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Nintendo grabs money, control from fans promoting its games on Youtube

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Re: Nintendo grabs money, control from fans promoting its games on Youtube

#11

Post by raganwald »

belorn wrote: post #9

How can Nintendo claim ownership of the videos? I can see how they might claim ownership of the images and in-game sounds, but the commentary and actions made by the player is the ownership of the player. Taking control of content which they only have partial legal right to is still very much illegal and copyright infringement. They are basically knowingly committing commercial piracy, including sending knowingly fal…

"Claim ownership of" is within the context of YouTube's ecosystem and YouTube's TOS. As a YouTube partner, they have the right to monetize videos that YouTube agrees they "own," block them, &c.

I don't think that asserting ownership within YouTube is equivalent to asserting legal ownership of all of the IP involved. For example, I can't see them rebroadcasting any of these videos in another medium.

Re: Nintendo grabs money, control from fans promoting its games on Youtube

#12

Post by tlarkworthy »

Presumably Youtube asked the same question to Nintendo that Youtube did to Mojang, do you want to monetize your trademarks? Mojang declined earning off Minecraft's massive youtube impact[1], Nintendo wanted the cash.

And so we can clearly see Nintendo has lost its way and Minecraft is the the new Nintendo.

[1] https://twitter.com/notch/status/335045859156819969

Re: Nintendo grabs money, control from fans promoting its games on Youtube

#14

Post by antidaily »

tlarkworthy wrote: post #12

Presumably Youtube asked the same question to Nintendo that Youtube did to Mojang, do you want to monetize your trademarks? Mojang declined earning off Minecraft's massive youtube impact[1], Nintendo wanted the cash. And so we can clearly see Nintendo has lost its way and Minecraft is the the new Nintendo. [1] https://twitter.com/notch/status/335045859156819969

This is key, I think. YouTube probably came to Nintendo. Like, sales guys. "Hey, here's 8 figures you could be pocketing".

Re: Nintendo grabs money, control from fans promoting its games on Youtube

#15

Post by belorn »

raganwald wrote: post #11
belorn wrote: post #9

How can Nintendo claim ownership of the videos? I can see how they might claim ownership of the images and in-game sounds, but the commentary and actions made by the player is the ownership of the player. Taking control of content which they only have partial legal right to is still very much illegal and copyright infringement. They are basically knowingly committing commercial piracy, including sending knowingly fal…

"Claim ownership of" is within the context of YouTube's ecosystem and YouTube's TOS. As a YouTube partner, they have the right to monetize videos that YouTube agrees they "own," block them, &c. I don't think that asserting ownership within YouTube is equivalent to asserting legal ownership of all of the IP involved. For example, I can't see them rebroadcasting any of these videos in another medium.

Can the actually author of the video take down the videos (ie take control of the copyright)?

Re: Nintendo grabs money, control from fans promoting its games on Youtube

#16

Post by fhd2 »

DanBC wrote: post #10

It's a stupid move by Nintendo. Some people view Let's Plays before buying a game. People aren't going to go to the trouble of recording Let's Plays without getting any kind of ad revenue from it. So people aren't going to bother recording Nintendo games anymore. And they can just delete all the Nintendo videos they already have up. So now Nintendo doesn't have anyone promoting their games (for free to Nintendo) and…

> It's a stupid move by Nintendo.

Definitely not nice, but stupid? I'm not sure about that. I have some doubts that Nintendo (being usually very good at not making their community angry IIRC) would do this without reason. Can we rule out that they actually noticed declining sales of some titles as Let's Play videos about them popped up?

I can't imagine they wanted a PA article on this though.

Re: Nintendo grabs money, control from fans promoting its games on Youtube

#17

Post by jakerocheleau »

DanBC wrote: post #10

It's a stupid move by Nintendo. Some people view Let's Plays before buying a game. People aren't going to go to the trouble of recording Let's Plays without getting any kind of ad revenue from it. So people aren't going to bother recording Nintendo games anymore. And they can just delete all the Nintendo videos they already have up. So now Nintendo doesn't have anyone promoting their games (for free to Nintendo) and…

This was such a solid analysis through-and-through. I feel that so many companies are getting real antsy and feel the need to grab for complete 100% ownership over all creative rights for everything with no leeway whatsoever. We, the people who actually pay for & consume these games, have no right to redesign or modify or record or promote anything without their consent - which would probably be denied most of the time anyways. From my point of view, it's just very difficult to continue supporting the video game industry anymore.

Re: Nintendo grabs money, control from fans promoting its games on Youtube

#18

Post by jakerocheleau »

LanceH wrote: post #8
freehunter wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a copyright lawyer, but that sounds like an unauthorized derivative work. For fair use to apply, the work has to be transformative, changing the original work in a substantial way. Since I'm not a lawyer I don't know if recording your own voice over the video would be considered significantly transformative or not.

The original work is an interactive piece of software. The videos in question are people showing what can be done with something which is copyrighted. They videos don't provide any ability to play the game. The games are only being played by a single person. There is no copy of the game being made. A running commentary of a single played instance of a game is entirely different than sitting down with a controller in…

Thank you for this explanation it really puts the topic in a better perspective for me.

Re: Nintendo grabs money, control from fans promoting its games on Youtube

#19

Post by skymt »

DanBC wrote: post #10

It's a stupid move by Nintendo. Some people view Let's Plays before buying a game. People aren't going to go to the trouble of recording Let's Plays without getting any kind of ad revenue from it. So people aren't going to bother recording Nintendo games anymore. And they can just delete all the Nintendo videos they already have up. So now Nintendo doesn't have anyone promoting their games (for free to Nintendo) and…

People recorded Let's Plays as a hobby for years before a few worked out that it might be a business. This isn't going to stop anyone but the few who thought it would be a good idea to make their living playing video games for the Internet.

Re: Nintendo grabs money, control from fans promoting its games on Youtube

#20

Post by tomrod »

tlarkworthy wrote: post #12

Presumably Youtube asked the same question to Nintendo that Youtube did to Mojang, do you want to monetize your trademarks? Mojang declined earning off Minecraft's massive youtube impact[1], Nintendo wanted the cash. And so we can clearly see Nintendo has lost its way and Minecraft is the the new Nintendo. [1] https://twitter.com/notch/status/335045859156819969

I certainly agree Mojang has done some cool stuff, but they'll need to step up their game significantly if they're going to be "the next Nintendo".
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