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The Power of Developers to Deny the Right to Use Their Content - a Debate thread

For the same principle we get to care about what you say (that is how forums work, ya know): sharing an opinion, viewpoint.
Especially from people that make a living on the platform (the fact you respect them or not is a different story, and not the main point).
He explains how YouTubers promoting his games have greatly boosted his sales.
Don't really care about the view point of one racist defending another
 

Nanashrew

Banned
For the same principle we get to care about what you say (that is how forums work, ya know): sharing an opinion, viewpoint.
Especially from people that make a living on the platform (the fact you respect them or not is a different story, and not the main point).
He explains how YouTubers promoting his games have greatly boosted his sales.

Keemstar is a well known scumbag who makes his business on drama.
 

Mr-Joker

Banned
Makes sense. Its really no different from The Rolling Stones not allowing their music to be played during a Trump campaign.

This pretty much, all they are doing is revoking Felix's license to host content and make money on their game.

Plus they clearly don't want their branding to be associated with a racist and they have the right to do that.

Here is Keemstar's answer to those tweets (attention, he cusses a little bit):

- https://twitter.com/KEEMSTAR/status/907017914083143680

Keemstar is an alt-right Trump supporter thus he has no value of worth to say.
 
Common sense says no company would want their IP associated with racism or racists. It shouldn't need to be written that "hey, while streaming our content, don't be a racist, bigot, homophobe, etc" unless the game is made by a white supremacist, nazi, or homophobe. Then, it's probably okay cause the devs are POS too.
Their IP is not being associated with racism in a legal sense. Their is no confusion in the market about the Campo Santo IPs when PewDiePie or whoever makes a video with racist commentary over the game. It is PewDiePie's video or stream. It seems confusion only happens if say PewDiePie made a fan game closely resembling the original that it could be recognized as official.
 

Nanashrew

Banned
Their IP is not being associated with racism in a legal sense. Their is no confusion in the market about the Campo Santo IPs when PewDiePie or whoever makes a video with racist commentary over the game. It is PewDiePie's video or stream. It seems confusion only happens if say PewDiePie made a fan game closely resembling the original that it could be recognized as official.

I mean, this is how they feel about it.

https://twitter.com/vanaman/status/906985405093838848

Furthermore, we're complicit: I'm sure we've made money off of the 5.7M views that video has and that's something for us to think about.

They feel complicit in giving PDP this platform he has and want to revoke their permissions given to him.
 

JABEE

Member
I guess the question is does anyone legitimately believe the broadcaster is an agent for the company.

Also, games are not music or film. They are not a passive art form.

They are at their base level akin to a board game or a rulebook for a sport. You can make the argument that certain games are movies or choose-your-own adventure books, so developers should have a say in how you broadcast their intellectual property.

Someone cursing and smoking weed while playing monopoly shouldn’t be subject to a DMCA because Parker Brothers doesn’t want their game for children to be associated with narcotics and adult language.

I don’t know if the developers can actually stop them without proving the association is real endorsement of the creator of the content, but I don’t know copyright laws. I’m sure they can brute force an automatic system like YouTube though without respect for the legality of the situation.
 

Yarbskoo

Member
I'm no fan of PewDiePie, but publishers have been abusing the shit of of Youtube's copyright protection system for forever, and I don't really see that as a good thing even when it's used to inconvenience shitty people.
 

JABEE

Member
Developers are right to be angry if someone is using their work to promote something bad, but I don’t know what recourse they have.

Even The Rolling Stones couldn’t stop Trump from using their music
 

zelas

Member
Makes sense. Its really no different from The Rolling Stones not allowing their music to be played during a Trump campaign.

Laws around buying something off the shelf is a lot different than music usage rights.

Developers that make games where the end user supposedly doesn't own the game (you buy a license) might have an argument though. If only because its a gray area court have yet to weigh in on.
 
If companies and advertisers can do it because they don't want their product associated with racists, sexists, neonazis, etc, why can't a developer do the same?

What's the difference between that and BMW pulling their ads from Breitbart because they don't want to be associated with them?
 
If companies and advertisers can do it because they don't want their product associated with racists, sexists, neonazis, etc, why can't a developer do the same?

What's the difference between that and BMV pulling their ads from Breitbart (aka stop monetizing our stuff, we don't want to be associated with you)?

Because we already acknowledge the power of advertisers to police anything they are involved with, but don't want copyright holders to have the same power over video content on the internet.
 
