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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

#41

Post by bvdbijl »

sillysaurus wrote: post #29

A good analogy is buying a car. If I buy a car and make a video at the beach that happens to include the car, what right does the car manufacturer have to say, "The video incorporates my IP, so therefore we're going to force you to show ads for our car"? You could argue that videogames are somehow different. But they're not. If someone makes a video about having fun with their friends, then the game they're doing it…

I wouldn't really call that a great analogy, a better analogy would be if you record a video of you showing the insides of the car and going on a trip where you describe how the car drives. But still, dumb dumb move by Nintendo

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

#43

Post by emehrkay »

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…

> Some people view Let's Plays before buying a game

I can't tell you how many times my son has come to me and asked for a new game because of some YouTube videos that he has been watching

Edit: as a matter of fact, he wanted to play the WiiU not too long ago after watching NintendoLand playthroughs of the Zelda game. The WiiU that hasn't been turned on in MONTHS

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

#44

Post by [deleted] »

bvdbijl wrote: post #41
sillysaurus wrote: post #29

A good analogy is buying a car. If I buy a car and make a video at the beach that happens to include the car, what right does the car manufacturer have to say, "The video incorporates my IP, so therefore we're going to force you to show ads for our car"? You could argue that videogames are somehow different. But they're not. If someone makes a video about having fun with their friends, then the game they're doing it…

I wouldn't really call that a great analogy, a better analogy would be if you record a video of you showing the insides of the car and going on a trip where you describe how the car drives. But still, dumb dumb move by Nintendo

[deleted]

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

#45

Post by sp332 »

belorn wrote: post #15
raganwald wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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)?

Yeah, the video is still on the account and under control of the original uploader. The only thing that's changed is they can't control is that the ads on their videos now fund Nintendo instead of themselves.

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

#46

Post by criley »

jakerocheleau wrote: post #17
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 ti…

>From my point of view, it's just very difficult to continue supporting the video game industry anymore.

Don't judge an industry by it's rotting old guard. Nintendo has been making blunder after blunder for quite some time and does not represent gaming as a whole.

Reddit has helped built a list[1] of studios and publishers who have given permissions for LPers to make videos, and the list is pretty comprehensive. Tons of developers and companies are 100% okay with and even promote it.

Also, with both next gen consoles supporting game play video natively, it's going to get bigger and bigger in the industry.

http://letsplaylist.wikia.com/wiki/%22Let%27s_Play%22-friend...

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

#47

Post by freehunter »

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…

The audio/visual aspect is kept. Interactive gameplay is simulated. The person watching gets to see the story unfold. It's clearly a derivative work, the question is where does the line stand and does making a LP cross it?

And that's a huge problem with copyright law, it's so grey in so many areas. If the exact situation hasn't been defended in court, it's unclear whether or nothing something is legal.

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

#48

Post by freehunter »

_pmf_ wrote: post #38
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…

> Some people view Let's Plays before buying a game. Maybe the reasoning is that this is not very beneficial to Nintendo, since most of their games are visually at most a "Meh".

Really? I've always held that the common thought was that Nintendo games are very stylistic and artfully designed. I hear people talk for days about how beautiful the new Zelda game is or how artistically styled the new Mario game is. They might not pump out the most pixels, but they can designed around their limitations.

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

#49

Post by dfxm12 »

thenomad wrote: post #23
skymt wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Who also happen to be the people putting the most time and effort into producing entertaining, watchable Let's Plays, and generally are the people who have the biggest audience. I've seen the chilling effects of this sort of thing before, in the Machinima world, and you'd be amazed how much damage removing or limiting the top creators in the chain can do.

It's analogous to Girl Talk having to clear samples of other artists' work to produce his records.

Yeah, there are artists who don't clear samples, but those records are released as white label (for fear of legal action), or, they remix the samples such they they are unrecognizable (by mechanical means).

This is just the sampling argument all over again. I don't see why it should be different. The real question here is how good is the content ID algorithm? Is it going to get triggered on seconds of unedited video footage? Audio? What if you are talking over it or overlay text on it?

If you can create something new & unique to beat the algo, that's awesome. If you are simply using Nintendo's IP in metadata or wholesale showing off the game unedited, to draw people to your videos, your content should get questioned (ala Vanilla Ice using Bowie's riff in Ice Ice Baby).

Take, for example, Gamecenter CX vs a long play where someone just records himself playing a game and barely adds any commentary over it.

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

#50

Post by zamalek »

Quick question for the legally-knowledgeable here (I am not an LPer and won't act on the knowledge, just want to know if what I know about the law is right).

As far as I know when you use any recorded human product (voice, movement, etc.) you need a signed "release form" from the people involved in that - else you stand to be sued for damages (due to rights violation, nothing to do with copyright, although I guess the LPers could have a case there as well). Music artists, for example, need to sign one of these release forms to give their publisher the rights to their voice.

Considering that the LPs are 50/50 Nintendo/LPer couldn't the LPer's [in theory] lash back and demand royalties because Nintendo illegally become their publisher without acquiring release forms (the YouTube EULA is between the LPer and YT, not the LPer and Nintendo)? Or indeed demand damages that far exceed any form of profit they have lost from the adverts in the first place (rights violation)? Or am I completely wrong?

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