YouTube video game shows hit with copyright blitz

Outrage and confusion have descended on the world of Let's Plays and YouTube video game content this week, following a flurry of copyright claims that have left some of the Internet's biggest star presenters bewildered.

Even the biggest producers, some of whom have millions of subscribers and who belong to large networks like Machinima, have been hit with a blitz of claims, diverting revenues from their work to copyright claimants. The issue is confused by complex laws and procedures and by the opacity of YouTube's activities.

If you go onto YouTube and look for a favorite game, you will find previews and trailers from the game's producers. You may find reviews from media outlets like Polygon. You will also find extensive collections of walkthroughs and Let's Plays, which are videos of people playing the game and talking about it.

These videos are problematic from a copyright perspective. The visuals and soundtracks usually belong to the game's publisher, or to any number of third party licensors, especially if they feature music.

YouTube allows copyright owners to automatically search any videos that make use of content that they own, which they can then flag. Using a service from YouTube called Content ID, they can block the content, they can monitor its traffic or they can claim revenues from any advertising attached to the videos, without any need to call on lawyers.

The most successful Let's Play producers are well-known personalities in their own right, who can earn tens of thousands of dollars a month from advertising through the millions of views they notch up every month. They acknowledge that their work is reliant on games content that they have not produced, but they say their work is fair use of the assets and helps to sell the content.

Most games companies have a stated policy of allowing Let's Plays so long as they are not monetized. But, until now, they rarely bother to make claims on the videos. Earlier this year, Nintendo said it would seek to monetize such videos, but YouTube video producers tell Polygon that Nintendo has not done much to follow up on its plans.

The producers wield power in the domain of public opinion. One games company was forced to apologize earlier this year when it slapped a copyright notice on popular YouTube critic TotalBiscuit, who had made negative comments about its product.

According to forum posts on NeoGAF, it has been well known for some time that YouTube would be tightening its rules to block the most egregious videos from individuals who post copyrighted material wholesale without any original commentary. But this week, producers with established audiences and even relationships with the games companies, have received hundreds of notices that their content is in violation of copyrights. Some report that up to 15 percent of their content is now diverting ad revenues to third parties, some of which have no obvious connection to the games.

"It has been rumored that YouTube will be changing their policy for awhile, ever since music companies started to sue YouTube and networks for allowing monetization of cover songs," said Doug Le, aka NukemDukem, a video content creator. "We got e-mails saying this was suppose to take place in early 2014 with the new video monetization review. It is to cover YouTube's behind from more lawsuits."

"A floodgate has opened and we have gone from getting maybe one [copyright notice] every few weeks to getting hundreds in one day," said Zach Drapala, aka GhostRobo, who operates a Machinima channel with over 600,000 subscribers. "It's crazy. Nothing like this has happened before."

He said that "half of the claims" are coming from companies that have no clear connection with the games, and that others are coming from game companies that are normally supportive of video producers.

"It's like YouTube just vomited out all these claims," Drapala told Polygon. "It's not from some legitimate games companies. I don't see how they are even associated with the games they are making claims on." He said that one claim had come from a company stating that it owns the copyright to a song played, in-game, on a radio station.

But many claims are from games companies like Nintendo. Drapala said that despite running Nintendo videos for months without any problems, he has been hit with multiple notices this week on videos related to the company's games, often referencing use of music.

Producers are speculating that YouTube has been overzealous in its implementation of new rules, and that some companies are seeking to take advantage of tenuous copyright connections. "I think it's a combination of all those things," said Drapala. "I think YouTube wants to crack down on people who just upload whole movies but there are clearly far too many holes in the system."

Certainly, some games companies are angry about the situation. Capcom tweeted today that it would be "investigating flags not instigated by us." A spokesperson for Deep Silver told Polygon that the company had nothing to do with flags that had been sent out based on its games. "We definitely don't want YouTubers to have to deal with this," she said. "We aren't sure really where these claims are coming from but we never want to block YouTubers from having fun with any of our games. We've already been looking into what we can do for the past day since this first went down and we'll be getting together tomorrow first thing in the morning to try and unravel it some more to find ways to help."

Polygon has contacted YouTube seeking comment, but has so far received no reply.

Machinima, which operates a large number of producer affiliates, tweeted today via network manager OpTicJ that it is "researching why it's happening" adding that "there's been some irregular influx as of today." Polygon contacted the company for more information, but a spokesperson declined to comment.

