Copyright on YouTube gaming videos

I don't get it... really?
... really, I just... I really don't get it.
OK, sorry. Now for explaining myself.

We all know about the recent map Romero made, right? Right.
Of course, we also know about Doom videos - let's plays, demos, mods... stuff like that.
You may ask - so what's the problem?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PouzO1ch4Z0

So, the thing is - this video has been used by Gamespot. Without giving credits to it's author, Ultraboy94fsr (although later they did).
When people started to inquire about it, some people decided to contact Gamespot for clarifying the situation.

https://twitter.com/Totalbiscuit/status/688476734556127232

Well, stuff like that may happen anyway and anytime, right?
At least, that's what I thought.
Until I've seen this.



So the question is - that is an encroachment on Bethesda's IP? Really? If I am understanding that right - basically, every video or anything/almost everything that is done for Doom by Doom community is a F*CKING encroachment?
Where it does lead us?

I apologize if I might seem to panic early... but I'd REALLY like to hear your opinions about it.

[LeD]Jake Crusher said:

I apologize if I might seem to panic early... but I'd REALLY like to hear your opinions about it.

Who's that, some Internet armchair lawyer? Unless that opinion came from somebody inside Bethesda, whoever that is should probably STFU and stop stirring a greasy pot.

Quasar said:

Who's that, some Internet armchair lawyer?

If I understand correctly - that was someone from Gamespot.

Well, I'll admit that I wanted to contact Mr. Pete Hines from Bethesda, and ask his opinion about this. But maybe something will be clarified before I'll do that.

That's funny. For real.

Soooo basically we all are illegal and our maps, TCs and other projects are illegal too. Okay then, it's time for Molotov folks!

If the person who made the video is making money off of it, and Bethesda didn't say it was OK to make money off those sorts of vids, then it seems sorta sticky. Gamespot using it without credit is sorta crappy, but it's just a video of gameplay, and they did credit him eventually. What that Danny person said seems like he's overstepping his bounds, though, when it comes to what Bethesda is OK with.

On a side note, "Let's Play" videos seem overblown to me. Especially the ones with commentary. They're good for seeing what a game was/is like, and maybe getting an idea for how to get past hard spots, but that's about it.

I usually prefer without the commentary too, many "Lets Players" are downright painful to listen to.

I wouldn't panic too much, I think this is just some Gamespot douchebag who thinks he knows everything blowing smoke on Twitter :) Don't mind him.

I'm surprised outlets like GameSpot and IGN even exist anymore. They seem so irrelevant.

Doomkid said:

I usually prefer without the commentary too, many "Lets Players" are downright painful to listen to.

True, yet it beats pausing a game and typing out responses though.

"Betheada"
...
Okay.

Betheada's Eldar Scrools.

Pretty sure Bethesda is on the "OK to monetize your videos using our content" list. I could do that for my Skyrim mod videos.

It's not good to be too moral. You miss out on too much life that way.

My opinion: I suspect Bethesda could demand royalties for every Doom YouTube video if they were so motivated.

In fact, the YouTube help pages make pretty clear that game authors can claim copyright on videos of their games. That page is about video monetization but the implications are pretty clear:

Whether you can use video game content for monetization depends on the commercial use rights granted to you by the license from the applicable video game publisher. Some video game publishers may allow you to use all video game content for commercial use and confirm such permission in their licensing agreements.

In other licensing agreements, publishers may not grant commercial rights for videos that simply show game play for extended periods of time. For these licensing terms, the use of video games must be minimal unless the associated step-by-step commentary provides instructional and/or educational value and is strictly tied to the live action being shown. For more information, please review Video game and software content.

I don't understand this "dispute" at all. If you upload footage of yourself playing a game in the normal way (i.e. not doing cool speedrunning skillz or whatever) and then someone uses a portion of that footage as an example of somebody playing the game, who fucking cares.

Linguica said:

I don't understand this "dispute" at all. If you upload footage of yourself playing a game in the normal way (i.e. not doing cool speedrunning skillz or whatever) and then someone uses a portion of that footage as an example of somebody playing the game, who fucking cares.

I think that was the original discussion, but the OP's question is actually "do game authors have copyright over videos of their games?"

fraggle said:

I think that was the original discussion, but the OP's question is actually "do game authors have copyright over videos of their games?"

Is that *really* even a question? Why would uploading footage of yourself playing through a game *not* legally be copyright infringement? Do all those graphics, sound effects, and music somehow magically not fall under normal copyright protection? People have such willful blindness about this.

In related news I just noticed the BBC's article on the Romero map http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35343089 uses my screenshots without proper attribution. I'M SO MAD! I'M BURNIN OUT OF CONTROnot really. Who cares. I made them with the express purpose of people seeing them so I guess I succeeded.

As an amateur youtuber I can shed a little light on this.

Is it legal to upload videos of game footage and sound? Not unless you have permission from the publishers of those assets to do so.

In this case it IS legal because Bethesda issued a blanket statement on their blog years ago giving permission for people to LP their games and monetize them. However it usually does NOT automatically grant permission to use the music from a game. Those copyrights are held by the composer or their publisher and the music is licensed for the game. Technically you would have to get permission from Bobby Prince to use DOOM music in a youtube video.

As for Gamespot using the footage, this is not legal for them to do. This content is automatically granted a copyright to the content creator. They could file a complaint with youtube if the video is hosted on youtube and have the video taken down. Whoever at Gamespot that wrote that could get into trouble legally for posting that, usually such things are handled by the legal department due to the touchy nature of them.

Properly disclosing credit to the author you pulled the footage from is the least you could do though. Outlets like WatchMojo have earned quite a bit of bad will for just swiping tons of people's videos without so much as a thank you.

