Jimquisition: Copyright War

[Signa]

This is why we need games to be defined as art.

Can you define art?

Yes. Kinda. As nebulous as the definition is, art is always created from the need to express, create a product, or masturbate. Anything you already define as art will fall into any combination of those categories.

OK, So how does that make video games like paint, which is a consumable material? You argued that video games should be defined as art, so that they would be more like paint. But few people define paint as art, so I'm not sure how that argument makes sense. Defining games as art would make them much less like a raw material, and more like, well, art.

Oh video games and information based products are absolutely consumable. That's why we are called consumers. The only difference between paint and footage for LPs is that the games footage has taken form into something more defined than just buckets of color. Still, if someone wanted to go through a ton of magazines and cut pictures from them to make a collage of something different and greater, I'd defend that artist if the magazine companies tried suing them for copyright infringement.

As for the rest of your post, I have a few nitpicks, but I agree enough in spirit that I'm not going to turn this into an needless argument. I'm at work right now anyway, so these posts are being made on stolen time.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Oh video games and information based products are absolutely consumable.

No, they aren't. They are completely re-usable. A "consumable" product is something like toilet paper or oil. There is none of it left after you have consumed it.

That's why we are called consumers.

You may call yourself a "consumer" but I do not. I'm a person.

The only difference between paint and footage for LPs is that the games footage has taken form into something more defined than just buckets of colour.

No, that's not the only difference. There are thousands more differences.

As for the rest of your post, I have a few nitpicks, but I agree enough in spirit that I'm not going to turn this into an needless argument. I'm at work right now anyway, so these posts are being made on stolen time.

But you can't steal time! Time steals YOU.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Which is exactly what I was saying. You can't base it just on profit, because there are plenty of profitable uses which are also valid parody and satire.

Yes but parody sets itself apart because its new yet loosely based something else. It being losely based makes it its own IP 8 times out of ten.

Which works are you referring to specifically? It seems a little unfair to lump everything together. Sure, for every 1,000 useless and derivative "Let's Plays" there might only be one that's original and creative - but why should that one original piece of art suffer because of the other 1,000 morons?

To many to name but my train of thought is it dose not matter if you are trying to make a profit then get the license or do not do it for profit.

So, money is the only important thing? What about things like defamation or moral rights? Not everybody is all about the money. There can be infringing uses that are emotionally or personally harmful that are not financially harmful.

You can do all that without the licensed material and if fair use was not vague and easily overruled you'd be able to do it better than today's hit or miss legal BS. I'd like clear rules over clip time and quality if short and low on quality then there can never be harm done. If short or low quality it should be able to pass fair use rules.

A very current example of this might be something like The Beastie Boys vs. Goldieblox, which was not about financial damage to The Beastie Boys (they hardly need more money at this point), but rather the wishes of Adam Yauch for the band's work not to be used in advertising, because it cheapens their legacy.

Its gaining revenue thus needs a license from the IP owner, if you can post something that dose not require money from anyone else but you AND the site allows it then there is no harm, people defame art all the time via mix tapes, remade music videos if an artist is that worried about such things then they are better off not being an artist. Art is meant to be consumed and regurgitated not made in stone and untouchable.

Profiting has its place as dose free consumption and use the trick is the balance and that comes down to revenue generation its the only thing limited in scope that dose not write off those unable to pay. Having a system based on distribution is just illogical IMO.


Mind you non profits profit so I am highly skeptical of any big organization being truly revenue neutral enough to allow free distribution so it will be limtied even youtube and the like profit.

It also makes it easier to go after piracy as focusing on profit makes its easier to make trade deals with other countries.

There is a method to my maddness and I am not getting rid of fair use but rather trying to limit abuse from the top down its the ebst system I can come up with even if alas I am an idiot.

Another example might be somebody posting another person's artwork online with the simple intent to bully or harass the artists. Not that y this I don't mean actual parody or satire, but straight-up using someone's work, and then calling them names because of it. No financial harm, but possible life-long emotional scarring. Which is worth more - money, or people's dignity?

