| marley said: The fair use law contains elements that must be met: 1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;2. the nature of the copyrighted work; 3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and 4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. I think it would be hard to argue that let's play videos satisfy condition 3. The art, sound, and story are lifted verbatim in their entirety from the games being shown. Those are all owned by the copyright holder. The only arguement in favor of fair use is that the gameplay is missing. I'm not sure how well that would hold up in court and I think a lot of people are overly confident that it would be enough. |
Nintendo's policy will affect review videos too, that aren't using nothing more than short disconnected parts of the game. We could argue that if a film review can be allowed, a game one can too because it's, by nature, even more distant from the source material because you aren't playing the game yourself.
| ihatefatkatz said: Just becausethey can, doesn't it will happen. In fact, I can bet you can provide a single instance of Nintendo flagging youtubers on the basis of criticism and opinion. The program is a few months old and there hasn't been a single issue of censorship. You are using a hypothetical and not a real issue. Even angry joes situation, Nintedo didn't take down the video they took the revenue. Angry joe himself took the video down himself in spite. I own a knife, I have potential to stab someone with it, it doesn't mean I will. This analogy applies here. |
Using the fact that we don't have an issue yet is a falacy. If they wanted their revenue share, they would just ask for it. But they want to choose:
a) If your video meets their rules.
b) If you can do a video for that specific game.
That's were the danger is. It's the same kind of politics that Google applies and that Apple applies and they used it to get advantages several times. The big problem here is that everybody is giving a free-pass because it's Nintendo. I would love to see the reaction if it was EA or Ubi.