We've also contacted Nintendo, some other game companies and a selection of video producers and will be following up this story in the days ahead.

http://www.polygon.com/2013/12/10/51...opyright-blitz

The Address the Sess video panel had a lot of good discussions on the issue:

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02:20 Total Biscuit! How has the copyright strike craziness affected you?
3:31 What is a partner and a network partner?
5:19 Affiliate partners under MCNs are being affected, not managed partners channels
8:47 JP Mcdaniel!
10:36 The music is the point of contention, not the video content. Supposed to be royalty-free
11:44 Blizzard's position, they weren't the ones who initiated the claim. YouTube blanketed without publisher's decision
13:03 Trailers and cut scenes also trigger the claiming strikes
14:33 Will Twitch be the place that everyone goes?
16:22 Fraser Agar! Isn't this what networks are supposed to do? Apparently they haven't been
17:57 PS4 streaming capabilities are limited already
20:43 Content ID system is just a tool, doesn't know or care about copyright license, and Nintendo always reinstates claims
22:30 Shining Force
24:09 Fraser Agar says he explicitly states that everything is fair use and state the videos purpose
26:03 "Fair use" is what you swing back with, we need a real defence and the weight should be on the accuser, not who's getting the strike
27:22 Who is making the claims on behalf of defunct companies like THQ? Not a person
27:57 Stephanie Schopp! Similar experience with Saints Row 4 and Deep Silver released a whitelist doc that publishers could sign to be cleared from copyright
30:00 Nigel Lowrie! Speaking on how publishers feel about the copyright strikes, YouTube videos are crucial to the marketing strategy for publishers
35:04 Hot Line Miami got several claims by CD Baby because of the music, what?
37:12 This one time, at YouTube camp, we learned about "reference files" which can be anything
38:05 Guilty until proven innocent!
40:31 Does every piece of content within a video game, graphics, music, etc. have separate licensing?
42:36 Individual uploaders still get claims from random companies, is this Google/YouTube's fault for having a shoddy claiming script?
52:42 You can't upload a whole movie, so why should you be able to upload video game clips?
52:45 It's like fair use was made FOR video game reviews
57:10 Redefining what video games are, more story-driven
1:01:40 Let's Plays are the truest way to see a video game and how journalists feel about it in an authentic environment
1:06:46 YouTube videos are crucial to purchase decisions
1:09:40 Super Smash Brothers' Masahiro Sakurai says he's limiting the cut scenes because he doesn't want to see them all on YouTube
1:13:30 Gary's Incident caused an even bigger incident
1:15:54 One day publishers would ideally have a relationship with reviewers, similar to song covers and music publishers
1:19:30 What's going to happen next? At least we've started a necessary dialogue

Today we're joined by TotalBiscuit, FarFromSubtle, itmeJP, Devolver Digital's Fork Parker and more to talk all about the new changes in YouTube's copyright policies.

Videogame Publishers are shooting themselves if they're behind this. I always found Let's Play's and VG reviews by the YT community to be a way to find out if I wanna buy the game or not. It's free Publicity for the game companies.

Yeah but if someone is making like $30k a month playing the game from the views of the video, that's a bit much.

I just wish I'd thought of it

Most of them have nothing to do with it. It seems to be a deluge of false claims by non-copyright holders. Just demonstrates the problems with YouTube's claim system.

I disagree, I think more power to them.

Yeah, YouTube's claim system sucks. I'm in a totally unrelated industry, but we had a client who licensed some stock music for a corporate video they put out. I don't remember the exact name of the artist who kept claiming a copyright infringement for it, but their name included 'anal' and 'nazi' in it, which kept popping up in the ad that would overlay the video due to their claim. Was a pain in the ass to take it down, as YouTube has no customer service department that you can contact. How a service-oriented company of their nature can get away with that is beyond me. I finally ended up figuring out contact info for the artist and sending them an email pointing out the illegality of their claim before they dismissed it.

Another problem with the claim system is that it can be used by publishers and developers as a weapon to stifle criticism. File a copyright claim on videos that are negative towards your game, but let other videos stay up.

I'm a huge fan of the Youtube gaming community. At the end of the day this is nothing more than an attempted cash grab that limits exposure to the industry. I do hope this goes away.

Here's how it should be...

1. You upload straight gameplay footage with no voiceover, editing or production work of any kind? You can upload but not monetize.

2. Put any kind of work into the presentation of your video? You can monetize.

The biggest problem is quantifying "production work". Does adding an overlay that says "Subscribe to my channel" count? How about an intro screen?

Good point.

I think there's a pretty common sense indicator for such a thing. You can tell when someone has put some kind of effort into something. Then again, this entire situation lacks in common sense so...

i imagine this gen will eventually have a feature where if you get stuck on a level a help icon would pop up sending the player directly to that point in a youtube let's play video. So even a video with no commentary attached will have some value.