Topic: Angry Joe Got a Wii U

No, it's completely different. When you own a franchised business, you are operating someone else's business yourself. While you definitely apply your ideas, it's not a transformed business.

You can't make a new burger joint and call it McDonalds, but it'd be a lot more up in the air if you made a hot dog joint and called it "Not Evil McD" as a parody.

In the latter case, you are transforming the former's product. It's even more cut and dry with Youtube. It's very clearly established that people have the right to use someone else's work for something transformative, particularly commentary and review. Do you think CNN has to pay someone every time they want to air a controversial McDonald's commercial for the purposes of review? No, because that would allow IP holders to censor critique. It's the same reason why Weird Al is legally allowed to parody whatever song he wants and make money off it without asking permission (he asks anyway because it's important to him personally, but he's not obligated to by any means)

Interesting. So where do you slot in things like "Let's Plays!" and Youtube series on rather short games that basically showcase the entire product? How do you explain away the honest fact that, if I really don't want to spend money, I could watch the entirety of the new Game of Thrones Telltale game on a "Let's Play" on some dude's Youtube channel totally for free? How is Telltale ever going to see a cent from me and people like me who opt to use Youtube for free instead of purchasing the game they worked so hard on?

Okay this is where you get into gray areas. If you watch a Let's Play of Game of Thrones that has commentary over the cutscenes, that's perfectly fine. It's a very different experience to watch a cutscene with and without commentary. With commentary, it's the same thing as commenting over a movie. You have a right to give your thoughts as a job. On the other hand, if you post an LP of Game of Thrones that's mostly just the cutscenes, then you are mostly just redistributing someone else's work. Still some people think that because there is player choice involved, every playthrough is unique, so I'd call it a gray area.

On the other hand, with a game like Mario Kart, where the cutscenes are almost nonexistent, every race is very much a unique experience. Commentary just adds to that further.

@iKhan

Very interesting. Seems to be a lot of gray area, as Youtube isn't the only place where stuff like this happens. For every AngryJoe there could be dozens of other, much smaller channels in much the same boat. So the question is: How do you approach these gray areas?

What an obnoxious YouTube bad and no good person this guy is.

Personally. I'm a fan of Angry Joe. I do like his reviews and find him interesting. While Nintendo has a right to do this, it's a bad practice that they really shouldn't do anymore. It makes much more economic sense for Youtubers to play Sony and Microsoft games, instead of paying Nintendo money. Nintendo could really use the advertising and this business practice really hurts them.

Boy do I love when people insult the intelligence of others via poor grammar, it's just the sweetest irony possible. I don't mean to be mean, I love Nintendo and only have any hate toward idiocy.

Anyway, I don't care what the laws say. The death penalty is legal in places and that's wrong, so obviously they're arbitrary. It's about what's right, not what's legal.

In any case youtubers should be able to play games, all games, and profit from ad revenue if they want. It's not like playing a movie on youtube because the critical aspect of gaming, playing the game, isn't there. This gets a bit greyer when it comes to story based games like Quantic Dream's stuff, but a lot of those games also focus on choice, so, again, the attractiveness of the game isn't terribly diminished to the consumer watching a let's play of it. And it's flat out illegal to infringe upon editorial content that's using footage or music from the work it's reviewing so =P

That all said, I'm not in favor of stupid rage videos being made by those who have plenty of good points to make in a more composed fashion.

Not for one thing or another but hasn't nintendo changed their stance on this subject and allowed it now that they have their own YouTube Program thingy in the works. Besides that I follow mainly Nintendo channels/Let's plays and while they indeed have talked about this issue but aside from that I don't think anybody actually had to pay or had their videos removed

I wouldn't be so gung ho about being on Nintendo's side about this issue. Parody and review are explicitly allowed under fair use law in the U.S. All it would take take would be for them to piss off the wrong group of Youtubers with cash to spare to find them on the wrong side of a class action lawsuit.

Angry Joe does seem to find himself in a tough situation here. On one hand, if HE bought the Wii U with his own money and HE was intending to perhaps do reviews and this happened, he could indeed go and say, "Screw it, I'm not supporting Nintendo." However, since it was his viewers who donated him money for the console for all intents and purposes for reviews/commentaries, he can't say the aforementioned, and has to find a way to fulfil his viewers' wishes.
In my opinion (as a fan of AngryJoe), I believe AngryJoe should have communicated with NOA about what's going on, and both parties should have reached a compromise (as there are many YouTubers who showcase Nintendo content who are about as popular as him as well). Should there have been no compromise, and had Nintendo been stubborn and unfair to Joe, THEN make the Angry Rant. However, deep down, I think Joe is aware of this reality, but knowing he found himself in a situation where he lost potential money (that would be made of the Mario Kart video he would upload), by immediately uploading an Angry Rant (which normally get tons of views), he would be able to make back any potential lost money, and voice his displeasures, effectively killing two birds with one stone.

No, however unless they use some workarounds they for the most part can not monetize their videos and for people like VGA that is their livelihood and why should they want to do videos on Nintendo when other companies allow them to make videos without any hassle. Another thing is that people don't like the idea of others making a profit off Let's Play but there is two things they need to know, one is that people are their for the personal commentary not the game itself most times (I know I don't watch VGA and Game Grumps because I want to see gameplay footage, more that I want to see their reactions to games and colorful commentary.) and the second being that you really don't have the right to say how people make a profit if you don't like it that is fine but you don't get to say they can't do that, I mean come on did you guys not watch Mystery Science Theater 3000 growing up?

