The "Youtubers" have every right to freedom of press/speech etc. but until the law says otherwise, they have to respect that the people that make the things they are shamelessly piggybacking off of have a say in who gets to make money off their IPs.
To make a rediculous analogy, imagine you wrote a best selling book. Now imagine that there were thousands of people on Youtube doing "let's reads" and holding the pages up to the camera while making jokes/reading it in character etc. and demanding 100% of the ad revenue to go in their pockets.
You can argue that people watch them for the person on camera, and that the book is merely a prop for their content creation. But when you take the book away, they have absolutely nothing to offer by way of content.
A "let's read" is different from a book review. In a review you aren't literally showing every page to the camera and reading it out loud for everyone, just like in a game review you aren't showing an entire playthrough. But in a LP, that is EXACTLY what some people do sometimes without a face cam or any post commentary.
The grey area where the stupid analogy I just created falls apart is in the mediums themselves. There may be many ways to interpret a book, but in general there is only one way to read it. A game can by definition be played many different ways. Unless the LR's decide to start at a random page and then black out every other word or something, they lack the built in copyright skirting that LPs get away with.
But, can a Youtuber copyright their LP? Can someone claim to own the rights to a particular playthrough of a game? They claim that it is THEIR content right? Can you see how this entitlement quickly breaks down when held under any kind of scrutiny other than public opinion?
Do I want to see LPs die? Not at all.
I watch Caddicarus, Northernlion, Dodger, Projared, Cinemassacre, KineticGTR, VideogameCarnage, ChristopherOdd, Jontron, Continue, and PeanutbutterGamer to name a few. Aside from Jontron who is currently shutting himself down for whatever reason, I'd hate for any of them to suddenly go away but I would certainly understand it.
They are all great people, and if I thought I had enough to contribute to the industry that they haven't already I'd probably have my own channel.
But the only real reason any of them are ALLOWED to showcase other people's work in pretty much all of their videos is that the owners let them. They believe, accurately or not, that letting everyone with an internet connection have unrestrained access to their IP being broadcast to their eye and ear holes is good for their bottom line. Probably in reality its better than taking everyone around the world to court over it.
So when Nintendo actually gives a damn about their IPs and says, nuh uh, I respect them for it. I'm only surprised that THEY are the ones drawing the line in the sand and not say EA, Ubisoft, etc.
Because if any company would stand to benefit from their games NOT being played for everyone to see, its probably going to be one of the ones trying to hide the fact that their games are horrible, glitchy, grade AAA shovelware and Nintendo doesn't really belong on that list quite yet.
As for Joe, I'll probably wait to see his reaction to Batman V Superman, but I honestly don't care about his channel aside from that. Its been at least a year since I've even thought about him tbh.
To make a rediculous analogy, imagine you wrote a best selling book. Now imagine that there were thousands of people on Youtube doing "let's reads" and holding the pages up to the camera while making jokes/reading it in character etc. and demanding 100% of the ad revenue to go in their pockets.
You can argue that people watch them for the person on camera, and that the book is merely a prop for their content creation. But when you take the book away, they have absolutely nothing to offer by way of content.
A "let's read" is different from a book review. In a review you aren't literally showing every page to the camera and reading it out loud for everyone, just like in a game review you aren't showing an entire playthrough. But in a LP, that is EXACTLY what some people do sometimes without a face cam or any post commentary.
The grey area where the stupid analogy I just created falls apart is in the mediums themselves. There may be many ways to interpret a book, but in general there is only one way to read it. A game can by definition be played many different ways. Unless the LR's decide to start at a random page and then black out every other word or something, they lack the built in copyright skirting that LPs get away with.
But, can a Youtuber copyright their LP? Can someone claim to own the rights to a particular playthrough of a game? They claim that it is THEIR content right? Can you see how this entitlement quickly breaks down when held under any kind of scrutiny other than public opinion?
Do I want to see LPs die? Not at all.
I watch Caddicarus, Northernlion, Dodger, Projared, Cinemassacre, KineticGTR, VideogameCarnage, ChristopherOdd, Jontron, Continue, and PeanutbutterGamer to name a few. Aside from Jontron who is currently shutting himself down for whatever reason, I'd hate for any of them to suddenly go away but I would certainly understand it.
They are all great people, and if I thought I had enough to contribute to the industry that they haven't already I'd probably have my own channel.
But the only real reason any of them are ALLOWED to showcase other people's work in pretty much all of their videos is that the owners let them. They believe, accurately or not, that letting everyone with an internet connection have unrestrained access to their IP being broadcast to their eye and ear holes is good for their bottom line. Probably in reality its better than taking everyone around the world to court over it.
So when Nintendo actually gives a damn about their IPs and says, nuh uh, I respect them for it. I'm only surprised that THEY are the ones drawing the line in the sand and not say EA, Ubisoft, etc.
Because if any company would stand to benefit from their games NOT being played for everyone to see, its probably going to be one of the ones trying to hide the fact that their games are horrible, glitchy, grade AAA shovelware and Nintendo doesn't really belong on that list quite yet.
As for Joe, I'll probably wait to see his reaction to Batman V Superman, but I honestly don't care about his channel aside from that. Its been at least a year since I've even thought about him tbh.