If its within community guidelines then its okay but how many communities allow such things? And not to mention there are such things as defamation lawsuits so at the end of the day you have many channels to go through before you even need to use copy right claims its just such claims are easier to use.

 

[Joos]

It's a shame the escapist don't have a "like"-button, 'cus I'm liking the shit out if this. Well said, Jimmy.

 

[RaikuFA]

But LPs? Trailer Footage? Reviews? The only way I can conceive of that hurting a company is if a product sucks and the footage proves it. But then, they've got bigger problems don't they?

Already happened. Look up Totalbisuit and Day One Garry's Incident.

Also, what vid was taken down of Jim's?

 

[geier]

Well Jim, we here in Germany have no law similar to the US Fair use principle. Let's play videos or reviews from German youtube users are pulled from the internet for years.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

I feel like this happens because the publishers are bored and feel like getting attention every now and then.

I think it's more a case of their Legal departments needing to justify their existence every now and then. I mean, think about it: a game is being well-received, its publisher isn't seeing a lot of reasons to earn flak for its actions, these poor old widdle lawyers need to make money.

So, um, off to YouTube to land spurious copyright claims, I guess, because then you can look up to Daddy McPublisher and go "Lookit, Dada! I stopped the bad guys for you! I love you!"

Either that or it's the guy who's at the head of Legal who's misinterpreting the purpose of LPs and game reviews - or some Gray Eminence in the board of directors who feels threatened when he has no reason to.

I always figured it was a generational problem. Once the current thirtysomethings turn up as CEOs of their own publishing instances, things just might change.

Or they might not, since they'll have tasted of wealth and affluence and will feel lost sales cutting deeply into their Tahiti vacation funds.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

If you own a car, you are not obliged to share bits of it with others, not even if they are unintrusive and not costing you any harm so it is "Fair Use".

OK, so you are not obligated to share your property with others, even if doing so doesn't cause any harm. Got it.

Property is a moral right by default, and it's limitations need special, extra-imortant justifications, such as even bigger public benefits.

So, property is a moral right, and to restrict the rights of the property-owner requires seriously important justifications. OK.

They entirely ignore that free communication is also a moral good by default, as if it would all be a form of asking for "free stuff" out of other people's property, rather than a freedom which their control blocks by it's presence.

Uh, what? I'm not seeing what this has to do with "free communication" or where "free communication" is defined as a legal or moral right.

This is the same reason why copyright has been extended to artist's life + 70 years. They shifted the argument from "Is there a need to control this?" to "Is there a justification NOT TO control this?", and kept rationalizing all expansion with that attitude, as if a writer's grandchildren no longer controlling a literary classic's fate would be a tragic case of them "losing property", rather than them losing a market monopoly (that was granted to incentivize writing).

So, the right to control one's property is an inalienable right, except for when it comes to intellectual property, in which case, anybody is free to use it any way possible?

You aren't being very coherent here.

You start out by saying that the property owner when it comes to a car has absolute authority over what is done with their property. But then you go on to say that the owner of a creative property should essentially have no say over what is done with their property, and it should be open to everybody. This is logically inconsistent.

 

[Entitled]

Publishers use the same logic to argue why every sound bite, every character design, every paragraph, and every plot that they come up with, needs to be absolutely controlled by them by default, unless there is a special, extra-imortant justification such as the public's need for basic communication through Fair Use or Public Domain.

Using flawed logic to excuse flawed logic is still flawed logic.

I'm not sure I understand you, but I have the feeling that you are reading my posts out of their context.

I have presented the publishers' perspective, and how they are justifying copyright, but in the famework that their justifications are WRONG.

How they are using the public's perception of property as an "inalienable human right", to argue that copyright should work similarly.

For example:

If you own a car you are allowed to share it with others without getting special permissions from car manufacturer.

