Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain
It seems that recording gaming videos and making them public is fine. But is it fine to record the audio and make that public? Is this fair use?
Essentially offering gaming music for free.
Eg. Record only the background music and make it publicly available.
It seems standing still on a stage and letting the music play is fine, but what is the case with audio only?
I have trouble imagining production companies standing still and not throwing the DMCA at this issue. I understand that ripping the CD of a soundtrack and making that freely available is not fair use. However, I'm talking about recording the audio in the same way that the video is recorded, using an emulator or output from console (not taking it from an OST)
There is a precedent of some YouTube users' channels being deleted for containing tons of video game music. One of them (and one of the best known cases, because he/she was very popular) was SilvaGunner.
YouTube account SilvaGunner has been terminated because we received multiple third-party notifications of copyright infringement from claimants including:
Record Industry Association of Japan
Media Interactive Inc.
The issue probably is a combination of quantity and luck. If a trigger-happy media-mafia representative fires a copyright claim on your video containing material (whether video or audio) created by their client (but practically owned by the mafia), there's not much you can do. Chances for that happening, well. Nobody knows.
It's unbeliavable that for YouTube every STUPID THING have some copyright. I already done a tutorial in my channel with some music, and already have problems. YouTube: I DO NOT OWN MONEY FOR DOING IT!
It's unbeliavable that for YouTube every STUPID THING have some copyright. I already done a tutorial in my channel with some music, and already have problems. YouTube: I DO NOT OWN MONEY FOR DOING IT!
Money has nothing to do with it. And yes, everything created (beyond a certain minimal complexity level) automatically has copyright protection.
Copyright is messed up, but more in the "lasts way too long" sense, not in the "man why can't I do anything I want with the creations of other people" sense.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
But is it fine to record the audio and make that public? Is this fair use?
If you ask the music industry, it's not. If you ask a court of law, it depends on the country, judge and how good your lawyers are.
Derakon wrote:
Copyright is messed up, but more in the "lasts way too long" sense
IMO copyright law should be completely rehauled and changed to:
- 10 years from the moment of publication for music.
- 20 years from the moment of publication for literature.
- 30 years from the moment of publication for movies and video games.
- 20 years from the moment of publication for anything else that doesn't fit into those categories (but is deemed as deserving copyright).
Any such copyright could be extended by an additional 10 years by paying a modest yearly fee.
(The rationale behind the different times is the average amount of effort needed to produce such works of art.)
Going for different terms for different types of creations makes it too complicated IMO. Better would be an exponential increase in costs of copyright extensions. E.g. you get 10 years for free; if you want you can renew the copyright for $100 for another 10 years (20 total); after that's up, you can renew for $10000 (30 total), then $1000000 for the next 10 (40 total), and so on. Only really valuable properties would stay out of the public domain for more than 30 years, and most would probably lapse after 20.
This is better than varying the term based on the type of creation, because the things that are expensive to produce (and thus would tend to want longer terms) also tend to have larger absolute profit margins, which means that the copyright extension fees are proportionally smaller. That is, if you spend $10 million producing a movie which gives you $6 million profit, then you're much more willing to consider dropping $10k on extending the copyright vs. if you spend $60k producing an album that gives you $40k profit.
Of course the fees would need to grow with inflation.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
It's unbeliavable that for YouTube every STUPID THING have some copyright. I already done a tutorial in my channel with some music, and already have problems. YouTube: I DO NOT OWN MONEY FOR DOING IT!
This brings up a common misconception about copyright: Even if it's non-commercial, and even if the copyright owner receives credit, it could still be a copyright violation. Fair use is not that broad (and rather than an affirmative defense, it's something that a judge would determine only after you get sued for infringement).
Anyway, you can blame the Berne Convention, which removed the requirement for registration or even an explicit copyright notice, for your frustration: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Berne_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_Literary_and_Artistic_Works
Unfortunately, removal of some of the more chilling aspects of copyright cannot be performed by one nation alone, because they are codified in this and other treaties.
"Genuine self-esteem, however, consists not of causeless feelings, but of certain knowledge about yourself.
It rests on the conviction that you — by your choices, effort and actions — have made yourself into the
kind of person able to deal with reality. It is the conviction — based on the evidence of your own volitional
functioning — that you are fundamentally able to succeed in life and, therefore, are deserving of that success."
- Onkar Ghate
Bisqwit wrote:
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Music is slightly different from videos because they're actually verbatim a product that's being sold, unlike the videos. Lots of games now have soundtracks available for them, particularly in Japan. It's not that much different from putting a CD of Metallica up on Youtube, except for the fact they're probably more diligent in taking stuff down.
Videos are different because they're not the same as putting the actual game online. You're always showing something in particular, except in the occasional "longplay" or "let's play" video. That makes it easier to claim fair use.
In reality, if tested in a court of law in the US, a lot of these longer (the aforementioned longplay videos, for example) videos probably wouldn't be considered fair use for a number of reasons that become obvious once you read the conditions under which those assessments are usually made. If you ask me, we're just lucky that the gaming industry doesn't see a particular commercial interest in taking down gaming videos. In fact, they probably boost their sales. I would never have bought as many games as I have had it not been for some of these videos.
tl;dr: soundtracks are often being sold as they appear on Youtube, making them commercially interesting to take down.
Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain
I've since found an interesting website that offers thousands of video game soundtracks online (mp3 and lossless). And they explicitly state 'we have not received a single complaint since our opening in 2005, but we will remove content if a publisher contacts us'. That website gets a lot of traffic too.
It seems the gaming industry is not as bad as the RIAA. Who would have thought :p
If it wasn't the copyright owner, or someone authorized by the owner, putting it up, probably not.
do you think that's fair use of panties?
"Genuine self-esteem, however, consists not of causeless feelings, but of certain knowledge about yourself.
It rests on the conviction that you — by your choices, effort and actions — have made yourself into the
kind of person able to deal with reality. It is the conviction — based on the evidence of your own volitional
functioning — that you are fundamentally able to succeed in life and, therefore, are deserving of that success."
- Onkar Ghate
Bisqwit wrote:
