Youtubers Upset over Nintendo's New affiliate program

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TDIRunner:

--- Quote from: Blumpkin on January 30, 2015, 08:39:57 AM ---I'm in the grandpa group too. I don't feel sorry for YouTubers that make money off someone else's property. You don't want to play by Nintendo's rules? Fine, go out and buy the game yourself.

But then again, I don't understand the surge of let's plays either. I don't understand why people would rather watch someone else play a game instead of playing it themselves.

--- End quote ---

I actually find the "lets play" videos helpful in determining if I would like a game or not. I use them along with traditional game reviews.

shenske:
I'm part of the old man group.

It's not that you should owe Nintendo anything ... BUT if you are making money off of nintendo's intellectual property then them getting a piece of that shouldn't be a problem.

There are no upfront costs correct? Just revenue sharing?

sheep2001:
i must be part of the old man group, as i didn't even realise people WERE getting paid for gaming videos. Who is paying them? and for what? It's not exactly advertising, unless they are being paid to say how good something is.

I know alot of (successful) bloggers and vbloggers get freebies in order to advertise stuff (which is fair enough unless they promote utter shit, in which case they soon get found out), but really didn't know money was changing hands. If nintendo want a slice of the action, whose money is it they want to take, and how do they propose to get it? Also, are these people paying taxes on earnings, or is it all virtual cloud money? Sorry, i probasbly should have watched the video, but not enough time today.

larryinc64:
@Sheep, users like Game Grumps and PewDiePie get paid ad revenue in real money for playing games and commentating/ making jokes over it. They are very successful.

The program only applies to most Mario, Zelda, Metroid, F-ZERO, Animal Crossing, Pikmin, Star Fox, and the black box NES games. Not every single Nintendo game. Bayonetta, and Pokemon are not involved.

larryinc64:

--- Quote from: Megatron on January 30, 2015, 03:44:50 AM ---Once a youtuber, blip user, twitch user etc puts up a video with commentary or edited in some way, the user has ALTERED the original product, meaning that it is NOT the same as if you or I bought it in the store. it is its own unique experience. So because of this, copyright is generally not claimed - it falls under the fair use clause which stipulates that a medium may be used for review or parody purposes (as well as a lot of other legal stuff)

--- End quote ---

But taking a let's play down to the basic description, commentating over a copyrighted work.

Out of curiosity, I began to dig around, trying to find some of the legal information on shows such as MST3K, and Beavis and Butthead. 2 shows that basically do the same thing LPs do.
I can't find much about it, I know MST3K had to get the rights to the movies they riffed, and many episodes can no longer be sold due to loss of rights.
Even sampling recordings seems to fall in a grey aria, when many of them are transmissive.

The fact that you are talking over large portions of video and audio does not make transformitive to the point of fair use.
The big problem I see is most let's plays are not reviews or parodies.
Total Biscut's "WTF Is?" is a review because a majority of it is talking about the game and it's strengths and weaknesses. Game Grumps is not a review, sometimes is a parody, but a good chunk of the videos are idle conversation or jokes that have little to do with the game. Power Plaid Plays (My show) is not review and rarely parody. I feel my show is not protected under fair use.

and length factors into it as well. Short clips for review to show an example, a review can't really show the entire movie, or entire scenes. LPs can use hours of footage.

It's a legal grey area, and no court case has ever determined the fair use of Let's Plays. But I don't think most of them fall under it.

TL;DR
I'm no lawer, but from what I gathered, a Let's Play is not inherently free use. Depending on how the game is used and what the host is saying can make it fair use.

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