91 replies to this topic

[Joelmacool]

i like pewdiepie (not really) but i dont care about shit so i say cool.

Edited by joelmacool12, 02 February 2015 - 03:09 PM.

[Mani Kanina]

If you'd like an case study in how something can make a great deal of people a great deal of money, including the makers of the game, then you should look deeper into this. I won't go into details explaining the results from the project, since I trust everyone here have the smarts to draw logical conclusions.

[Beefster]

For example, Zelda music.  Nintendo hired whatever composer to compose the music for the game.  Only that game has the legal right to make use of the music.  Unless another company gets distribution or commercial rights, like Apple for iTunes for example, it is illegal to put that music in any other product.  In this case, these let's play videos.  The music is quite plainly playing in the background while whoever talks over it.  Just because they're talking doesn't mean it isn't there.  This is why things like Content ID matches and Viacom Takedowns happen.  

I really hate to bring it to this, but aren't you a bit hypocritical to bring this up? You're posting on a Zelda fangame forum and you have an avatar that is a reference to Five Nights at Freddy's. You own neither IP and I seriously doubt you have paid royalties (although you MAY have asked for permission...)

 

Every quest made on this site is technically treading on legal thin ice and this entire forum could be shut down right now if Nintendo wanted it to. But if they did, they would lose a massive heap of their fanbase. It's tolerated use. And it benefits them more than it costs them.

 

What makes DeviantArt okay? VGMusic? OCRemix?

 

What about Twitch? Speed Demos Archive? AGDQ and SGDQ?

 

All of these thrive on derivative works. And, especially with that last one, I would shudder to see any of those sites/events be shut down. Especially with AGDQ being a charity event.

 

As for a more... Civil... response, this is what I personally would like to see for copyright reform:

• 5 years of free copyright coverage. No restrictions. No bureaucracy. If you can prove you were the first one to do something, you have full ownership of the IP and can do with it what you please. Including selling it to a company. Or giving it to your own.
  • Naturally, fair use still applies, probably more liberally, specifically covering gameplay videos, homages, and criticism (it actually already covers satire and criticism IIRC, which is a possible justification for speed runs and glitch videos) And above all, give some better protection toward derivative works such as fangames and fanfiction. Hacks are, naturally, a little more questionable, so I would be okay not extending those same protections to hacks.
• Up to 3 5-year renewals for digital content. The first renewal should be fairly straightforward: pay a fee, fill out some papers, and get the copyright renewed. The second and third renewals need to be more stringent, requiring justification for why you need to extend your copyright- e.g. you are still able to sell the work.
• Up to 3 10-year renewals for print content. Physical books tend to stay in publication much longer and therefore benefit from longer-lasting copyright without hindering creativity or inconveniencing customers. This part might not be compatible with eBooks and may have to be removed altogether.
• When copyright expires, the content is released into semi-public domain for the life of its creator: Consumers of the content may not sell new copies (they can resell existing copies, though... which would be kinda pointless because you would be able to distribute free copies without penalty), but for all other purposes, the creator can no longer require royalties to be paid (though he may still respectfully ask for them- but cannot enforce royalties to be paid). No permission of any kind is required to copy, resell, or make derivative works, provided that credit is given to the creator of the original work.
• When the creator dies, any remainder of the copyright stays in full effect until it expires, after which (usually immediately) the work is released into the public domain. This would probably require some refinement so that creators can't pass on their ownership in their will and thereby extend their rights indefinitely, but with it being in the semi-public domain, that may not actually be a problem.

And possible, related, but somewhat extreme ideas.

• All forms of DRM are illegal.
• Patents cannot be applied to software. I think you should be just fine with trade secrets. Yeah, there's decompilers, but software is so complex these days that it would never do you any good.
  • To compensate, source code would be given protection as "trade secrets," as code is constantly changing and is never seen by consumers of the final product (well, unless it's written in a scripting language or something). This should give sufficient protection to software business.