They don't acknowledge that train of thought, because in their presentation, it is not the video that is someone's property, like "the car" from the analogy, but the copyrighted game itself, and recording and copying even a piece of it is "taking that piece away" from it's "owner", so the video as a whole is an act of theft.

Property is a moral right by default, and it's limitations need special, extra-imortant justifications, such as even bigger public benefits.

no. Property is a legal right.

We are talking about the moral justifications that people use for legal rights here. Sure, property is protected by laws, but the reason that those laws exist, is that securing property in it's owner's hands is considered morally virtous.

Theft isn't just wrong because it is illegal, but it is desired to be illegal because even if it wouldn't be, theft would be called a "Malum in se", an axiomatic wrong, something that is wrong by it's very nature.

Publishers want to jump on the bandwagon of association by presenting copyright regulation as an intellectual "property", and it's infringement as "theft".

They look at a video, and ask "It is mine. What could justify giving it away to the public?" Instead of "This is the public's communication. How can I justify asking for a necessary copyright control over it?"

More like "It is their video. How can i control it?"

The problem with treating a game as property, is that unlike a single object owned by a single person, this "IP" has many people's interests in it, from the creators and the publishers, to the players and the LP video producers, who all feel entitled to use and copy and control it in certain ways.

Treating a video resulting from the game's recording as someone's "property", is just as flawed logic as treating the game itself as property, and has the same problems.

Information is not property, it's communication.

 

[SecondPrize]

Going after videos containing B-roll or any reviews is as bad as uploading a playthrough of a game and monetizing without permission. Actual cases of copyright infringement should be stopped, and videos with fair use rights shouldn't be flagged ever.

 

[Roxas1359]

snip

I can help with answering some of the Game Anyone questions.
The first one about how everything is marked as a Walkthrough, you'll be able to tell if it has commentary or not if it has a little microphone icon on the playlist. It's in the column labeled "Traits".
Here's what it looks like:

Also, you can tell if a Walkthrough is in HD or not as it will have a little HD icon in the "Traits" section.
Here's what that one looks like:

Now you noticed how you picked a guide from 2009, well Game Anyone hosts some YouTube LP/Walkthrough videos if the content creator decides to have them hosted there. As for the quality, in 2009 HD capture cards weren't so great and YouTube's constant changes in quality messed with some things.
Now there are also walkthroughs that are exclusive to the site, those ones are Blue when you are on this list of playlists.

Spoiler: Here's an Example, the Blue ones are exclusives, the grey ones are from YouTube

As you can see on the list, there is the HD symbol meaning those Walkthroughs are in HD, and there is a microphone on some of them, meaning those ones have commentary. The stars next to my playlist (Roxas1359) is something new that was recently implemented. Basically the stars represent the number of achievements/trophies that I unlocked in the game and were caught on the capture.
The popularity meter is also something new, and from what Maceman told me, it's basically just a rating on how many people watch that walkthrough as apposed to other ones. Before we had a Star System for rating the Walkthroughs overall, but the system was being abused so Maceman changed it to the Popularity meter. Although videos themselves can still be rated with Stars from 1 to 5 and then the average is taken into account.

 

[Roxas1359]

Going after videos containing B-roll or any reviews is as bad as uploading a playthrough of a game and monetizing without permission. Actual cases of copyright infringement should be stopped, and videos with fair use rights shouldn't be flagged ever.

Problem is that Fair Use is severely outdated and needs to be changed or update to apply to modern day media. Plus YouTube has a broken automated system that has it so that anyone can flag a video as infringing copyright without needing to provide proof that the flagger owns the copyright itself. Heck it's happening right now as many people are getting flagged by different trolls.

 

[Entitled]

They entirely ignore that free communication is also a moral good by default, as if it would all be a form of asking for "free stuff" out of other people's property, rather than a freedom which their control blocks by it's presence.

Uh, what? I'm not seeing what this has to do with "free communication" or where "free communication" is defined as a legal or moral right.