Makes sense. Its really no different from The Rolling Stones not allowing their music to be played during a Trump campaign.
It is different. Rolling Stones have a right to the reproduction of its music, and that's what's happening at a Trump rally. Game developers have a right to the reproduction of their games, but that's not what's happening. The game is still sitting on PewDiePie's computer in one piece while he streams a video of the game's output to a computer with commentary.
 

JABEE

Member
If companies and advertisers can do it because they don't want their product associated with racists, sexists, neonazis, etc, why can't a developer do the same?

What's the difference between that and BMV pulling their ads from Breitbart because they don't want to be associated with them?
Aren’t there usually contracts involved in advertising deals reviewed by teams of lawyers on both sides? They are also paying money to Breitbart to advertise.

BMW isn’t permitted to prevent Breitbart from writing reviews of BMW cars or taking pictures of their cars and posting it on their site.
 

Mik317

Member
weren't people super pissed when Nintendo started to take down vids for simply showing off stuff? I mean PDP is a POS and I know people wish that he gets got for it...but ehhhh. Lets flip it and say some Bigot Game Dev saw some youtuber tweet about equality or whatever and felt offended and thus wanted to demonetize their vids because of that. Piss poor business sense and career suicide imo but on the technical sense its the same thing. A system that is based off of feelings does not work. There needs to be set in stone guidelines of what is allowed and what isn't. Its not like he was yelling slurs on his firewatch video, so him being a racist loser elsewhere isn't even effecting their product. They don't have a strong case here beyond "this dude sucks"...and while you all may wish that was enough...it isn't, mainly for the flipside of things also not being enough.

Personally, I feel like the IP creator has the right to do damn near whatever they please.....I just remember there being quite a bit of pushback when it was done for more other means...you can't have it both ways. Morality unfortunately muddies this quite a bit.
 
If companies and advertisers can do it because they don't want their product associated with racists, sexists, neonazis, etc, why can't a developer do the same?

What's the difference between that and BMV pulling their ads from Breitbart because they don't want to be associated with them?

The crux of it lies with the "transformation" of content. When does it cease being CampoSanto's content and become PDP's due to his commentary and gameplay?

The DMCA isn't cut out to deal with games and let's plays. It's hardly cut out for any modern content. Lord knows Washington isn't well equipped enough to put forth some new legislation.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Aren't there usually contracts involved in advertising deals reviewed by teams of lawyers on both sides? They are also paying money to Breitbart to advertise.

BMW isn't permitted to prevent Breitbart from writing reviews of BMW cars or taking pictures of their cars and posting it on their site.


Depends on how that content ended up on Breitbart. Was it a direct site buy? A network buy? Through a programmatic platform? Without knowing the details, I can't really say.
 
If companies and advertisers can do it because they don't want their product associated with racists, sexists, neonazis, etc, why can't a developer do the same?

What's the difference between that and BMV pulling their ads from Breitbart because they don't want to be associated with them?
Because advertisers made a specific agreement with whoever that they can choose to rescind at any time or per the contract. When Campo Santo makes a game and puts it out to the public and PewDiePie does something different with it by making a video, no such agreement was made because it shouldn't need to be. CS owns its thing and PDP owns his, but they have little to do with each other.
 
weren't people super pissed when Nintendo started to take down vids for simply showing off stuff? I mean PDP is a POS and I know people wish that he gets got for it...but ehhhh. Lets flip it and say some Bigot Game Dev saw some youtuber tweet about equality or whatever and felt offended and thus wanted to demonetize their vids because of that. Piss poor business sense and career suicide imo but on the technical sense its the same thing. A system that is based off of feelings does not work. There needs to be set in stone guidelines of what is allowed and what isn't. Its not like he was yelling slurs on his firewatch video, so him being a racist loser elsewhere isn't even effecting their product. They don't have a strong case here beyond "this dude sucks"...and while you all may wish that was enough...it isn't, mainly for the flipside of things also not being enough.

Personally, I feel like the IP creator has the right to do damn near whatever they please.....I just remember there being quite a bit of pushback when it was done for more other means...you can't have it both ways. Morality unfortunately muddies this quite a bit.
They're only doing it for moral reasons. We'd be upset if a racist took down a video from someone not racist because the YouTube didn't hate black people or whatever.

We can argue on the legal side where Camp Santo likely doesn't have a steady footing, but that's for YouTube to decide since it's a private service.

Being angry in the past over content ID claims and devs trying to censor criticism is completely different from this situation
 

border

Member
If companies and advertisers can do it because they don't want their product associated with racists, sexists, neonazis, etc, why can't a developer do the same?

What's the difference between that and BMV pulling their ads from Breitbart because they don't want to be associated with them?

