ArchangelMadzz said:
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.
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I think everyone knows any publisher can legally do this, it is their content and they have a right to do it if they want.
It's just a dick move, not even EA is willing to stoop that low.
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I'm not sure everyone knows or agrees that it's legal. I see people argue against it's legality all of the time. Of course, we won't ever know if it truly falls into fair use until it's argued in court, but I highly doubt that it does. I'm not a copyright lawyer or anything, but I did work in copyright approval for almost a decade. In my work experience I found that people tend to think 'fair use' covers much more than it actually does.
Also, I don't personally see it as a dick move, but that's probably because I don't care about the youtube videos in question. I can see how it might not be the best business decision though.
