To clarify/complicate this further, while he is a born Swedish citizen, he currently lives in the UK, hence I stated 'whatever variation of this concept may be applicable'. I'm less familiar with either Sweden or the UK's approach to the concept, though it must presumably exist in some fashion.
Plus there's the whole 'Youtube is a US company' argument.
Sure, I think the DMCA is definitely applicable anyway given that we're dealing with an American company enforcing its rights for a violation on an American website.
Question is: can PDP (or streamers/uploaders in general) make use of their local law with whatever copyright exception that may have? In Europe, there is no 'fair use' clause. You only have a specific list of exceptions (listed
here in art. 5), which is not even fully implemented in every EU Member State.
So the sub-questions are then:
- If PDP can use EU law (in this case, UK if that's where he's based)?
- Is streaming of video games even a violation of copyright in general, as it is not a direct reproduction?
- Can he utilize the review (art.5.3(d)) or parody (art.5.3(k)) exceptions (and assuming these are implemented in UK law)?
For reference, the Deckmyn judgment of the EU Court of Justice touched precisely upon this subject where a Flemish right-wing extremist political party used a comic book series for some propaganda purposes. The publisher rejected this use, and won the case, that the usage did not fall under parody. See also:
http://ipkitten.blogspot.be/2014/09/has-cjeu-in-deckmyn-de-facto-harmonised.html
This relates to the concept of 'moral right' of the author, which is actually a bit absent in the USA but more common in Europe. It's sort of an unwaivable right of the author to reject any kind of use of his works when it would infringe his integrity (like political views).
Frankly, if this was a purely European case, then I think CampoSanto would be 100% in their legal right to block PDP from streaming their games.