BILL S.978 TO SEND LET'S PLAYERS AND KARAOKE SINGERS TO PRISON

[Baneat]

what about game where they encourage you to post vidoes of gameplay like for instance TF2

They've openly granted you permission to post the footage.

 

[GiantRaven]

Ban Let's Plays? But some Let's Plays are awesome. This sounds wank.

 

[Keava]

Could have been reasonable, if you could show up to 20% of the content.

That way you can still have replays of game tournaments, because there's infinite possibilities and for music and video you can still demonstrate why something is good or bad.

What about tournament live streams? Like SC2 tournaments or any other eSports event? 20% of a match would not really bring you many viewers, it would very quickly kill the scene. Further more, since it affects the entirety of copyrighted material, you can't even put some background music unless you hold the rights to it or got permission from the company.

The costs of producing any video as such would raise dramatically which in turn would result in no one bothering to do so.

The whole bill is flawed from ground, and there is now way it would in any shape or form reduce "piracy" or increase the companies profits. No one will buy a music CD just because they won't hear it on commentary video on YouTube, even more so, they might never hear about given track as result of it not being part of said video.

The worst part however is that it will be considered felony. It doesn't really give any new rights to copyright holders, it gives rights to governments to pursue you even if the company holding the copyrights won't press charges. That's just plain idiocy.

 

[SinisterGehe]

That is not going to happen, it would kill companies like youtube and other small magazines and media sites. Not going to happen.
But if it would happen, I happy that I am a Finn - it wouldn't affect me in a anyway, maybe with lack of content to watch but I will be safe.

 

[veloper]

Could have been reasonable, if you could show up to 20% of the content.

That way you can still have replays of game tournaments, because there's infinite possibilities and for music and video you can still demonstrate why something is good or bad.

What about tournament live streams? Like SC2 tournaments or any other eSports event? 20% of a match would not really bring you many viewers, it would very quickly kill the scene. Further more, since it affects the entirety of copyrighted material, you can't even put some background music unless you hold the rights to it or got permission from the company.

The costs of producing any video as such would raise dramatically which in turn would result in no one bothering to do so.

The whole bill is flawed from ground, and there is now way it would in any shape or form reduce "piracy" or increase the companies profits. No one will buy a music CD just because they won't hear it on commentary video on YouTube, even more so, they might never hear about given track as result of it not being part of said video.

The worst part however is that it will be considered felony. It doesn't really give any new rights to copyright holders, it gives rights to governments to pursue you even if the company holding the copyrights won't press charges. That's just plain idiocy.

100% of a tournament is still less than 20% of the game, because there's infinite ways to win or or lose, so that wouldn't be a problem.

 

[PatrickXD]

The Bill gives the owners of the game the right to press charges against those who post videos of the game online. However, for reasons you have clearly stated yourself, they won't press charges because it helps them as free advertising. So you have nothing to worry about.

 

[kebab4you]

The Bill gives the owners of the game the right to press charges against those who post videos of the game online. However, for reasons you have clearly stated yourself, they won't press charges because it helps them as free advertising. So you have nothing to worry about.

They can already do that so how is that a valid argument for this law?

 

[Scorpianhead]

This sucks and i have only just started let's playing.

 

[Starke]

100% of a tournament is still less than 20% of the game, because there's infinite ways to win or or lose, so that wouldn't be a problem.

More likely, in cases like that it would be assessed by the amount of assets shown. Almost every unit, every tile set, every background music. The only thing you wouldn't be seeing is the plot and prerendered video. Also, remember, felonies are prosecuted by the state, not the rights holders, so it doesn't matter if the rights holders actually wanted this online, if they didn't explicitly provide authorization before hand, they can't stop the process after it gets started.

 

[Cheesus333]

There should be something in place that enforces these people to know what the fuck they're actually dealing with before they try to ban or suppress it. Because I don't think they really understand what Let's Play-ing, walkthroughs, karaoke etc. actually is.

Not that it's gonna happen anyway... it's just too ridiculous.

 

[Internet Kraken]

I just realised that miracle of sound and moviebob will get hit hard by this bill

Man, moveibob getting smoked would almost make it worth it.

Well okay not really. Still, I don't see this bill getting anywhere. Even if they did approve of it, enforcing it would be a nightmare. Monitoring the internet is quite the task, and when some many things violate the bill how the hell could they possibly enforce it properly? It will fall apart, one war or another. I seriously doubt SWAT teams are going bust bust into my house and fry my hard drive becuase I made an LP.

This sucks and i have only just started let's playing.

Just ignore it. It's not going to get anywhere, and even if it did do you really think they are going to have the time to strike down some random guy making LP videos?