@SCAR392 Certainly he got a Wii U free but that doesn't change the argument (that is a fallacy) that Nintendo really shouldn't be doing that. People he bought him a Wii U to see HIS reviews and HIS commentary of the game, they had plenty of other resources to see MK8 gameplay. People and I also take issue on the fact that Nintendo is the ONLY big company that consistently does this(besides maybe CAPCOM or Konami). I don't think anyone is not willing to give Nintendo a cut of the profit...but Nintendo takes all the profit. Heck there is a parody (A PARODY) on YouTube that has existed for a long time and got a copy right strike for using a section of the SMB music...that ain't right.

^
FYI pretty sure Mystery Science Theater got the rights to show the movies and is why now Rift Tracks are only audio files of their commentary that you have to buy the movie separately. Since people are saying that Let's Plays are watched for the commentary, what if someone did that for a movie? Should that person be allowed to put the entire movie on the internet and they just add their own commentary? I don't think so. Also Nintendo has a program set up where it will split the ad revenue from videos that have copyrighted material with the video creator, from what I have found in recent research. So people can still make money off of Nintendo copyright material, it is just split with Nintendo which makes sense imo. Just because others do something doesn't make it the correct thing to do.

Yes they should. That being legal is what allows critique. I'm not sure if a movie is even enjoyable if you have someone talking over the whole thing. The entire point of watching something like that is to hear the opinions of the watcher. And even beyond that, a gameplay experience isn't the same as a movie. Your match of Mario Kart 8 is different from everyone else's, so in itself is a transformative process.

What benefit is there if the copyright holder has complete control of the material? If anything, that does nothing but stifle potential creative ideas. Even if LP's are legal, the system is still broken, in that it relies on the idea that something as abstract as an idea can be owned. There's really no way to know who came up with an idea "first", and ideas are something that can be publicly disseminated and human beings naturally want to expand upon. I've heard the very concept of a trading card game is copyrighted, so you can't even make something like the Pokemon TCG without permission.

Wow 3 pages of you guys going back and forth on this that's amazing.

Lots of points here, not sure if I can address it all.

Critique is good, iirc fair use for critique lets the person show only as much as needed for the critique.

But what about the cinematics of the game or the music? Not everything in a video game is interactive. Most of the time the story isn't even interactive. How much should a Let's Play be allowed to show before the copyright holder can claim they own the content?

Copyrights holder has control over what they own. There are certain things people can do, legally, with copyrighted material.

Sadly in the world we live in people do own ideas, things that were never physically created are owned. Nintendo was fighting a couple of lawsuits against things that were just drawn on a piece of paper.

Not sure what this part is about with the idea first thing. With the Pokemon TCG copyright, I believe it is the mechanics of the game which are copyrighted, along with the art and design of the cards. It isn't the fact that it is a TCG that is copywrited, that would make it difficult for Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh to exist.

Nintendo is not doing anything legally wrong by claiming the profits off videos that use their copyrighted material. Should they be doing it? That is a different discussion. But Nintendo has every right to do what they are. I just wonder how other people are able to make Nintendo videos and not have the same problems?

@DefHalan so I think we agree to an extent on whether the concept of copyright is okay, which was the point of that final argument.

In regards to the other points, yes you only can show as much footage as necessary, but if you are going to comment over the whole movie, then I'd say the whole movie is what's necessary.

I agree that cutscenes and cinematics are very much a gray area. On one hand, they aren't interactive in the slightest, but on the other hand, they are an important part of the rest of the interactive and transformative work. But I'd say the gameplay and the bits of text containing story surrounding it is definitely fair game.

The guy who monetized on someone else death. And later complained he made 7 dallaz about which he doesn't care. Such a cool guy.

He's not even a reviewer - he's so called "reviews" are so vanilla it's worthless. That, or when he does bother with review, he only shows he can't play games.

Pretty much. The only time I ever liked a video he made was when he managed to express why people hate what DmC did to the previously established characters surprisingly well, reminding people that it's not a bad game, it's just a game that would be so much better if it wasn't a direct reboot considering it missed the point of every single character it brought back from previous games. Other than that...he's no more notable than the guys who do the video reviews on Gamespot and IGN.

You people are shortsighted as ****.

I like Angry Joe's stuff (at least his reviews) but that's irrelevant. The guy gets serious view numbers....a loooooot of people see his stuff.

Like, just to put it simply. I don't like Pewdiepie. But if Pewdiepie gave a game I made coverage, I think the millions of dollars from people buying it might make that irrelevant. You don't anger the people who bring in these types of numbers. Opinions become irrelevant at that point. And I don't find it be helpful to even bother. It's been proven over and over again that hating something is a good way to make it more well known and usually more popular. Personally, I hope all the people finding success on Youtube would otherwise try to be writers. That way I have way less competition in the future.

I mean, Nintendo could continue to not allow people to monetize. But Nintendo could also stop advertising video games. That doesn't mean I would find it to be a smart marketing move.

As another thing, I don't like Beyonce, but she was in a commercial for Rhythm Heaven on the DS and that might be the reason some people bought Rhythm Heaven so I'm happy Beyonce was overexposed if it meant people got to play Rhythm Heaven.

I'm in the "never cared for him" camp as well, but I've always wanted to know why he uses G.I. Joe as the overall theme for his persona, (his logo, his theme song, Corporate Commander, etc.) but wears a Superman shirt in all his reviews.