'Let's Play' videos may soon make you a felon thanks to Senate Bill S.978

[Malacite]

Just read this on Joystiq and yeah, this is pretty disgusting. I'm all for IP rights but really? Wonder what Youtube's reaction to this is.


'Let's Play' videos may soon make you a felon thanks to Senate Bill S.978 | Joystiq

by Jordan Mallory on Jul 2nd 2011 10:30PM

Hold on to your butts, Internet, because this party is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets any better. According to Game Informer, a Senate Bill has been introduced which, if passed, would make streaming unauthorized copyrighted material a felony, resulting in up to 5-years of jail time.

Bill S.978 states that "10 or more public performances by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copyrighted works" will result in "not more than 5 years" of imprisonment, so long as the performance in question is valued at at-least $2,500 USD, or if the value of a license to legally "perform" the content is valued at $5,000 or more.

These are, in essence, the same criteria that allow for DMCA take-down notices to be issued by copyright holders, however jail time and felony status are not currently associated with this particular flavor of copyright infringement. Should this bill jump through all the right hoops, its broadly worded contents could potentially cover everything from homemade gameplay clips (commonly referred to "Let's Play" videos), to fan-made music videos, webcam cover songs, and anything else that involves copyrighted music or video. S.978 could also potentially cover cell-phone videos of concerts and press events, making 13-year-old Beliebers and jaded gaming journalists alike equally in danger of losing their right to vote.

If accepted into law, these addenda will be attached to existing copyright laws and will not only apply to YouTube users, but to the sites that embed YouTube content as well. Internet activism group Demand Progress has set up a web-form for those who disagree with the legislation and wish to communicate their displeasure to their local representatives. We would be concerned about the bill's implications as well, but fear not dear reader: the legislation doesn't cover puppet shows as far as we can tell, so Joystiq Playhouse's shadow-kabuki production of Battle Arena Toshinden should still be on track.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: 'Let's Play' videos may soon make you a felon thanks to Senate Bill S.978

Sad to see that after almost 14 years of hard lessons to be learned from this sort of backward thinking That we still see this sort of legislation, especially when we're just starting to see a lot of games embrace features that let us upload videos of our sessions to Youtube and all that.

The Uncharted 3 multiplayer beta sports such a feature. Of course, Sony wasted years fighting viral promotion of music, so at least they're not in on this.

I'll bet dollars to donuts that the likes of EA, Activision and THQ are padding some wallets on both sides of the aisle to make this happen. Probably Hollywood, too.

It will fail, just like all forms of censorship tend to do. I mean, really, they're going to threaten teenagers and twenty/thirty-somethings with jail time? Create more needless traffic for the court system? Sure.

The RIAA and MPAA tried all this once and failed horribly. I seem to remember them shunning advancements in technology and then Apple, Redbox and Netflix rising to take the place of their favored institutions.

Good luck locking up all those high schoolers, college students and blue-collar workers for streaming Let's Plays, man. That could only be like hundreds of thousands of people. Who can pay up to take all of them to court?

[Feba]

Re: 'Let's Play' videos may soon make you a felon thanks to Senate Bill S.978

I'm sure this is aimed more at the "HEY GUYS, EVERYBODY COME TO THIS STREAMING WEB SERVICE WHERE I WILL BE HOSTING A SERIES OF PROFITABLE AND RECENT HOLLYWOOD MOVIES" crowd than anybody playing games. It would be hard to argue that random gameplay footage qualifies as "a performance" as well; in the case of Speed Runs, the act itself is the performance, not the game. But I think we can all agree that the performance of a video game is in the gameplay; and I wouldn't be surprised to see a court find the same, and that simply viewing someone else's gameplay is about the same as comparing a video of a concert to sneaking inside. Questionable legality, maybe, but it ain't trespassing.

not that it's a smart law, but fear mongering gets us nowhere.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: 'Let's Play' videos may soon make you a felon thanks to Senate Bill S.978

I'm sure this is aimed more at the "HEY GUYS, EVERYBODY COME TO THIS STREAMING WEB SERVICE WHERE I WILL BE HOSTING A SERIES OF PROFITABLE AND RECENT HOLLYWOOD MOVIES" crowd than anybody playing games.

Tell it to the smalltime game blogs like Joystiq, Kotaku, Destructoid and so on that kinda make part of their living on streaming footage of games. If you don't think the likes of EA and Activision aren't trying to look for ways to keep sites IGN, Gamespot and Gamespy their paid pet mouthpieces, think again.

