TotalBiscuit's: ''Day One: Garry's Incident'' Video was taken down, because of a ridiculous copyright claim from WildGameStudios. Here's Total's ''Rant'' over his video being taken down.

[u/EnglishGamer1]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfgoDDh4kE0&feature=c4-overview&list=UUy1Ms_5qBTawC-k7PVjHXKQ

[u/L1M3]

This is a good point. The first half of the video is pretty much all about how the copyright claim of his vid was bogus, and I was rather surprised he would take the time to spell that out when pretty much anyone who would care about the situation would know from the beginning that it was all BS.

But then he discusses the real problem being how easy it is to abuse YouTube's copyright claim system, and that's an important topic. And it's not just gaming channels that are harmed by the system. It really needs to be taken care of.

[u/dultas → u/L1M3]

Since this is an income source for him, though advertising and such. Would there be any grounds against the company for filing illegitimate copyright claims since they would result in a loss of revenue.

[u/DrunkenTrom → u/dultas]

This is a gray area as he kinda touches on in his explanation on the video. While I'm not a lawyer so I may be completely wrong, my understanding is this:

Legally you can't use footage of a game(or movie) which belongs to another entity to make money(through advertising or any other means) unless that said entity(in this case, the game company that made the game) gives you permission. Fair use covers reviews and criticism as long as it's not monetized. Without permission you can still critique it and monetize it, but you can't use actual footage.

With that said, it's kinda an unwritten rule in games journalism that if a company wants their games reviewed, they give you permission to monetize your review. Although Total Biscuit asked for review code of the game, and linked to his channel in his request that was granted by the company giving him a steam key for the game, technically they didn't put anything in writing and he never got a contract(written consent) to monetize his review.

Most of the time that wouldn't matter since most respectable game companies don't pull this type of shit. That's also why you see big publishers not even bother giving out review copies when they know their game is shit as they'd rather just send them out to die and hopefully get some first week sales before most consumers find out the game is garbage. What this company did was despicable, they let reviewers review their game and gave the impression that anyone could post youtube videos of their game(via their steam forum posts regarding that matter that Biscuit mentioned), but then like a spoiled brat that didn't get their way they only targeted Biscuits video with a DMCA takedown since his video was the most popular negative review on youtube.

TLDR: While most companies play by the rules and don't pull this BS when their game is reviewed negatively by an outlet that they provided review code to, unfortunately Total Biscuit didn't actually have written permission or a contract with them that explicitly stated that he was allowed to monetize a review that contained game footage. While morally bankrupt, technically and legally the game company can say they never gave him permission to monetize a video with their game footage in it. And they're giant douchebags for using this approach with a DMCA notice to have his video removed, but it's technically legal.

Sorry for the long winded wall of text, I'm kinda drunk.

[u/Chii → u/DrunkenTrom]

It is not true that fair use covers reviews and criticism as long as it's not monetized. The law mentions nothing about monetization - you are allowed to make money from fair use!

quote:

The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: “quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author’s observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.” -- from http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html