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Technician

Copyright Bill S.978, Any LPers Here?

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Keits said:
According to the bill as it’s currently written, if you engage in “public performances by electronic means” 10 or more times over a 180 day period, and if either the total economic value of those performances exceeds $2500 or the cost of getting the copyright holder’s permission to perform exceeds $5000, then you can potentially get fined and put in jail for 5 years. Jail. FIVE YEARS.

Just to hit you over the head with this, that means that if you stream a game like Street Fighter 4 or Starcraft 2 (or a movie or a song etc) only 10 or more times in a full half year, and if you make a bit of money doing it, you either need to have a license from Capcom or Blizzard etc or you risk going to jail.

Well, a new bill designed to limit people from streaming copyrighted media, such as old sitcoms and cartoons, and video games has had a negative drawback for people making an income from reviewing(possibly), LPing or using copyrighted media for their material wich can be argued against the fair use limitations or exceptions.

Anyone here making a menial income Youtube LPing? It's actually a huge movement on Youtube ATM. Many users have thousands of hours of posted copyrighted video game footage on their channels.

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Technician said:

Anyone here making a menial income Youtube LPing?

If anyone could find my videos, maybe.

As I understand, this would affect those not making money as well. The bill's a load of shit and I'm glad a large amount of people are against it. I doubt any of the people supporting this realize that 1. making people pay money to be able to show other people something is stupid and 2. for games specifically, seeing gameplay or an LP or a playthrough/walkthrough or etc. can actually drive people to purchase the game in question. More proof that the copyright system is broken.

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Oh well, guess I won't watch much youtube stuff anymore then. It's not really a big deal for me. I already try to avoid buying/funding copyrighted stuff, and instead focus on free/open alternatives whenever possible.

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And here I thought only Square-Enix was stupid enough to care if people streamed the video from their games (because that's all their games are). Now is a wonderful to to not be American.

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Aliotroph? said:

And here I thought only Square-Enix was stupid enough to care if people streamed the video from their games (because that's all their games are). Now is a wonderful to to not be American.

We always follow suit, we always do.

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Good thing all the Youtube channels I'm subscribed to are British. Also, this has a lot of steps to go through until it gets passed, so no need to panic just yet.

Kind of sucks because I was playing with the notion of starting my own Youtube channel.

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hex11 said:

Oh well, guess I won't watch much youtube stuff anymore then.

Hmm? Did I miss read something? Why is youtube the evil here?

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Blzut3 said:

Hmm? Did I miss read something? Why is youtube the evil here?

They're not, but they have no intention of sticking up for the fair use agreement. I've seen a couple worthy reviewers loose their channel by companies like Viacom bitching.

Blip.tv is really starting to catch on because of Youtube's cowardice.

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Blzut3 said:

Hmm? Did I miss read something? Why is youtube the evil here?


Nobody said they were evil. But it's where the focus of RIAA/MPAA/**AA is going to be next (once they bribe enough politicians to pass the bill). They're already monitoring other places like bittorrent, and now they want to find people to sue on youtube. Anyway, I don't use youtube that much since my browser doesn't have flash plugin (don't want it either), and I have to use a script to download the flv then watch it with mplayer.

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Clonehunter said:

So... The US Gov want to take control of the WORLD WIDE Web?

The US are under the mindset they own it, or at the very least, should run it.

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Aliotroph? said:

Now is a wonderful to to not be American.

Though it sucks if you have a Free Trade Agreement with the US. If that bill's passed it'll wind up being mirrored by Australian copyright law.

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Clonehunter said:

So... The US Gov want to take control of the WORLD WIDE Web?

Of course! Obviously, trying to control every aspect of US citizens' lives just isn't enough.

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Xeros612 said:

The bill's a load of shit and I'm glad a large amount of people are against it.


Unfortunately, a lot of organizations support it, including Warner Music Group (Ironic considering they had the audio pulled for a video of MLK's I had a Dream Speech), Disney, Viacom, and AT&T. I think it's safe to say the large corporations take priority over people here.

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I'd try to stop them, but I'm a minor, and they wouldn't listen anyway no matter my age. I'm not from a big corporation, or a rich family, so I'd be ignored on the basis on how much money will I give to the politicians. (which for me would be none.)

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Sent in my letters, too. It's a bit weird for me to be writing things that are very heavily politics related, but I personally think it's better than sitting down and doing nothing, even if the per-person influence is quite low. I'm just hoping, though, that they at least amend it to make it usable by us and all of that.

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Once this causes a virtual holocaust of online freedom of expression, surely it will go down in history as one of the new Intolerable Acts, once some generation finally comes along with the guts to stand up and say enough is enough.

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???

I don't get any income from my youtube gameplay videos and I don't intend to. Also, it's their right to remove my videos if they contain copyrighted content, because yes, they contain. Those games are copyrighted. I don't live in America, but Youtube is American, so likely it listens to American laws. Who is responsible for removing Doom videos, if it happens? Zenimax or higher forces?

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The copyright holder just needs to complain to YouTube and the offending vid is pulled out. The Terraria devs used that card to get rid of a bad review (more like a parody/trolling review, but this doesn't matter).

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printz said:

I don't get any income from my youtube gameplay videos and I don't intend to.

I was wrong, you don't have to make any income to have charges pressed, but Youtube partners making an income will be hit first, and hardest.

Also, it's their right to remove my videos if they contain copyrighted content, because yes, they contain. Those games are copyrighted.

Yes, but this shows how ignorant the people behind this bill are. I understand Television shows becasue they are the finished product. Viewing them is the product's intension, and why it sells. Games are made to be interacted with. I buy a game for the game-play. The video is really just publicity for kids to go out and buy the game they see the LPer having fun with.