 

[veloper]

100% of a tournament is still less than 20% of the game, because there's infinite ways to win or or lose, so that wouldn't be a problem.

More likely, in cases like that it would be assessed by the amount of assets shown. Almost every unit, every tile set, every background music. The only thing you wouldn't be seeing is the plot and prerendered video. Also, remember, felonies are prosecuted by the state, not the rights holders, so it doesn't matter if the rights holders actually wanted this online, if they didn't explicitly provide authorization before hand, they can't stop the process after it gets started.

Yes, you're probably right. Though no cop would ever go through the effort to count all the textures and models in a game and then examine all the plays on youtube, you could hypothetically have a prosecutor single out just one guy as a test case.
Game completion may even be impossible to quantify, but a legal limbo is still not desireable.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

I just realised that miracle of sound and moviebob will get hit hard by this bill

Also Unskippable.

Movie and games reviewers would have to get right approval. Which means that games companies could turn round and say 'Only if you give us a positive review.'

This bill is horrible.

I kind of agree with not streaming complete movies and tv shows as that is pretty dodgy they need to amend it to not include clips of movies and perhaps exclude video games altogether.

It would hit E3 hard also since most of what the developer does is show footage of his game and talk the gamer through it.

It's ridiculous.

It would essentially destroy Youtube.

The only positive: No more rogue pvp videos from WOW. lol

 

[Starke]

Thats stupid, it wont heppen.

After reading the actual text of this, I seriously doubt this will hit the floor. If it does it'll get killed and eaten the first time it shows up in an appeals court.

This gets even more deranged in that it could potentially be used to charge someone with a felony for driving around with his car windows open blaring music from his iPod.

 

[Starke]

100% of a tournament is still less than 20% of the game, because there's infinite ways to win or or lose, so that wouldn't be a problem.

More likely, in cases like that it would be assessed by the amount of assets shown. Almost every unit, every tile set, every background music. The only thing you wouldn't be seeing is the plot and prerendered video. Also, remember, felonies are prosecuted by the state, not the rights holders, so it doesn't matter if the rights holders actually wanted this online, if they didn't explicitly provide authorization before hand, they can't stop the process after it gets started.

Yes, you're probably right. Though no cop would ever go through the effort to count all the textures and models in a game and then examine all the plays on youtube, you could hypothetically have a prosecutor single out just one guy as a test case.
Game completion may even be impossible to quantify, but a legal limbo is still not desireable.

I alluded to this in my last post, but generally speaking laws don't tend to end up in legal limbo. The first time someone is convicted for violating this it would get appealed, and the law would almost certainly get tossed once hit hit an appeals court.

That's assuming it ever was passed into law. I seriously doubt this thing will ever escape from committee.

 

[Keava]

100% of a tournament is still less than 20% of the game, because there's infinite ways to win or or lose, so that wouldn't be a problem.

Who would you define 100% of content however? How would you even define content of multiplayer part of the game? What about games that have user created content? Like say custom maps? And to start with, why 20% not 25% or 30% or 15%?

The Bill gives the owners of the game the right to press charges against those who post videos of the game online. However, for reasons you have clearly stated yourself, they won't press charges because it helps them as free advertising. So you have nothing to worry about.

No. The bill gives government, which means police forces, to arrest you even if the game owner doesn't press charges, since uploading copyrighted material will be considered a felony which makes it high seriousness crime - not a misdemeanor. This means that uploading a Let's Play video to YouTube makes you a criminal, and apparently you are pretty much as dangerous to society as say rapist or kidnapper.

 

[Vohn_exel]

As a karaoke singer, this sucks, but I doubt it'd pass. It's probably someone that works for Youtube, lol.

 

[Starke]

The Bill gives the owners of the game the right to press charges against those who post videos of the game online. However, for reasons you have clearly stated yourself, they won't press charges because it helps them as free advertising. So you have nothing to worry about.

No. The bill gives government, which means police forces, to arrest you even if the game owner doesn't press charges, since uploading copyrighted material will be considered a felony which makes it high seriousness crime - not a misdemeanor. This means that uploading a Let's Play video to YouTube makes you a criminal, and apparently you are pretty much as dangerous to society as say rapist or kidnapper.

Actually fraud is a better analogy, given the sentencing recommendation, but still, the idea stands.

And Keava is completely right, Patrick, this doesn't empower copyright holders at all, it empowers federal agencies, primarily the FBI, to investigate you for copyright infringement.

What's really scary is, there's basically two circumstances where that's likely to occur, either you're involved in some kind of large piracy operation, like running a site that broadcasts copyrighted content, or you pissed of the cops, didn't do anything intentionally illegal, and fell within the prevue of this law, for instance playing a song on your iPod through your car stereo with the windows down (and yes, this does appear to fall under the purview of the bill).