It's not a policy, just a tool that youtube provides. But it's just a bad implementation in that people who claim content have all the power and are not reprimanded even if they falsely claim content, while people who got struck get nothing to reimburse them.

Let's plays are debatable. The most popular streamers are being watched not because of the games they're playing but because people like to watch them and listen to their comments and opinions. Which means they create their own transitive content from gaming content. Especially if you consider that the actions the players take are not pre programmed by the game devs and are in itself newly created content not by the game developers but by the streamer. This is unique to games and not other media which is why the laws haven't kept up yet. For example I would argue that making a video that only contains ingame cutscenes without player input are copyright infringement. Because the video creator does not create anything. Let's Plays are a whole lot more though.

But let's Plays aside, Nintendo is also claiming clips in critiques and tiny video snippets used in montages which is definitely under fair use. That's what it's about.

So? Whats the big deal?

I know how Jim makes his money. By getting hyperbolically outraged at every little transgression and calling it consumer advocacy. 

Youtube does need to clean up the application and prevent misuse (ie claiming copyright on critiques or parodies), but I would say that Let's Plays are not debatable. As mentioned in my example before, fans are there primarily for the commentators in a work like MST3K however they still have to pay for the original footage that they use. And given that any action in a game is one that the programmers have already designed and implemented, that does not making playing the game a transformative work. If you wish to montize Nintendo's footage/programing then regardless of the presence/absence of commentary on it, then Nintendo is owed a cut.

Nonprofit videos are a bit tricker as they can be used to promote a commenter's 'brand' and make them money indirectly, or they can be just for fun. Those videos are debatable and would probably need to be handled on a case-by-case basis.

I adressed this. Let's plays are different from just presenting a finished piece of art like a movie or an album. A game is interactive. While playing a game you create content yourself. The game dev did not program you to jump at that exact spot or to craft this item at that moment. In this regard games are more like toolsets. A streamer creates content by playing the game and adds additional content by commenting and using video edits. In the end the game software itself is only one small part in the newly created product. That's why Let's Plays are debatable. You can certainly not put them on the same level as music or movies unless you alter the content of those.

You just have to watch this video. He mentions several instances of Nintendo claiming fair use material. That's the only reason why the so called "copyright deadlock" works.

To get back to the actual topic of the thread, this is about morals. Enforcing a law does not grant moral high ground. Almost every single game developer not only allows but in some instances even embraces streamers and content creators on youtube. While Nintendo is one of the most radical enforcers of their twisted version of the copyright law. It's just dickish and stubborn behavior and they deserve to be called out on that.

Just look at Konami or EA or Ubisoft. None of them are really breaking any laws yet it's ok to call them shit as soon as they pop up in a conversation. That's why we need threads like these to spread awareness and hate evenly.

Video games are not movies or music albums. Movies and music are a passive mediums, whereas video games are interactive. You really can't draw a direct comparison between the two. Watching someone play Metal Gear Solid 5 is not remotely the same experience as actually PLAYING Metal Gear Solid 5. With movie commentary, you are getting a very similar experience, just with two robots and their human companion occasionally cracking jokes. 

What's more, Let's Plays are a two-way street. Yes, successful Let's Players get money from playing games. But the companies that make those games get advertisement and exposure from those Let's Plays. Some games, like Five Nights at Freddy's, owe their success entirely to Let's Players playing the game and exposing it to millions of people. This is why most video game companies don't give Let's Players crap. This is why some video game company's PR even work with Let's Players. Personally, I don't really watch Let's Plays though. 

And Jim says in his video that he's received more copyright strikes from Nintendo than any other company for his ad-free Jimquisition videos, which most definitely fall under fair use. Even more than Konami! He gets around it by using a trick he calls "copyright deadlock", where he purposefully includes copy written content from two or more sources, which makes it impossible for Nintendo to claim and monetize his videos.

No, they're not. Isn't that the basis of all the problems. Nintendo ends up claiming all ad revenue.

Jim is usually smart, but lately he says a lot of stupid things, this was definitely not his best video. Feels like he is driving his persona into hater territory just because is trendy now that Switch is coming, which is disappointing, in the las month he did like 3 jimquisition about how garbage is Nintendo, basically, and people of course loved it.

Agreed. And it's not because he jumped on the Nintendo-hate bandwagon (it's "fine" as long as the argument is right). But this comparison makes zero sense to me. Nintendo YT policies are wrong? Yeah, I think they are. But there's a long way from that to piracy imho.

And you have an entire coment section jerking themself together about how nintendo is the worst company in the world ever... because they have an outdated approach to youtube... mindblowing.