Nintendo claiming ownership on Youtube videos featuring their product

[Lestworth]

I believe I read a law on some issue where you have the right get full compensation on items that are owed to you, given the party in question can pay that off within 5yrs. If you go past this said time, then your rights to that money you are owed, is thrown out of the window.

In all honesty, if Nintendo wanted to destroy the job market, they would of done what they have done when they realized that videos were being created off their video games on youtube. The real question is why has Nintendo taken this long to "Act" on this, despite the general belief of it being legal (with a strong legal backing), given the gray area Fair-Use Law that was threatened, and upheld a few years ago.

Nintendo had to of known that such a backlash would occur, they don't make BILLIONS a year for nothing. So why draw so much negative publicity from the online community? It's very stupid. Don't feed me that horse crap that any publicity is good publicity. If Nintendo wanted to crack down on this when youtube was getting popular they would of done it then.

"o but they are trying to protect their copyrights!" Take it to the courts before you start to actually take action on it. They are attempting to force these LP'ers to take it to the court, waste their money, and inevitable reach a settlement with youtube on this subject. Its just a backdoor way of getting to the goal.

 

[FAST6191]

The issue at hand/breakdown of the various lines of thought underpinning thing as it stands
Video footage of gameplay can be considered a use of the intellectual property (in this case most likely copyright) even if gameplay and video thereof are fundamentally different mediums (nothing new -- screengrabs are still covered, I can not make an action figure of a film/tv show/cartoon*, a game of it, I can purport to represent it somehow...).
In the case of let's play (and the possibly related subject of fan works) it does not fall into the traditional exemptions to copyright (three big ones in criticism/review, satire and education, though they are not the total umbrella for fair use they are the the overwhelming majority of it and feature/TV show amounts of footage are almost certainly not otherwise covered). I am not sure it would even be an overly suitable candidate for a new exemption either, there may be cases where a let's play amounts to one, two or even all three exemptions but that would be an interesting work.
Even if substantial extra work has been done on top of it (sampling, the fact you have to pay for music you add to your film even if it is an order of magnitude or two longer than the music, 3:30 though the whole show is great) it still counts.
Seemingly with the rise of easier monetisation Nintendo (maybe after being prompted by google) has decided to go against the unspoken traditional industry agreement that footage and such like is largely fair game. There are various reasons they could have done this with two of the big ones being "money is nice" and "unlicensed use of our IP is damaging our game's/brand image" but that is all largely irrelevant.
Those that willingly, wittingly or unwittingly could be a case for sympathy or not but is somewhat irrelevant, used the IP without license to do so are now finding themselves stung. It could be far worse but that is also largely irrelevant, however some seem to have taken the position that it is an unbidden tragedy so I was mainly arguing from the "this is what the law says" perspective. Part of that is if you infringe upon a work as a key component of your work you might well lose the lot.

IP is a hard game and if you go up against the proverbial half tonne gorilla with a machine gun you are likely to lose. There do even seem to be relatively easy ins (if IP holders have some kind of blanket agreement with the likes of machinima and co to almost arbitrarily sub-license the content to others that is insanely lenient compared to other forms of IP -- you are a kind of partner) though I would equally unsurprised to see Nintendo refuse to entertain the notion of a license if you were not an affiliate of a halfway known/big player (lawyer time is valuable time after all).

*this may be trademarks depending upon what goes.

It seems somewhat irrelevant to say (indeed I often opt to not include my personal feelings on the matter in such situations, partially as it feels unnecessary/counterproductive and partially because quite a few seem to be infuriated by my doing it -- typically those that assume the only camps are for or against) but I am not necessarily opposed to let's play type things; could possibly agree at some level Nintendo are shooting themselves in the foot, Nintendo are throwing away an advantage or Nintendo are setting a bad precedent; that monetisation of such activities represents a new and interesting activity (though the usual warning that internet money is by no means soft long term money applies); and that let's play making, whether through incompetence or through being a substantial work, can take a lot of work to do well.

 

[Lestworth]

It is nearly impossible to view this subject, and not report with personal feeling attached to everything you say. The only time that is possible is when a written law is created, and even then that favors a side. We could talk law (as it has been for the past 10-14 pages) all day long, the fact is, its a gray area. Nintendo has challenged that gray area now. They opened themselves to this abuse that comes with them challenging this. The company is already being viewed as a second fiddle, so question becomes why.

In all reality, Nintendo probably was the only company that could get away with this, with minimal backlash compared to if Sony, or Microsoft attempted this. Reason being the passionate fans of Nintendo, and the fanboyism fight of Sony v. Microsoft (with the occasional PC Elitist jumping in).

