as easy as songs - couple minutes of download and its there. The whole copyright debacle is final trampling of a dieing elephant. it may take 4 lions with it when it falls but its still dead. They will either have to change or die. there is no third option unless you think people are going to live in dystopia so easily.

Wow, that's quite a chip on your shoulder, kid.

Seriously, where the hell did this come from? I never said I was special, I just said that I was an artist.

Jeez, no need to be a dick about it, or anything.

You said you support copyright, therefore you think you are special and deserve special privileges (such as monopoly on your work). Im not saying you shouldnt argue what your arguing about or anything but at least not be a hypocrite about it. If you are arguing that you deserve special treatment then admit that you think you are special.

 

[AJey]

I have to disagree with one of your references. AngryJoe was very emotional and barely said anything useful in his videos. If you really want to understand the issue watch TotalBiscuit or "Address the Sess" podcast with Adam Sessler, where youtubers, developers and PR people discuss the issue.

 

[Redd the Sock]

Some notes:

This can in no way stop criticism, just alter the form. We had critics long before youtube, so worst case scenario is we have to go back to writing and podcasting without using images and video. Not always good, but how much video footage does Yahtzee use?

Despite some legitimate anger, we all have to admit we shouldn't be surprised. This isn't Bob's American revolution metaphor. This is we've gotten free cable through a screw up, and now they've caught on and we have to pay. We've known for a long time that we've been using, and later monetizing, material in a system known for making you pay to use a song lyric, or mention a brand.

In that regard, that makes your endpoint troubling. I get the desire to say that this is the new reality and you have to surrender all rights you had such that is benefits us, and that's a large reason why this gets approached with lawyers. You are king George going "do what I want or else" and then get surprised when they'd rather send out a cease and desist instead of doing that. One thing I hate in the modern generation is an unwillingness to accept that everyone else has the same right to be a greedy self interested dick without thought to others that ourselves do. We get along and do more when we approcah things with trying to convince someone our side is in there best interests as well, not throwing a tantrum about how something is unfair to ourselves.

In that however is a problem as for all the talk, there's little soid about why this is going down. I could think of a dozen legitimate business reasons why, so being open for negotiation (let's players now pay fees to the owners of the games they use) and some that are just being dickish, but we can't move forward until we know what all was trying to be achieved here.

 

[Habballah]

I love jim but alot of those videos were not fair use.
And as for the legal end of this,

you guys, the reviewers would have to pull a mass exodus from u tube, and convince your fans to fallow.

......
I've seen people try it hasn't ended well bob. they came back quickly.

3 pages so far, and nobody as tossed this man a slow clap? Escapist, I am disappoint.

Bob, that was an excelent job. Let's just hope things actually evolve at some point, in this money-grubbing world of ours...

Bob's being idealistic.
We are not the settlers. (history major here).
the majority of us, don't need the internet to live.
A small minority do.

Look I understand and appreciate bobs situation. this hits him at home. He should be worried.
but, as he said he doesn't know the law, and the law is a pain in the ass,

if i was Bob, i'd start learning. I'd talk to a lawyer, i'd baton down and be ready for what evers coming how ever it's coming because it's going to affect him, and people like him.

 

[Banzaiman]

snip because doesn't pertain to me

Just wanted to point out that my name somehow ended up in the quotes in your post, although I'm almost certain I didn't write those unless I'm obnoxiously tired. Don't remember ever talking about Walking Dead, might have been someone else. Probably got the string or username wrong, in which case no harm done. If I really did write that, well... I need sleep.

 

[Parnage]

1. Burden of proof on people who claim something is there's must be shown and proven before a video is taken down. Oh you claim you are actually sony? And you want to take down a review..? reallly....? Instead of having bots roaming youtube for stuff to take down stuff get a program to help verify the claims that come in. Steve from Jersey shouldn't be able to click a button and say he's Sony, the creator of metal gear solid and or the lead singer in AC/DC.

Done. I just saved Youtube. Where's my medal?

 

[KazeAizen]

From what I've seen so far, the gaming industry, at least, seems to have a good handle on this. Ubisoft (oh ye purveyor of the egregious season-pass) came out immediately to say they would NOT be stopping ANYONE uploading their stuff to YouTube, be it reviews, let's plays or whatever.

And why would they, the amount of free publicity they're getting from it.

In fact, a lot of the companies seem as taken aback by all this as the community.

Its interesting to say the least. I'm not sure if Nintendo has responded to this but I can only imagine it won't be the response we hope for. Among my personal few criticisms of the company its their stance on videos and such on youtube that I think needs to change. That's beside the point. Seems like even the big assholes of the industry are more or less saying "this is bullshit. Everyone keep doing what your doing." I'm actually glad that big dogs like Riot and Ubisoft are responding in such a way. Youtube and Google are big but they aren't THAT big if more and more major companies start going against this.