20 years is plenty long to make a living off a game or movie. After that, it has a greater benefit to the overall creative economy for it to be released into a more liberal state. By that time, you could easily make 5-10 more works, so there really is no reason for copyright to last life + 70 years (and rising, thanks to Disney).

[Koh]

I really hate to bring it to this, but aren't you a bit hypocritical to bring this up? You're posting on a Zelda fangame forum and you have an avatar that is a reference to Five Nights at Freddy's. You own neither IP and I seriously doubt you have paid royalties (although you MAY have asked for permission...)

Eww no, my avatar has absolutely nothing to do with that overhyped game series XD.  He's a character in my own game, lol.

 

Zelda Classic could be targeted if they wanted, but only in the regard to the resources.  If you change out the graphics, music and sounds to something non-Zelda, everything would be fine, since all of the code used for the engine was written by the devs, and not just taken from the actual Zelda 1 cartriges.  I believe we talked about this one before.

 

Derivative works and such fall under fair use, if and only if certain conditions are met, which can vary.  But one of those conditions is you can't legally sell whatever that work is without the proper license/rights to do so.

 

As for your copyright law proposals, some of them I like, and some of them sound like they'd cause problems because of the short time frame, like the lifespan of a copyright.

Edited by Koh, 02 February 2015 - 11:38 PM.

[kurt91]

Well, I can see that most of the argument over let's plays themselves seems to have simmered down a bit. Even so, I'd like to say one thing.

 

A while back, VintageBeef was doing a Let's Play of Kingdom Hearts. I already own that game, and have played the hell out of it. I've got something like five full save files at 100% on various difficulty settings, a completed save file where I did a low-level run, save files for each of my favorite bosses,etc. I watched his LP, and actually subscribed to his channel, so I could continue watching it as new episodes came out. No, I didn't do so because of the game contents itself. If that was the case, I'd just go play the game yet again. No, I watched it because the guy had never played a Kingdom Hearts game before and was going into my absolute favorite series completely blind. I wanted to see his fresh view and enjoyment of a game that I loved already.

 

I watched MegaGWolf do a Let's Play of Metal Gear Rising. I've never played that game before, and it looked interesting. He played though it, and the entire time, I was amazed at what I was seeing. As a result, I bought the game for myself and enjoyed it. I wouldn't have done so unless I had seen the game beforehand. You can't really get that good of a feel of a game from just the trailer, because those are intended to show only the highlights of the game. A Let's Play let's you see the high points and the flaws of the game in full.

 

I like watching Super Gaming Bros. and BrainScratchComms, a lot of the time even when they're playing a game that I don't like, or have no intention of buying anyways. Obviously, it's not because of the game itself, but because of the commentary and the people behind it. I owned Super Mario Land 2 when I was a kid, and it was one of my least-favorite Mario games of all time. I still laughed my arse off when they got to Mario Zone and went into disbelief over Mario owning a giant mech in preparation for the inevitable Gundam crossover.

 

I can't stand Game Grumps at all. Right now, they're playing Yoshi's Story, a game that I loved from my childhood. I'm still not watching it because I dislike the way that they do commentary. It's so loud and obnoxious, and they seem to spend more time trying to make jokes than actually talk about and enjoy what they're playing.

 

For me personally, it's more about the person playing the game than the game itself. I can't think of a single time when I decided "You know what? I was interested in that game, but I don't think I'm going to play it anymore. Watching it was good enough for me." Honestly, if I was going to "pirate" a game, I'd actually pirate it as in downloading the actual game and pulling up whatever emulator is needed to play it. I wouldn't attempt some half-baked attempt like watching videos until I had no interest in the game itself anymore.

 

I don't have anything to say over whether Nintendo's in the right or the wrong on what they're doing. I don't know if a Let's Play falls enough under Fair Use that royalties shouldn't apply. I know that reviews should, and that videos like Nostalgia Critic's or MrEnter's (I'm not going into detail on that one, it just happened to be the first one that came to mind. Please don't jump on that one.) should be allowed to be online without penalty or royalties. That is Fair Use as it was intended to be used.

