Questions about copyright
LAZYNOOB2017
United Kingdom Join Date: 2016-12-31 Member: 225824Members
United Kingdom Join Date: 2016-12-31 Member: 225824Members
I don't know if this is the right place to ask this but whatever.
Being a YouTuber, copyright is a factor I need to take into consideration and BY GOD is it the hardest thing in the world to even know whether something is copyright protected.
I know I can upload videos of Subnautica to YouTube because I have seen them on YouTube and uploaded them myself. But in the Copyright section at the bottom of the page it says Subnautica IS copyright protected. I think that means that they can take the video down if they wanted to but they choose not to do that. But the question is:
How am I supposed to know whether I can upload a video of something to YouTube?
Being a YouTuber, copyright is a factor I need to take into consideration and BY GOD is it the hardest thing in the world to even know whether something is copyright protected.
I know I can upload videos of Subnautica to YouTube because I have seen them on YouTube and uploaded them myself. But in the Copyright section at the bottom of the page it says Subnautica IS copyright protected. I think that means that they can take the video down if they wanted to but they choose not to do that. But the question is:
How am I supposed to know whether I can upload a video of something to YouTube?
Comments
I think you can. If you're selling content, that might be another story. Also, I'd ask before you monetize the videos.
But like I said, that's never been challenged in court yet so a lot of companies have gotten away with taking videos down without any consequence. From what I've seen, UWE seems pretty friendly to Youtubers. At least there are a lot of videos out there of Subnautica already, many of which are monetized.
I haven't seen a page like this for Subnautica but assume it is the same. Please take a look at this page for the game Factorio:
https://www.factorio.com/press-and-youtube
This is our policy.
Thanks. So look under "Video policy" when I'm looking for info on other sites?
However, you do have to keep in mind that Youtube works the wrong way around. So it might be completely illegal to file a copyright claim, on YouTube you are guilty until proven innocent, using their ineffective and easily abused three strikes policy. That is why Ubisoft, Sega and Nintendo were able to remove video's by making false and actually illegal copyright claims. This is not just for copyrighted material, there are a lot of people abusing the flawed YouTube reporting system, when they don't like a video (reviews exposing how bad a movie/game/product is for example)
However in this case (Unknown Worlds Entertainment and for Subnautica), they actually encourage people to do Let's plays as they understand it increases exposure and is basically free publicity
Just link to this in your description: https://unknownworlds.com/video-policy/
For other companies, Just Google them, their game title alongside "video policy" or "YouTube policy". If they do have a page on their official website, just slap a link in your video description. They probably won't come after you with pitchforks and torches anyway
Wait. Wait. Wait.
"Illegal copyright claims based on not liking the video"
I lost interest in a particular video of mine but "Warframe Part 10" I got claimed for something that wasn't there. It says there was a remix called "Deep eyes" or something at a certain time. But the only sound was a background chime. Which HASN'T been claimed in my other videos.
Could that have been a possible attack or an AI bug. I think it was an auto claim but...
If you are in the clear, you can counterclaim by providing proof. Usually that stuff clears up in about a day or two.
But what I meant about illegal DMCA takedowns, for example the Nostalgia Critic, he got into trouble for his review of "The Room" where Tommy Wiseau wasn't amused about NC's video. He did win the counterclaim eventually, but did have a strike on his account for the entire time it was indeed "taken down"
And the funny thing is, that failure of a movie is now a very infamous meme. Making the movie actually quite popular to watch for shits and giggles
The claim restricts monetisation on the video but I don't monetise my videos anyway so it's like whatever and when I tried looking up the name and the song I couldn't find anything.
The following things could happen:
- Audio disabled
- Video taken down
- Audio or video restricted in certain countries
- The one making the claim, could place ads on your video
If the claim is not a valid one you can safely counterclaim, these counterclaims are handled by actually YouTube people (humans, not bots
>>
All this talk about the almighty YouTube and it's troubles. Why don't ya link us up to your channel. I'm sure people are starting to get curious on this here forum...
I thought I was being original with that name but then I saw that a bunch of people used it and I just went straight into facepalm mode.
The video is almost 1 year old now and not monetised so it's pointless to counterclaim it now but I could use it in the future.
The claimant is a company called LLC music publishing.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxD74FkkSXY4ElsbntLZ9kA
A lot of publishers make their own bots that crawl YouTube looking for things that look like copyrighted content. The problem with this is that any claim they make is almost always wrong and even illegal for them to make. The reason they get away with it is because despite the law saying it's illegal to make a bogus DMCA claim, no one punishes them for doing so.
As @Kouji_San has mentioned, let's play videos pretty much always fall under fair use. It would actually be very difficult to make a video of you playing a game that doesn't. I'm sure it could be possible, but I can't think of how offhand. The problem you run into is that these companies know they can get your video taken down without any consequences at all, so they do it anyway. The only real time you should have to worry about countering the claim is if it deals with music where the entire song was in the video. Even that has a good fair use claim, but it's not as solid as just the video of you playing the game.
These bots are a haphazard result of not being able to control YouTube copyright and other illegal content. That is mainly because of it's sheer size and amount of video content being uploaded each second. They mean well, but end up causing trouble by misidentifying content as copyrighted quite often...
Also to add a bit more to @cdaragorn's info. Cinematic cut-scenes can also trigger as "copyrighted visual content", which in a way is kinda like a movie copyright, I guess. It should be fair use, but I'm no entirely sure about this. ie: Movie reviewers/critics are allowed to use scenes from movies, and in essence a cut-scene is a movie scene. So when doing a Let's Play commentary during a cut-scene, it should be considered fair use. However I've heard of some people having issues with ingame cut-scenes with bots flagging those video's. Because some gaming company has filed that visual content as "Content ID appeals" on their account
When I searched Activision's website, looking through many different pages for info I was looking for something like what Obraxis sent me earlier up the thread. But I couldn't find anything.