Not that I think it will work, but that doesn't stop out-of-touch boardroom nitwits from trying. Some people just cannot adapt to the changes in technology and the market.

[Feba]

Re: 'Let's Play' videos may soon make you a felon thanks to Senate Bill S.978

Kotaku, Joystiq, and Destructoid are "small"?

Anyway, given that these videos are basically all free advertising, no, I don't particularly think video game publishers want to go fucking with them.

[Icemage]

Re: 'Let's Play' videos may soon make you a felon thanks to Senate Bill S.978

I'm sure this is aimed more at the "HEY GUYS, EVERYBODY COME TO THIS STREAMING WEB SERVICE WHERE I WILL BE HOSTING A SERIES OF PROFITABLE AND RECENT HOLLYWOOD MOVIES" crowd than anybody playing games. It would be hard to argue that random gameplay footage qualifies as "a performance" as well; in the case of Speed Runs, the act itself is the performance, not the game. But I think we can all agree that the performance of a video game is in the gameplay; and I wouldn't be surprised to see a court find the same, and that simply viewing someone else's gameplay is about the same as comparing a video of a concert to sneaking inside. Questionable legality, maybe, but it ain't trespassing.

not that it's a smart law, but fear mongering gets us nowhere.

I dunno about that, Feba. I haven't looked over the entire verbiage, but I did glance over the pertinent sections of the bill that was proposed and it does indeed look like using a sledgehammer to swat a fly. Sure, it'll shut down the idiots streaming movies, etc.

However, I don't see any exclusion clauses or other mitigating conditions which would leave sites like YouTube or Vimeo unscathed. Games blogging would effectively vanish as well.

Realistically, there's no way this bill will survive a court challenge even if it does somehow manage to get passed, but still... your tax dollars at work, folks. Are you proud of your government representative today? Because I'm not.


Icemage

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: 'Let's Play' videos may soon make you a felon thanks to Senate Bill S.978

Kotaku, Joystiq, and Destructoid are "small"?

In the scope of things, yes, they are indeed considered small. Regardless of where you might get your news, the majority of gamers still go through IGN, Gamespot and the like and with all those massive sites do, they need traditional advertising revenue streams that pay big.

The sites I mentioned tend to get their revenue by less mainstream means, but getting advertisers for steaming videos is still part of it. Its also not uncommon to see Nintendo or whomever to advertise on Destructoid, but if you want to get the word out on your game, IGN is still a safer bet.

While publishers do obsess about Metacritic averages, they also know there are people on Youtube that have strong sway in the purchasing decisions of gamers. If I can show the world what utter shit Duke Nukem Forever is and I have 200k subscribers, that's not a good day for 2k Games, now is it?

Then again, they just have to play the demo. Some times publishers can do the bad PR themselves. Man, after all that loading time for the first real level, I get treated to textures worthy of the N64 and that's only because the textures hadn't finished loading yet. In fact, comparing this game to something on the N64 is insulting to the N64, as it had no load times and most of the shooters there played better.

I'm ashamed I downloaded the demo, but now I must live with the fact it will forever be on my PSN download history. I could have been playing a good game with that time.

[Raydeus]

Re: 'Let's Play' videos may soon make you a felon thanks to Senate Bill S.978

Whoah. o_O;

[Firewind]

Re: 'Let's Play' videos may soon make you a felon thanks to Senate Bill S.978

Here in the UK, the Motion Picture Association is suing various ISPs because they aren't cutting off users for accessing "file sharing sites" or streaming services, or denying access to said sites/services, so shit like this happening hardly surprises me.

[Malacite]

Re: 'Let's Play' videos may soon make you a felon thanks to Senate Bill S.978

Well, I figure it's a toss-up between:

Exhibit A for all you MLP fans

Or, a little more appropriately given the context of the bill:





Course, I live in Canada so yeah:

[Feba]

Re: 'Let's Play' videos may soon make you a felon thanks to Senate Bill S.978

it does indeed look like using a sledgehammer to swat a fly.

like I said, not a smart law. It's definitely in the "leaving things a bit too open for abuse" category.

[Etra]

Re: 'Let's Play' videos may soon make you a felon thanks to Senate Bill S.978

like I said, not a smart law. It's definitely in the "leaving things a bit too open for abuse" category.

That's what makes it a smart law (in the eyes of the politicians.)