Nintendo Hijacks Ad Revenue From Fan-Created YouTube Playthroughs 297
mcleland writes "The BBC reports that Nintendo is now using the content ID match feature in YouTube to identify screencap videos of people playing their games. They then take over the advertising that appears with the video, and thus the ad revenue. Nintendo gets it all, and the creators of these videos (which are like extended fan-made commercials for the games) get nothing. Corporate gibberish to justify this: 'In a statement, the firm said the move was part of an "on-going push to ensure Nintendo content is shared across social media."'"
Re:So many questions... (Score:5, Informative)
Livelihood? Really?
Yes, really. The particularly popular LP-ers make their entire living off of the videos they produce.
That might sound strange at first, but some of the best LP-ers are something of a cross between comedians and critics. Both of these are jobs that we are accustomed to seeing making a living off of their work. A good LP-er doesn't just play the game, their value is in their commentary and jokes as they play the game.
Re:Right of first sale (Score:3, Informative)
Fair use for LPs:
Academic: Hell no
Parody: Nope, except in the rarest of cases
Commercial nature or is for nonprofit: quite clearly commercial
The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole: usually they play through the whole game.
The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work: Possibly detrimental
I don't see any path for fair use in there. It doesn't really meet any of the requirements.
Re:Nintendo's Right, but being Jerks about it... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:copyright exempt? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:copyright exempt? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm certain that MST3K's producers made fully sure that the rights to play the movie in syndication were fully paid up
Yes, MST3K made sure they had a legal ability to do what they were doing. Cinematic Titanic continues this tradition. This is one reason why the movies they show tend to be bad: bad movies are cheap to license.
That's the brilliant part about Rifftrax. Since they are not redistributing the movie, they don't need rights. Thus they can do any movie they want, including Star Wars movies, Lord of the Rings, anything. They don't have to pay anything and they don't need to get permission first. (I don't think George Lucas would give permission to Rifftrax to mercilessly rip Episode 1...)
I'm just waiting for home Blu-Ray players to start offering an option to play an externally-downloaded audio track while playing a disc, or for AppleTV sort of products to do the same for general media files. There is no technical reason why this could not be done, and it would mean that when you pause the movie the Rifftrax pauses as well, much more convenient for the user.