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Fake Nintendo lawyer is scaring YouTubers, and its not clear YouTube can stop it

theverge.com

71–80 of 201 posts

Re: Fake Nintendo lawyer is scaring YouTubers, and its not clear YouTube can stop it

#71

I worry about let's plays (especially let's plays without commentary). They pretty clearly exist in a "yes, this is copyright infringement but yes, they are generally considered positive for a game" space. The moment some game creator decides to test this will get very interesting. Not good interesting.

Why do you think a video capture of a computer program would infringe the copyrights of the program's creators?

A video game contains text, images, videos, and/or audio which are copyrightable, even if the game mechanics nor the player's decisions themselves are not copyrighted by the creators of the game.

Re: Fake Nintendo lawyer is scaring YouTubers, and its not clear YouTube can stop it

#72
post #33

When DMCA was proposed, the internet was up in arms predicting exactly this sort of stuff. It was a ridiculous law then and it is now.

[flagged]

The DMCA predates Napster, Gnutella, and Bittorrent. It did nothing to prevent piracy, which exploded in the years after it was passed. Low-enough cost convenient enough subscription services moved people away.

Re: Fake Nintendo lawyer is scaring YouTubers, and its not clear YouTube can stop it

#73

I worry about let's plays (especially let's plays without commentary). They pretty clearly exist in a "yes, this is copyright infringement but yes, they are generally considered positive for a game" space. The moment some game creator decides to test this will get very interesting. Not good interesting.

It's not immediately clear to me that this is true. Video games are designed to be played interactively. Streaming a single playthrough via a non-interactive medium strikes me as transformative. Would you say a screen capture of Microsoft Excel is also copyright infringement? If not, what would you say is the legal basis for treating that differently than a video game?

Years ago somebody at Kinko’s refused to make copies of a draft software manual because it had screenshots of our software’s Windows interface. She said it would violate Microsoft’s copyright. This led to a fun discussion of how copyright on rectangles would even work. Obviously this wasn’t Kinko’s official stance. Just one obstinate, over zealous employee.

Ironically, it was a bible software manual and the screenshots she looked at accidentally had text from a copyrighted bible translation. So she was right that those screenshots had copyright issues, but for the wrong reason.

Re: Fake Nintendo lawyer is scaring YouTubers, and its not clear YouTube can stop it

#74

I worry about let's plays (especially let's plays without commentary). They pretty clearly exist in a "yes, this is copyright infringement but yes, they are generally considered positive for a game" space. The moment some game creator decides to test this will get very interesting. Not good interesting.

My first very ever attempt at making a let plays video.

Immediately got taken down for copyright infringement. Completely destroyed my desire to ever make a let's play video again.

And it was for a 10+ year old game. It is unfortunate

Re: Fake Nintendo lawyer is scaring YouTubers, and its not clear YouTube can stop it

#75
post #33

When DMCA was proposed, the internet was up in arms predicting exactly this sort of stuff. It was a ridiculous law then and it is now.

[flagged]

Is this sarcastic? There is still lots of piracy, and streaming services that made it more convenient to consume content, like Netflix and Spotify did far more to reduce piracy than DMCA did.

And quite a few people have gone to jail, including for creating ways to circumvent DRM, which wasn't illegal before DMCA.

Re: Fake Nintendo lawyer is scaring YouTubers, and its not clear YouTube can stop it

#76
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then hire a lawyer & sue, you have to enforce your rights.

Right. Part of the reason why it's hard to start a business is having to deal with unfair bullshit. Youtube streamlines enough of the process to get people started relatively easily, but they get a lot of shit from these same creators for not doing everything for them.

they get a lot of shit because most youtubers would be forced to hand over their pii (name and address) to the reporter. Some reporters are doing this solely to get that information (stalkers, doxxers, etc).

It's unclear, to me, if youtubers could proxy this through an attorney.

Re: Fake Nintendo lawyer is scaring YouTubers, and its not clear YouTube can stop it

#77

When DMCA was proposed, the internet was up in arms predicting exactly this sort of stuff. It was a ridiculous law then and it is now.

Absolutely yes. Ridiculous for you and me, and absolutely perfect for multi billion dollar corporations to “protect” their profit streams.

Re: Fake Nintendo lawyer is scaring YouTubers, and its not clear YouTube can stop it

#78

It is perfectly clear that YouTube can stop it. As the article points out, we know there are things YouTube can do because those are the very same things The Verge asked about and YouTube refused to answer. The DMCA is broken, yes, but YouTube has made it worse with their kind-of-but-not-actually-DMCA counter-claim process. If they really wanted to solve it, here's an idea: if you get a takedown notice you also get a…

They wouldn't even need to go that far. The current way YouTube's system works is so deck-stacked against the creator to a ludicrous degree. Basically any "copyright holder" just has to say "this belongs to me" and YouTube immediately funnels all revenue for the video to that holder, with basically no oversight whatsoever, and as anyone in the space will tell you, a video makes 90% of it's money in the first few days…

> hold onto the revenue until the dispute is resolved

They do that: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7000961?hl=en

Re: Fake Nintendo lawyer is scaring YouTubers, and its not clear YouTube can stop it

#79

I had no idea spoofing email sender was so easy. Does anyone know of a good way to defend against this? I've always taken it for granted that if the sender was a domain that I trusted that I could trust the email itself.

Isn't this the purpose of SPF/DKIM?

https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/email-security/dmarc-dki...

Re: Fake Nintendo lawyer is scaring YouTubers, and its not clear YouTube can stop it

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess as to why it's necessary to nuke all potentially copyright audio is that the platform is liable for infringement, and as a result they have a policy to shoot first and ask questions later. This is justified because in overwhelming majority of cases the streamer does not have a license for the audio. In the case that the copyright audio is coming from a game, there is no way currently for the platform to auto…

> This is justified because in overwhelming majority of cases the streamer does not have a license for the audio I guess my point is that this arrangement was fine for a very, very long time. Why is it suddenly not fine in the last handful of years? Who is standing to gain here? In my view, it hurts the very platforms and industries this is trying to "protect." Twitch/YT/etc. are harmed because the content will be in…

As much as I don't like the current rules either "I never got a notice until recently" is a very different thing than "It was fine until recently".
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