 

[FAST6191]

the fact is, its a gray area

I do not see it -- Nintendo's actions seem to be legally righteous under google's TOS and general readings of IP law as it presently stands. There was something of a long standing unwritten agreement as far as most of the games industry was concerned but that probably counts for little here (copyright does not need to be defended like a trademark).

As for "Take it to the courts" most people try to avoid seeing the inside of a courtroom if they can and this goes double in many cases of contended IP.

 

[KingdomBlade]

The issue at hand/breakdown of the various lines of thought underpinning thing as it stands
Video footage of gameplay can be considered a use of the intellectual property (in this case most likely copyright) even if gameplay and video thereof are fundamentally different mediums (nothing new -- screengrabs are still covered, I can not make an action figure of a film/tv show/cartoon*, a game of it, I can purport to represent it somehow...).
In the case of let's play (and the possibly related subject of fan works) it does not fall into the traditional exemptions to copyright (three big ones in criticism/review, satire and education, though they are not the total umbrella for fair use they are the the overwhelming majority of it and feature/TV show amounts of footage are almost certainly not otherwise covered). I am not sure it would even be an overly suitable candidate for a new exemption either, there may be cases where a let's play amounts to one, two or even all three exemptions but that would be an interesting work.
Even if substantial extra work has been done on top of it (sampling, the fact you have to pay for music you add to your film even if it is an order of magnitude or two longer than the music, 3:30 though the whole show is great) it still counts.
Seemingly with the rise of easier monetisation Nintendo (maybe after being prompted by google) has decided to go against the unspoken traditional industry agreement that footage and such like is largely fair game. There are various reasons they could have done this with two of the big ones being "money is nice" and "unlicensed use of our IP is damaging our game's/brand image" but that is all largely irrelevant.
Those that willingly, wittingly or unwittingly could be a case for sympathy or not but is somewhat irrelevant, used the IP without license to do so are now finding themselves stung. It could be far worse but that is also largely irrelevant, however some seem to have taken the position that it is an unbidden tragedy so I was mainly arguing from the "this is what the law says" perspective. Part of that is if you infringe upon a work as a key component of your work you might well lose the lot.

IP is a hard game and if you go up against the proverbial half tonne gorilla with a machine gun you are likely to lose. There do even seem to be relatively easy ins (if IP holders have some kind of blanket agreement with the likes of machinima and co to almost arbitrarily sub-license the content to others that is insanely lenient compared to other forms of IP -- you are a kind of partner) though I would equally unsurprised to see Nintendo refuse to entertain the notion of a license if you were not an affiliate of a halfway known/big player (lawyer time is valuable time after all).

*this may be trademarks depending upon what goes.

It seems somewhat irrelevant to say (indeed I often opt to not include my personal feelings on the matter in such situations, partially as it feels unnecessary/counterproductive and partially because quite a few seem to be infuriated by my doing it -- typically those that assume the only camps are for or against) but I am not necessarily opposed to let's play type things; could possibly agree at some level Nintendo are shooting themselves in the foot, Nintendo are throwing away an advantage or Nintendo are setting a bad precedent; that monetisation of such activities represents a new and interesting activity (though the usual warning that internet money is by no means soft long term money applies); and that let's play making, whether through incompetence or through being a substantial work, can take a lot of work to do well.

To be honest, not that many people actually put the legality of this in question. I don't believe I've seen that many reasonable perspectives on the matter (including TotalBiscuit's) that questions the legality, since unless you're someone fundamentally experienced in something like this, it's doubtful you'd be able to give a good perspective on the matter. However, most of the backlash stems from the fact that what they're doing is a case of very poor judgement, which it absolutely is.

By network, I'm referring to things such as The Game Station, which is BTW probably the largest gaming network on Youtube. The members become affiliated with gaming companies and essentially become "part of the press" in a way, which gives them the ability to monetize stuff like this. However, I agree that it's fairly easy for Nintendo to bypass something like this.

I doubt anyone would actually want to take this to court. Most Youtubers that are against this simply acknowledge that what Nintendo is doing is, for all intents and purpose, damaging to the gaming industry as a whole, but they also acknowledge that Nintendo has a lot of grounds to the case. I don't think legality was ever the real problem here. If what they were doing didn't damage anyone, it wouldn't even be a problem.

 

[Rydian]

http://letsplaylist.wikia.com/wiki/"Let's_Play"-friendly_developers_Wiki#Master_List
A list people have been compiling of LP-friendly publishers/developers.