Nintendo claiming ad revenue from Youtube videos (Let's Plays, etc.)

[ríomhaire]

http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/16/4336114/nintendo-claims-ad-revenue-on-user-generated-youtube-videos

Basically Nintendo partnered with Youtube and now videos with a certain amount/length of content matched to Nintendo's samples that they've provided to Youtube have had ads put on them with the money going to Nintendo or if the uploader was already monetizing them the money is now going to Nintendo instead of them.

To be honest I'm surprised it's taken this long for a major company to do something like this. Let's Plays are pretty blatant copyright infringement (whether it has any positive or negative effect on sales or anything else) and large companies tend to be fairly conservative about that sort of thing and edge on the side of caution.

 

[Vegeta897]

Let's Plays are pretty blatant copyright infringement

I think that's highly debatable.

Edit: Depends on how it's executed though. If it has no commentary from the player, that's really pushing it. But then, if a video is infringing copyright, why isn't a screenshot?

If you're only referring to videos which users make money from, then I agree with you in that that should be considered infringement.

But for someone recording themselves playing a game and uploading it without making money from it, I think that's fair use.

 

[ríomhaire]

I'm no expert on copyright law in my own country or the US but I think in general there are laws (fair use/fair dealing) that in relation to the amount of the work you are copying, though the "amount" of game there is is a bit less strictly defined than in other media forms. In my college library there are notices up by the photocopiers about how much of a book you can legally copy (something like 5% or one chapter, whichever is shorter).

 

[Vegeta897]

Fair use is affected by many factors, not just 'how much' you're using.

Since I doubt anybody would be able to predict accurately what would be fair use and not, I think this thread is a good place to discuss what we believe it should be.

I think uploading videos and not making money from them should be allowed, except for cases where there is little or no user commentary, and/or the game has a lot of cinematics. (in which case, this is a terrible video and whoever uploaded it is lazy, and responsible for the land fill of pointless videos on the internet)

For a game with a lot of cinematics, the developers put their time and money into making exactly what you're seeing, which would be the same experience for the game owner as well as the viewer. When the viewer gets the same experience as the player, this is where real infringement occurs. Watching someone play a game like Arma, however, is in no way comparable to the actual experience of playing, and I believe should be protected.

 

[MFL]

As much as I appreciate justice and its various interpretations, how YouTube regulates its site will be the crux of the matter.

Just for the sake of educating here, the Content ID claims that are applied to these videos directly influence the standing of a YouTube account, which in turn effects which features can be taken advantage of. Eventually, this can lead to a blunt account take-down. Long before that though, it will be the case that the ability to post videos longer than fifteen minutes in length will be removed, which, as pertains to the production value of any particular LP, is pretty ****ing shitty.

Now, by and large, if you are a contracted LP'er, your contracting agency will sort through most of the behind the curtains bureaucracy that is involved when it comes to handling copyright issues. This happens no matter how large or small the game is, if you are a prominent producer, you are getting the consent of the copyright owner. I'm not prominent, but I had to do this just last week for Blood Dragon.

As for finding a definition of fair use, the best way of thinking about it that I've been able to parse in layman's terms is that, if you are adding to or changing the work in a profound way, it is one of the multifaceted gem faces of fair use. Let's talk about extreme ends of the spectrum for a second. Would changing the first letter of a published book and reselling it as your own count as fair use? Let's call that a no. Would remixing a dozen different songs into a unique arrangement of samples, which has a result of effectively producing something "new" out of previously produced elements count? Yes. Keep that difference in mind when you think about LP's. The new content is the commentary layered over game-play. Every scream, laugh, giggle, joke, and lame drawl is one production's unique reaction to the medium in which it is being carried.

Also, major companies do stuff like this all the time. Any company can register any of their property that they want with YouTube to provide Content ID coverage for, and most of them have traditionally just put global blocks on the infringing videos. Nintendo went the extra step to do it across the board for every Nintendo video whatsoever that is not produced by them, putting adds on everything that gets pinged by Content ID, whether or not the video was monetized, whether or not the video has permission to be posted, and every bit of the add revenue goes to the big N. It's their right to do this. They also did it as a surprise, which is also their right. It's also their right to be ignorant to the environment that they are conducting business in. Doesn't make it a smooth move though. Kind of makes it a dick move.

If we don't want to get into the money side of things that's fine, but there is a solid amount of metrics supporting that LP's are positive influences across the board when it comes to the profits of the content owners.

Anyways, I'm done ranting, and I don't LP Nintendo products anyways. I just hope this kind of behavior doesn't catch on.

P.S. - cheers, Paradox. http://i.imgur.com/J0F1KYV.jpg

 

[ríomhaire]

P.S. - cheers, Paradox. http://i.imgur.com/J0F1KYV.jpg

As we're on a Valve site here I'll just point out that Valve explicitly allows this too as long as you don't charge for views (ad revenue is fine).

 

[Lobster]

I think a lot of it depends on the game.

It feels a little strange seeing the entirety of 'The Walking Dead' game posted on YouTube with no commentary, given that the primary selling point of that game is the story. While at the opposite end of the scale you have games such as Minecraft and DayZ, that (arguably) owe a lot of their initial success to the LP community for spreading the word. Plus the really successful LP'ers tend to build audiences based on their personality and style rather than the particular game.

The problem with these kind of claim systems is that they don't really differentiate between blatant piracy and reasonable use. You just have to look at the long list of perfectly well intentioned YouTube channels that have been blitzed offline by Viacom over the years.