 

Also, if it helps any, I got a copyright strike a while back over a Let's Play video, because I borrowed a couple seconds of anime footage when I was discussing the series, just to show that there was a television show that went with the game that I was playing. I claimed Fair Use on the dispute form, and YouTube put my video back online and removed the strike.

[Beefster]

As for your copyright law proposals, some of them I like, and some of them sound like they'd cause problems because of the short time frame, like the lifespan of a copyright.

My reasoning is that typically, games are obsoleted in 5-10 years after release due to running on older hardware/OSs. It might change in the next decade, with Moore's Law starting to settle down, but that is honestly up in the air. Games typically aren't sold new anymore after a certain period of time- not without updates.

 

And actually, the way I see it, updates to games would, in a sense, renew the copyright, as the copyright then apply to the updated version as well. So for games that are updated regularly, you could definitely play an older version for free, but that's the thing. It's at least 5 years old at that point.

 

The original copyright holder is still allowed to rerelease and remaster. But I suppose everyone else can too if it's semi-public domain... I guess my idea needs a slight amendment such that derivative works of a semi-public domain work are restricted to noncommercial uses for a certain period of time... but I'm not quite sure how that would be enforced without royalties.

I dunno. I'll have to think about that.

 

Books tend to be sold for a much longer period of time and could very well afford extended copyright. And you can artificially extend that by making new editions of a book. Of course, once the copyright expires on an older edition, people would be allowed to scan said older edition and post it online. A lot of people are going to want the physical book anyway... plus there's these things called libraries that "take away sales" from authors anyway. I'm not convinced this would lead to a significant loss to authors.

 

Copyright and DRM really do nothing to stop piracy. People will always find a way to get something for nothing. And experience has told us that invasive DRM (e.g. Spore) actually makes players more likely to pirate because the DRM hinders the player experience and the pirated versions are just better.

For musical artists, they actually make more money if you pirate their music and spend the money you would have spent on a concert instead. I'm not going to say that piracy is good, but it certainly isn't as bad as people try to make you think it is.

 

At any rate, there's really no reason why copyright should last life + 70 years. It's only that way because Disney doesn't want to release their death grip on Snow White, which IMO should be in the public domain by now. And yet Disney broke the very law they lobbied to make. Narnia would have technically still had a valid copyright for another 70 years after CS Lewis's death, but the movies were made before the copyright would have expired, against his wishes. (there's probably a loophole somewhere I'm missing, but the point of the matter is that this is ridiculous)

And that's what makes copyright law so broken. It's almost entirely dictated by the people who have towering heaps of money and somehow still want more. And it's fudged by those same people. Why? To snuff out any little guy that wants to come along and make a movie. And then turn a profit. The whole point of copyright IMO is to protect the little creative dudes who work hard from the well-established but less creative corporations. And yet it's being used for the exact opposite purpose.

 

Short copyright encourages continual creativity and promotes a synergy of ideas. If we could freely make new works based on works made 20 years ago, there would be an even bigger explosion of content than there already is. That creativity in turn creates jobs and improves the economy.

[Koh]

 

Short copyright encourages continual creativity and promotes a synergy of ideas. If we could freely make new works based on works made 20 years ago, there would be an even bigger explosion of content than there already is. That creativity in turn creates jobs and improves the economy.

I really only have one thing to say about this part....and that's, more often than not, instead of actually building upon, or expanding the now public concept, what'd likely happen is the same exact thing, but just with a different paint job.  Thus, the creativity levels would actually be lower, since they're no longer forced to rely on their imagination, instead of pre-established material.

 

Think about how many games fall into that category....like Angry Birds.  It's literally Crush the Castle with a different paint job.  It plays exactly the same.  Crush the Castle is probably not the first game that plays like that, but it certainly came out years before Angry Birds did.  What happened?  No one remembered Crush the Castle, but everyone talks about Angry Birds, like it's a godsend.

[Beefster]

The thing about creativity is that it's not the act of making something from nothing. Every work influences others and is influenced by other sources.