Advertising is affirmative, paid support of a particular person or entity.

Allowing someone Fair Use is not support. It's simply how things work. You don't get to revoke someone's right to Fair Use based on whether or not you like them as a person.
 
Deny a key to him for the next game, whatever... But abusing the DMCA like this is treading dangerous ground that I really don't like.

Are you suggesting a DMCA take-down would be denied by invoking some freedom of speech slippery slope?

This incident should be enough for developers to establish a precedent with platforms like YouTube and Twitch.

I more than welcome both parties to take it to court. I'd like to get legal precedent on this. They can both afford the legal battle but I think we already have it with the h3h3 debacle.
 

TheYanger

Member
I don't think the game creator should have that power, no, but I also think they do right now and it's a damn good reason to exercise that. I mean, Nintendo forces you to share monetization with them still, right? If that can happen, then 'hey you're a racist piece of shit we don't want you to use our stuff' is just as valid.

I feel like it's pretty easy to see both sides here, nad not in the meme-y sense of 'both sides racism is a side' - racism is vile, PDP is vile, but I think copyright law is important and a video creator is not stealing the game creator's content, they're making valid NEW content that shouldn't be subject to the DMCA, but as long as shitlords like this have a platform with literally no other consequences, they should be hit however they can be. The real issue is Youtube should be the one stepping in here and simply shutting the dude down, it shouldn't HAVE to resort to what I consider a distortion/broadening of the intent of the DMCA. This is an action I dsagree with leading to a result I agree with.
 

Riposte

Member
Deny a key to him for the next game, whatever... But abusing the DMCA like this is treading dangerous ground that I really don't like.



I more than welcome both parties to take it to court. I'd like to get legal precedent on this. They can both afford the legal battle but I think we already have it with the h3h3 debacle.

H3H3 was more about changing something with "critique". Playthroughs, especially non-commentated ones, could be seen as a separate issue.
 

antonz

Member
Because we already acknowledge the power of advertisers to police anything they are involved with, but don't want copyright holders to have the same power over video content on the internet.

We already give that power to companies. Which is why Movie, TV reactions etc. all have very clearly defined rules of 10 minutes of video on average etc.

If anything the Gaming Industry in its typical grey area of relationship with advertising has let people run wild with their videos. A Video Game and its maker should be as well protected
 

dlauv

Member
I don't think this will fly unless they find some loophole.

But I think using hatespeech falls under Youtube's discretion to shut him down should they want.
 

Lister

Banned
Right now at least it doesn't matter what anyone wants.

When it comes ot things like reviews and other fair use, they don't have a leg to stand on legally speaking. However, YouTube can certainly demonetize if they feel like it, or at the behest of Campo Santos.

When ti comes to "let's plays" and other similar, type sof coverage, NOT covered by fair use, they certianly CAN claim copyright strikes if they so desire.
 
We already give that power to companies. Which is why Movie, TV reactions etc. all have very clearly defined rules of 10 minutes of video on average etc.

If anything the Gaming Industry in its typical grey area of relationship with advertising has let people run wild with their videos. A Video Game and its maker should be as well protected

I think it's the opposite, the current status quo with video games is reasonable and the use of other media should been in a similar state. Legally it is all murky because no one wants to bring it to the courts, but that's all the more reason I'm not going to cheer Campo Santo for daring someone to do it.
 

Niosai

Member
While I don't condone racism in any way and don't support PewDiePie at all in this, I do think it sets a dangerous precedent. DMCA wasn't created to be used this way.
 

antonz

Member
I think it's the opposite, the current status quo with video games is reasonable and the use of other media should been in a similar state. Legally it is all murky because no one wants to bring it to the courts, but that's all the more reason I'm not going to cheer Campo Santo for daring someone to do it.

How would it be even remotely reasonable to stream movies on youtube just because you offer a little feedback over the movie?
 
I believe YouTube can do what they want since it's their private service. With the recent controversies of brands not wanting to be tied with non-advertiser friendly videos, it might be bad look for them to say no.
Dont imagine Felix is in great standing with YouTuve after being partially responsible for these recent events.

I guess we'll see how things turn out.
 
We already give that power to companies. Which is why Movie, TV reactions etc. all have very clearly defined rules of 10 minutes of video on average etc.

If anything the Gaming Industry in its typical grey area of relationship with advertising has let people run wild with their videos. A Video Game and its maker should be as well protected
But guys, you're missing something essential here. Movies and TV are not analogous because that footage IS the copyrighted work. IP holders of video games have ownership of the game, but who said anything about videos of them being played?
 