RoyBatty said:

Technically you would have to get permission from Bobby Prince to use DOOM music in a youtube video.

Pretty sure he did that while working under contract for id, meaning that I doubt it's really "his" music.

Linguica said:

Is that *really* even a question? Why would uploading footage of yourself playing through a game *not* legally be copyright infringement? Do all those graphics, sound effects, and music somehow magically not fall under normal copyright protection? People have such willful blindness about this.

I agree, though I can see that it's slightly unintuitive and understand why people like the OP here find it confusing. Our mental model of copyright is usually built around "exact" copies - books, films, software, etc. - where we understand that there is something that we are making a duplicate of.

Game footage is a far more slippery case that doesn't fit this usual model, because the player of the game is an intrinsic part of the recording. To record a video of ourselves playing a game feels like we are the sole authors as 1) it doesn't feel like anything has been "copied", and 2) we have taken a central role in its creation.

It's perhaps better thought of as a derivative work with multiple authors, but it just goes to show that the nature of copyright law is far more complicated and subtle than people tend to assume. I've previously pointed to the red bus lawsuit as another example of how copyright isn't always about exact duplicates.

Of course, a software company could do smarter things than suing a youtuber for using pantera and slayer tracks their very own, original game music tracks in a video. ;)

If I was reading a book aloud on YouTube, would I not be able to monetize it because the text isn't mine? The sound waves are coming from my mouth, but it's not a parody or anything, so I would have to assume I could not monetize it.. Right? This is all assuming the copyright holder cares, but that's the safe / smart thing to do when you're unsure of course.

The intended use of a book though is strictly to convey words/thoughts/what have you, where as the intended use of a game is to be played, not just watched.. Doesn't the original work's intent also play a factor in constituting copyright infringement?

Its so glaringly obvious that the majority of these laws were conceived not realizing that soon in the future, nearly everyone would have a camera, mic, and internet to share literally everything with the world whether or not they own it.

If we really want to change copyright laws, all we need to do is have billions of dollars like Disney has! As we all know, the law, be it good, bad, right, wrong - It bends like rubber when you wave cash at it!

http://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/08/10/cq/disney.html

Linguica said:

I don't understand this "dispute" at all. If you upload footage of yourself playing a game in the normal way (i.e. not doing cool speedrunning skillz or whatever) and then someone uses a portion of that footage as an example of somebody playing the game, who fucking cares.

Yea, I wouldn't care either, except that video made this player kinda famous along with the drama :P

By the way, apparently the person that posted on twitter is in fact some random scenario maker / host / whatever, I doubt he really knows what he's talking about... especially given that GameSpot itself disagrees with that statement.

Much ado about nothing.

Doomkid said:

If I was reading a book aloud on YouTube, would I not be able to monetize it because the text isn't mine? The sound waves are coming from my mouth, but it's not a parody or anything, so I would have to assume I could not monetize it.. Right? This is all assuming the copyright holder cares, but that's the safe / smart thing to do when you're unsure of course.

I'm pretty sure that's correct, yes. By the way, there's a similar, slightly more common analogy to this case in the example of song lyrics (performing rights), so if you upload a video that is a performance of a song by someone else, they can demand royalties.

A well-known, pretty extreme example of this came with the song Bitter Sweet Symphony, a song by The Verve which is probably their best known song, but which they ultimately received no royalties for, because they sampled an orchestral performance of a song by the Rolling Stones (not even lyrics, just a few repeated notes).

I should probably clarify that in explaining all this I'm only describing the state of things as they are, and not how I'd like them to be - personally I think the whole state of copyright is a huge mess and things need to swing massively back in the direction of fair use and reduced copyright terms.

fraggle said:

a song by The Verve which is probably their best known song, but which they ultimately received no royalties for, because they sampled an orchestral performance of a song by the Rolling Stones (not even lyrics, just a few repeated notes).

Beastie Boys did the same thing with Sabotage. Only it was from an artist that wasn't well known. They didn't have to pay a dime.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=660862405243129598&q=388+F.3d+1189&hl=en&as_sdt=2,5

Moral of the story - sample from someone that won't have greater legal resources than you.

Some video game companies started to fill copyright claims against people who criticized their games one or two years ago. There's a new button so people can appeal a decision that resulted of a dispute, I don't know if Youtube added this button for this particular reason or if it's because of another reason. I think the companies have stopped doing this, it may have hurt their reputation.

It was mostly butthurt 3rd-rate indie devs, Konami, and Derek Savage that did that. It got so bad that YouTube finally rolled out out a system where if a false copyright claim is filed on a video protected under fair use, they will go so far as to defend it in court and cover costs of up to $1 million in doing so. By default, (and jesus christ best for everyone's sake this is as far as they have to go) they simply take the video and go "NO YOU FUCKS LEAVE IT ALONE" and make it un-copyright strike-able.

Of course, all of this only applies in the US, and if you're a big name/can make enough noise about the situation.

And as good law right now we have the awful Blurred Lines verdict, where the defendants neither directly sampled a sound recording nor directly copied the song's composition but still lost because the jury decided it sounded "too much" like the plaintiff's song.

Under that sort of lax standard, you could easily argue that Freedoom is infringing on copyright, even though everything about it is 100% from scratch.

Seriously, Bethesda is full of themselves,

"oh we make shitty excuses of RPGs(Daggerfall and Morrowind was their last good RPG) and murder fallout and we have cringey voice acting and our games are filled with bad jokes that aren't funny but we make money because IT JUST WORRRRRRRRKKSS!"

I know I sound like a goon from RPG codex but seriously they're one of my most hated companies yet I still buy their games, hoping that their will be some redeeming qualities.