 

Originality isn't necessarily the Holy Grail of creativity. Angry Birds overshadowed Crush the Castle because it did something better than it. Okami is still a fantastic game, despite being Zelda with Japanese Lore. Harry Potter is better than the 1800s book of a similar concept it was supposedly based on. Some of our best works of art are just old works of art with a new twist and a different coat of paint. Does that make them bad? No!

 

Not to say that being original isn't good either. Pixar is probably the prime example of originality done well. But honestly, just because you're original doesn't mean your work is going to be amazing.

[Koh]

No, but I'm talking about carbon copies that literally only sell because of the paint job.  Angry Birds is literally the same exact gameplay as Crush the Castle, yet it exploded and Crush the Castle did not.

 

The same would happen, but exponentially with the smaller copyright times, since people could literally just take the public domain Zelda 1, for instance, slap some new 8-bit graphics over it, and say "Original character, donut steel!"

[Haylee]

Koh, you're being irrelevant at this point.

 

You can say people shouldn't be getting payed on LPs, that's fine, that's your opinion. However, the fact remains that several companies, Sony and Microsoft included, allow viewers to at the very least keep 90% of their revenue from their gameplay videos. The fact remains that Nintendo is trying to get some way to give people their revenue. However, there are problems with this set-up Nintendo has, which requires a 3 day review process for those people to get the revenue, and to only get 60% or 70% of the revenue is going to make people not want to upload Nintendo videos. These are the facts.

 

You're free to have an opinion, Koh, but stop ignoring the facts and being irrelevant by stating your opinion over and over.

Edited by Nexas, 04 February 2015 - 11:28 PM.

[Koh]

We've already established all that pages ago.  We were talking about possible changes to the copyright laws that'd make things easier on everyone.

[Haylee]

You best make a different thread then. The ethics of gaining revenue from Let's Plays is a different topic entirely.

Edited by Nexas, 05 February 2015 - 01:10 AM.

[Koh]

Naw, they're one and the same.  It's why videos can be removed due to copyright violations, LPs included, because some make commercial use (monetizing) of copyrighted content, i.e. music, without the proper rights to do so.  Some companies ignore it, others actually make use of their legal rights like Viacom.  

[Beefster]

Maybe this is just me, but I literally don't understand why some businesses are so overprotective of their IP: "Someone is making a fangame? That's so horrible! WE MUST SHUT THEM DOWN!"

Personally, I would be flattered by the existence of fangames of my work. Just as long as they give proper credit and they don't hurt my sales. Which they won't.

 

I would argue that inaction is just as much a use of your legal rights as taking action. Turns out to be more beneficial in the end. Well, besides straight movie piracy... But even then, you're probably still not losing money because the people who pirate aren't going to pay for the content anyway. Or if they are, the money will end up landing in Redbox or Netflix, or they'll check it out from a public library. So you might as well outlaw libraries and rental companies while you're at it.

 

Koh, you're being irrelevant at this point.

 

You can say people shouldn't be getting payed on LPs, that's fine, that's your opinion. However, the fact remains that several companies, Sony and Microsoft included, allow viewers to at the very least keep 90% of their revenue from their gameplay videos. The fact remains that Nintendo is trying to get some way to give people their revenue. However, there are problems with this set-up Nintendo has, which requires a 3 day review process for those people to get the revenue, and to only get 60% or 70% of the revenue is going to make people not want to upload Nintendo videos. These are the facts.

 

You're free to have an opinion, Koh, but stop ignoring the facts and being irrelevant by stating your opinion over and over.

This post pretty much summarizes the entire thread here...

 

Mods: Could you possibly fork the last few posts of the thread? Copyright reform really deserves its own topic.

[Koh]

I had my people call your people and took care of it personally .

http://www.purezc.ne...174#entry943019

 

As for this thread, I doubt any much more meaningful discussion can come from it, since we've drifted into copyright territory and no one else added anything.

Edited by Koh, 05 February 2015 - 07:19 AM.