You might have also heard about it as "freedom of speech", "freedom of expression", or based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; "the right to seek, recieve and impart information".

It's rather simple. If you have copyright over a piece of information, it means that I'm not allowed to freely receive or impart that information. For example I'm not allowed to print out certain books, I'm not allowed to publically sing certain songs, or I'm not allowed to distribute videos of me playing certain games.

Right, some or more of these limitations on my free speech might actually be justified by the publishers' necessity to publish, I'm not contesting that. But the way the copyright industry works right now, this isn't even considered right now, they are not seeking justifications, just assuming that copyright is a form of property therefore it needs as much ontrol by an owner as they can get away with.

So, the right to control one's property is an inalienable right, except for when it comes to intellectual property, in which case, anybody is free to use it any way possible?

You aren't being very coherent here.

You start out by saying that the property owner when it comes to a car has absolute authority over what is done with their property. But then you go on to say that the owner of a creative property should essentially have no say over what is done with their property, and it should be open to everybody. This is logically inconsistent.

Hunting rights should be limited to those with proper licences, except for job hunting, which should be allowed without a hunting license.

Assassinations should be illegal, except for character assassinations.

Property rights deserve as much protection as possible, except for intellectual property rights.

I'm not really seeing your confusion at my stance, unless it is sarcastic, given that you have already quoted and replied to my other post in which I declared that copyright shouldn't be called intellectual property:

"Intellectual property" is an umbrella term, and copyright is just one form of it. The term also covers things like patents and trademarks. It is a useful term, because it reduces the misuse of words like "copyright" being used to refer to the other forms of intellectual property.

But maybe you could explain why this term should not EVER (in all-caps) be used?

Intellectual property is a misleading analogy. A figure of speech, that makes sense in a very narrow context, and breaks down in all others.

Controlling monopolistic regulations over other people's information sharing (a.k.a. communication, self-expression, knowledge), is not at all similar to ownership of object.

That phrase leads to the unneccessary growth of copyright regulation, under the assumption that if information (such as a game) is "owned" by someone, then this ownership must be as long-term, as wide, and as inherently desirable, as with objects.

Copyright exists as basically a government subsidy, to protect the basic sustainability of artistic professions. But it comes at a price that every act of copyright limits the public's free speech.

The illusion that all ideas should be "owned" unless justified by vital needs for Fair Use, is a complete reversal of all speech being free by default, unless necessarily limited by a regulation (with a particular pragmatic purpose).

This leads to cases like this, with publishers attacking derivative works without any clearly defined need to do so, solely out of a sense of desire for controlling "their property".

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

Guys, can we PLEASE get Jim into the oval office or something? Already a proven leader with millions of loyal viewers ready to vote him in, what's the holdup?

I would imagine that Jim not being born in the United States would be a significant holdup.

wait for Schwarzenegger to find a way,then Jim can follow

 

[Bad Jim]

Problem is that Fair Use is severely outdated and needs to be changed or update to apply to modern day media.

It's not really the law on Fair Use that's the problem. The problem is that it is never tested in court. It it was, a judge might decide that Let's Plays could be sufficiently transformative to be protected by fair use. Actual court cases have shown judges to be quite reasonable a lot of the time.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

They entirely ignore that free communication is also a moral good by default, as if it would all be a form of asking for "free stuff" out of other people's property, rather than a freedom which their control blocks by it's presence.

Uh, what? I'm not seeing what this has to do with "free communication" or where "free communication" is defined as a legal or moral right.

You might have also heard about it as "freedom of speech", "freedom of expression", or based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; "the right to seek, recieve and impart information".

Which essentially has nothing to do with communication or copyright. "Communication" is not the same thing as "speech" or "expression."

Intellectual property is a misleading analogy. A figure of speech, that makes sense in a very narrow context, and breaks down in all others.

Controlling monopolistic regulations over other people's information sharing (a.k.a. communication, self-expression, knowledge), is not at all similar to ownership of object.