Let me put it this way. Hobbyists are now making income on Youtube for reviewing figurines. Hasbro holds the image rights of Optimus Prime, but I'm not investing in the products intent; I don't get to play with it. If anything, a subscriber will now buy the figure when his/her favorite critic praises it's quality.

The internet makes gaming huge. It made it a culture for grownups. Without Youtube LPs and reviews, classic games would never had this much light shown on them as they do today.

Gez said:

The copyright holder just needs to complain to YouTube and the offending vid is pulled out. The Terraria devs used that card to get rid of a bad review (more like a parody/trolling review, but this doesn't matter).

Both CBS and BBC pretty much fucked over my favorite sci-fi reviewer sfdebris. He gave many praising reviews along with many bad ones -Voyageur. The irony is, he never gives Dr Who bad reviews. Youtube doesn't stand for fair use. They buckle to whatever company bitches once.

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printz said:

I don't get any income from my youtube gameplay videos and I don't intend to.

There are a lot of people on Youtube who use it as their primary source of income. You have to get very popular and I think get some sponsorships before that becomes a viable option, though. I think they should have the right to stream video games because honestly it just boils down to reviews and playing around with the source material. It's like if they banned video reviews of movies or re-edits/abridged series. Speaking of which, all of those are probably subject to the new bill. Yeah, say goobye to Youtube being anything other than a video version of Livejournal. :/

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Technician said:

Both CBS and BBC pretty much fucked over my favorite sci-fi reviewer sfdebris. He gave many praising reviews along with many bad ones -Voyageur. The irony is, he never gives Dr Who bad reviews. Youtube doesn't stand for fair use. They buckle to whatever company bitches once.

Fortunately, blip.tv exists, so he can easily transfer over to there. Blip is big on reviewers and isn't a copyright bitch like youtube from what I've seen. Sadly, support for gameplay isn't quite there, since raw footage is apparently against their TOS and/or doesn't show up in the search engine, and who knows if they count LPs as anything more than "raw footage".

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Danarchy said:

Yeah, say goobye to Youtube being anything other than a video version of Livejournal. :/


Wasn't that supposed to be youtube in the beginning anyway?

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This is all 100% entirely about having control over the expression of opinions on items of media.

Game companies don't want any reviews of their products except ones they've approved and bought out the reviewers on.

We are rapidly approaching the point where the only people allowed to say anything about a product will be the company that made it. The point of fair use is to protect materials of a commentary (ie. Let's Play) or critical (ie. review) nature.

This part of fair use underlies the foundation of freedom of speech. This bill is a direct attack on that most fundamental freedom.

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Quasar said:

This is all 100% entirely about having control over the expression of opinions on items of media.

Game companies don't want any reviews of their products except ones they've approved and bought out the reviewers on.

We are rapidly approaching the point where the only people allowed to say anything about a product will be the company that made it. The point of fair use is to protect materials of a commentary (ie. Let's Play) or critical (ie. review) nature.

This part of fair use underlies the foundation of freedom of speech. This bill is a direct attack on that most fundamental freedom.


Pretty sure this is a bit more accurate.

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and if you make a bit of money doing it

God forbid you can't make money off of other people's work. I don't see the problem with this, nor will it affect me. You really shouldn't be charging people to watch your LP's anyway.

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Wagi said:

You really shouldn't be charging people to watch your L1P's anyway.


You can't charge people for watching your videos on YouTube. At most you could imagine making them private and selling the URL. Good luck with that business model.

However, YouTube finances itself through advertising; and if your vids are viewed a lot, then you get to take a share of the ad revenue generated by your vids. Why do you think there are so many videos that end with pathetic "plz liek and susbcrieb!!!1!" comments? People who want to reach the magical threshold at which they'll start getting some pennies from YouTube.

Which means that if you make LPs for fun, because you like playing games, commenting them, and recording yourself, and you happen to become popular enough to gather a large crowd of followers, what happens? You're starting to make money off other people's work. Even if it's likely not enough money to pay the bills.

Also yes; making money off other people's work is shameful. That's why people like Roger Ebert are scum of the Earth.

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You're forgetting about the old possibility of incidental profit. Youtube gets hits from your video whether or not you get any of that. The fact that this could drive ad revenue to Youtube is more than likely enough to make Google shut down all LP, game review, movie review, book review, etc. videos preemptively. They don't have to wait for you to make a profit on it personally. The fact that they *can't* without being answerable to felony charges means they will not and cannot allow that material on their site any longer. The lawyers will say no.

Besides that, where does it say you have to MAKE money off it? It says if the "economic value" or "cost of getting permissions" exceeds a certain threshold, then it's illegal.

This means that it's actually entirely up to the company that made the stuff. If Disney wants to license a 2 minute excerpt of their should-have-been-public-domain-10-years-ago early Mickey Mouse cartoon to you only at the fee of $10000 per minute of footage, they are allowed to make that distinction are they not? Where does it set any concept of a ruler in the form of fair market values? This has never been required - the principle of "liberty" allows for a property owner to charge whatever fee he desires for the use of that property or to otherwise deny its use altogether.

So if you go ahead and upload, let's say, a series of educational vidoes one per day over a 10 day period and each one contains one minute of commentary fair-use footage from said cartoons, you are now a felon and can go to pound-me-in-the-ass prison, the same as if you held up a bank or stole a car or killed somebody.

This is insanity and anybody that cannot see it is either willfully blind or really overly optimistic about the way this is supposed to work.

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