As long as it's a let's play, regardless of the length of said let's play, they should have this right. That said, if gameplay is used for critique (and is of reasonable length and related to the actual critique), then the gameplay should be usable under fair use, to the best of my knowledge, this is unquestionably the case in other media.
Despite their reasoning being largely unrelated to the video in question, the developer doesn't seem to be over reaching.
 

Yukinari

Member
Pewdiepie has the power to change youtube and hes doing it for the worse so its no surprised that advertisers and now game devs want to crack down on it.

He doesnt deserve to make money off any videos at this point with how careless he is in his position of power.
 

wbEMX

Member
If I have content and you use that content to make money while using hate speech then you get fucked.

If you make money with my content and you just trash talk it then I have to stfu.

Exactly this. Also, that thing on the website isn't legally binding. They can revoke the permission on a case-by-case basis anytime. PewDiePie being a fucking asshole is such a case.
 
But guys, you're missing something essential here. Movies and TV are not analogous because that footage IS the copyrighted work. IP holders of video games have ownership of the game, but who said anything about videos of them being played?
There's no legal precedent either way which is why there's debate
You can probably argue about cutscenes and music alone being enough
 
There's no legal precedent either way which is why there's debate
You can probably argue about cutscenes and music alone being enough
Sure, but regardless, I don't think they're at all analogous and the eventual legality and this conversation shouldn't be based off the asumption that they are. There's a reasons devs put out executable files and discs of theit games and not just a video of their game being played.
 

Mik317

Member
They're only doing it for moral reasons. We'd be upset if a racist took down a video from someone not racist because the YouTube didn't hate black people or whatever.

We can argue on the legal side where Camp Santo likely doesn't have a steady footing, but that's for YouTube to decide since it's a private service.

Being angry in the past over content ID claims and devs trying to censor criticism is completely different from this situation

Thats all fine and dandy but you can't allow it or not on a case by case basis..or rather thats not how it will work.. No body will want to have to decide what grounds count as ok or not (no matter how obvious it may seem).

and thats not even talking about situations in which are currently justified but still have massive pushback. As shitty as Nintendo has been about things, they are 100% in the right to do so, and the only reason companies don't is the negative press (Nintendo don't care). How easy would it be to say oh this guy/gal curses a bit too much on their social media....so let me take down their vids with my games....I am sure there would be a lot of uproar there too.

The moment you make this about what is morally correct, you start opening up a can of worms.

again I think PDP should see some repercussions for his bullshit and by no means is justifying his garbage but this is not it. People should not let their hatred for this clown get out of control to the part where it effects others not even involved
 

Nanashrew

Banned
There's no legal precedent either way which is why there's debate
You can probably argue about cutscenes and music alone being enough

Yep. Hence why when you stream from a PS4 or Xbox One, some content can be blocked, like the cutscenes.

Xenoverse 2 blocking the screenshot function on Switch during cutscenes too.
 

JABEE

Member
The crux of it lies with the "transformation" of content. When does it cease being CampoSanto's content and become PDP's due to his commentary and gameplay?

The DMCA isn't cut out to deal with games and let's plays. It's hardly cut out for any modern content. Lord knows Washington isn't well equipped enough to put forth some new legislation.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.




Depends on how that content ended up on Breitbart. Was it a direct site buy? A network buy? Through a programmatic platform? Without knowing the details, I can't really say.
They say one day they want to cover a BMW car they borrow from someone else or purchase without manufacturer cooperation.
 

sonicmj1

Member
But guys, you're missing something essential here. Movies and TV are not analogous because that footage IS the copyrighted work. IP holders of video games have ownership of the game, but who said anything about videos of them being played?

That's absolutely wrong. If you wrote a play, I couldn't use the script from the play to perform it without your permission. If you made a movie, I couldn't copy the ideas from it wholesale and make my own movie without your permission. If you wrote a song, I couldn't rearrange it, or even take small portions from it, and sell it without your permission.

Intellectual property encompasses more than the finished work. It also includes the ideas and elements that constitute that work.
 

Nanashrew

Banned
All I can say is welcome to showbusiness. Keep doing horrible things that make the people you work for uncomfortable, angry or whatever, get ready for consequences.
 

JABEE

Member
We already give that power to companies. Which is why Movie, TV reactions etc. all have very clearly defined rules of 10 minutes of video on average etc.

If anything the Gaming Industry in its typical grey area of relationship with advertising has let people run wild with their videos. A Video Game and its maker should be as well protected
I would say video games are different though. Not playing a game and playing a game are not perfect substitutes as they are in passive media.

Maybe games with little player input and a direct path could claim differently.
 
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