That phrase leads to the unneccessary growth of copyright regulation, under the assumption that if information (such as a game) is "owned" by someone, then this ownership must be as long-term, as wide, and as inherently desirable, as with objects.

Let's break this down. How is the "ownership of objects" more important or desirable than the ownership of creative or intellectual output?

That seems rather backwards to me. What gives you the right to "own" physical objects? These objects are not created with a specific owner in mind - they are typically atoms and molecules that have been created by natural processes. Any "ownership" of these objects typically comes about due to violence or other dubious actions.

For example: the ownership of land and mineral resources is largely determined by who wins wars. Your ancestors defeated some other tribe, and claimed ownership of the land that they lived on. What makes this "ownership" so sacrosanct, regardless of the lives lost in the process? Physical ownership often result in many other atrocities such as pollution, slave labor, cultural appropriation,exploitation, etc.

Now, let's contrast this with "intellectual property" - such as writing a novel based on your life experience. That story is uniquely tied to yourself. It's hard to imagine a more intimate and real form of property than something created by your own brain. Anybody can dig rocks out of the ground. That's why things like oil and gold are called "commodities." But nobody else has your brain or your experiences.

To me, this makes "intellectual property" a much more valid form of ownership and property than physical objects.

For most people, their ownership of objects is a quirk of happenstance - you were lucky enough to be born into a society which defeated some other society, and therefore had the means to take possession of land. People "inherit" this physical wealth and pass it on to their offspring. Now, why exactly is this more valid than people owning or passing on the things that they have created with their brains, rather than digging up from the ground, or killing people over?

The illusion that all ideas should be "owned" unless justified by vital needs for Fair Use, is a complete reversal of all speech being free by default, unless necessarily limited by a regulation (with a particular pragmatic purpose).

You can't own ideas, even under current intellectual property laws. You can only own the expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves.

This leads to cases like this, with publishers attacking derivative works without any clearly defined need to do so, solely out of a sense of desire for controlling "their property".

And of course, that never happens with physical property at all. It's not like there are any land and property disputes that date back hundreds or thousands of years (sarcasm).

Seriously, these intellectual property games are very small potatoes compared to the ongoing fights over physical property, which cost hundreds of actual human lives per day. I'd rather have people who care about intellectual property over those barbarians any day of the week.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

So...why is it that YouTube channels that get special permission to post footage of games are consider 'suspicious' and 'questionable' (The implication being they've sold out to some degree) but game critics who get free games and game consoles are completely legit and 100% above being bought off so easily?

I ask you, what is the difference between a channel that agrees to give a game a positive review in exchange for video permission and a critic who agrees to give a game a positive review in exchange for free games/consoles?

I'm not saying Jim is like that, far from it. It just seems like an odd argument to make given that about a month ago he and I talked on these forums about the objectivity of game critics who got advanced copies of the PS4.

 

[AdmiralMatt]

When a company puts their trailers on Facebook or other social media, do they have to sign the same "release of all copyright claims" agreement that we do?

 

[Hellfireboy]

Nintendo, Sega, and Capcom aren't run by "dusty old white men." They're run by dusty old Asian men. Satoru Iwata, Hajime Satomi, and Kenzo Tsujimoto respectively. They just happen to be using the asinine state of American copyright law to dick over American their consumers. I the US the entertainment industry has an extraordinarily incestuous relationship with the government so that there are five RIAA lawers in the DoJ and one of them is the Solicitor General. In addition the head of the MPAA is former Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd who was the chairman of the Senate Banking committee prior to that. Considering the inroads that they have made to get their place at the table it is little wonder that foreign company would take advantage of the playing field that they created.

 

[Alpha Maeko]

I don't care if this whole thing was an accident or on purpose or whatever.

I still agree with Jim that they've gone too far. Even having that sort of thing made possible means it's ridiculously easy for people who've done nothing wrong to get screwed by the automated system.

Guilty until proven innocent doesn't sit well with me.