 

[Atmos Duality]

But that does not mean that copyright laws should just be thrown out all together because, for guys like me, they are a helluva lot better than the alternative.

Rest easy then, because in reality there will never be an alternative.
Not until the collapse of modern civilization, though at that point, issues over creative rights will be a quaint memory.

 

[Gilhelmi]

I smell gas. NO BOB DON'T LIGHT IT ON FIRE!!! Oh, you were doing a controlled burn to try and prevent the fire from spreading, Thank you Bob.

OT: I agree with Bob in this. Everyone needs to make a living, Everyone needs to eat, and have shelter, and have clothing. An artist is no different. As to the colonies, that is a good way to sum things up. In the end, the consumer will get screwed more if we do away with copyrights.

I want to start an Internet video network. If I have no claim over original content, then there would be no way for me to pay the bills to even keep the domain active, let alone my personal expenses. Donations are just not enough (generally) to live on.

 

[Deadagent]

Wow, that's quite a chip on your shoulder, kid.

Seriously, where the hell did this come from? I never said I was special, I just said that I was an artist.

Jeez, no need to be a dick about it, or anything.

There was no real reason for you to say that you're an artist, other than tell me that to somehow try to say that you understand this better than me because youre different from me and that you're special. Again, I'm not here to please you.

That's kind of the thing, though. The ability to make "whatever they want" should be about creative ideas, their own concepts, even if it's somewhat similar to other works. What it shouldn't include is "using someone else's characters and world for your own work just because you like them."

Why? I'm not against limited time really I get that if someone makes a cheaper copy of your product you cant compete wich is why copyright and patents existed to begin with. To give authors and invertor a limited window to make money from their work and it was limited time only because having something to work with promotes creativity.
Music sampling is a great example of doing something new out of something old, but because time of exclusivity has been extended to ridiculous proportions, whole genres of music require stupid amounts paperwork for one track to be even made.

If someone wants to make a game about a dystopian fifteen-minutes-into-the-future with an allegory about global warming/fossil fuels and a somewhat douchey main protagonist whose background is fraught with mystery and doubt, they can do that. What they can't do is call him "Cloud" who works with "Barret" and "Avalanche" against the evil "Shinra" and "Sephiroth" all of whom use "Materia."

As asked above, Why?

And what's funny is that it's not that hard to take a fan work and turn it into a wholly creative effort. Look at Fifty Shades of Grey, it was a fanfic for Twilight originally.

As far as I understand the character names were only changed, so the way to qualify in this magical copyright game is to just change the names. Ok so if it's something that simple, why would it even matter if they had the same names?

Are you really claiming that possibly great artists likely lack the originality that the writer of Fifty Shades of Grey had?

I claim that originality is a concept made up by the copyright lobby. Everything ever made, is based on something.

And while it's true that everything is a remix

Exactly my point

there's a lot of difference between "has similar musical styling" or "Neil Gaiman wrote a book about a young orphan boy who discovers he has magical powers prior to J.K Rowling, but they were both writing something similar to T.H White's The Once and Future King" or even "OMG compare The Hunger Games to Battle Royale" and what we're talking about when we talk about real copyright infringement.

The only reason those aren't considered copyright infringement is because nobody claimed it as such.

The cases where the author of Battle Royale sues Suzanne Collins are vastly outnumbered by the cases where the makers of Mass Effect sue to stop someone selling Mass Effect merchandise without permission. The times when Neil Gaiman sues J.K Rowling are dwarfed by the times that it's absolutely, positively, copyright infringement ("He's So Fine" vs. "My Sweet Lord").

Every note ever has already been played, should the offspring of the people who played each not be tracked down and be given compensation everytime a certain note is played? No.
How about if 2 seconds of a song sound exactly the same as some other song, should they be sued?
No, but it has happended.

 

[daxterx2005]

No one want's to be King George, not even King George.

 

[Daniel Janhagen]

If everyone had a right to make Spiderman movies, we might actually get some good ones. Many, many bad ones, to be sure, but probably more good ones than we do now, so... That would be a good thing.

And no, Bob; copying is not theft.

 

[Monsterfurby]

Once again, I find myself asking: "Who is Bob talking to here"?

Publishers have been extremely cool about the matter.
It has been established that this was NOT a political move but a technical screwup on YouTube's part (the automated Content-ID system has been suspended in some areas now, it appears).
And who on earth would ever claim that artists shouldn't care about money?

Honestly, Bob, while we certainly don't live in the same country or even on the same continent, from time to time it appears that your arguments seek to address issues from a parallel dimension.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

This is probably my favorite Big Picture episode. Very eloquent, very well thought out. Bob, you are a gentleman and a scholar.