"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

[Deadpan]

Yeah it probably sucks for someone who sees very few sales and tons of play throughs on YouTube, but the developer has to take responsibility for this.

 

I feel similarly. It sometimes seems like Youtube is getting flak not because it causes problems but because it makes them visible, like the mismatch between people playing and people paying that takes us back to piracy discussions. A lot of people approach it from the angle of "think about the developers!" but it's not like every complaint a creator has about the way their creation is used is automatically valid and a lot of stuff developers themselves have said on the subject feels like it's coming from the same kind of anguish they might feel when they see somebody at an event playing their game "the wrong way".

[Gaizokubanou]

Yeah the more I'm refining down my view, it pretty much boils down to just preserving the legality of IP/asset ownership, so what I was looking for is more of a public acknowledgement of this by not instantly shutting down any talk of licensing fee (an extreme extension of that right, but still one that ought to be 'respected') as completely baseless.  I just don't want to see LPs becoming a hole in which dev's ownership of game sink under.

 

Maybe 'burrowing' is a good way to protect that interest.  People can 'burrow' your work to create LPs which are unique creation, but that way the rights to base game IP and assets are left untouched without making a fuss over dev/LPer relationship.  But it's just that current copyright laws require explicit permission for that, but it does express my views better.

 

Like for an example, I wish criticism of Nintendo's program mostly revolved around that it's impractical and dumb, not that they are out of bounds with regards to rights or ethics (beyond running the company impractically).

[Problem Machine]

Just that I wish public opinion wasn't so hostile about devs negotiating on potential licensing fee (which I want to emphasize, I don't think should be a lot, I'm talking about 5 ~ 15% IF any at all).

I don't think public discourse would be against that principle if that was ever the framework in which it were discussed. When the topic comes up, though, it's usually because of a dev pulling something like Nintendo did and claiming 100% of the revenue on every video they can find. Also, as has come up, even if a 10% license is agreeable in principle, the amount of paperwork generated at that point is ridiculous, and probably costs more than the 10% itself in terms of wasted labor.

 

 

Yeah it probably sucks for someone who sees very few sales and tons of play throughs on YouTube

Has this happened?

[Gaizokubanou]

Yeah hence more I think about it, simple permission with rights built into base cost along with just general acknowledgement of the process would be fine the way I see it.

 

Has this happened?

 

Closest I can think of right off the bat is... what's that "I wanna be the boshy" sequel with the angels?  It was featured on Dodger's and ManVsGames channel/stream but I heard it did really poorly?  But two notable personalities aren't exactly ton and game is kinda niche.

 

I think the actual sour point, at least for me, is the stories of receiving emails about how they want to cover your game... for price.  Makes perfect business sense, but it just rubs all the wrong buttons of this topic.

[Mawd]

On the twitch side of things, for those who take the position devs should ask for a cut of the streamer's ad revenue, should they also get a cut of the streamer's tips?

 

From my understanding not even Twitch gets a cut of donations so personally I'd say no.

[Problem Machine]

Wings of Vi? I mean, it might well be the case that it's more popular for streaming than playing, but I suspect the dev knew very well that would be the case when making it. Very few people have the patience for that genre of game, but they're always a hit for streaming since they're so frustrating.
 
I'd actually kind of like to give it a shot sometime, but I find it kind of intimidating and haven't gotten a chance to get it on sale yet -- $15 is a big chunk of change for me.

I think the actual sour point, at least for me, is the stories of receiving emails about how they want to cover your game... for price. Makes perfect business sense, but it just rubs all the wrong buttons of this topic.

Yeah I think pretty much everyone here can agree that's super gross.

[Zeusthecat]

As far as revenue sharing goes, yeah, I don't think tip sharing really makes sense. Besides, is there even a way to determine what tips were intended for what videos or are they just done at the channel level?

The way I see it, the revenue sharing really makes the most sense when it comes to ad revenue generated by views. Similar to music royalties racking up whenever a song is played, it gives some basis for the number of views that video generated. Considering these ad agencies or whatever are out there paying these Youtubers for giving them another avenue to market to people, it makes sense that these companies should also pay a portion of that to the game creator since the game is most definitely a critical component of any given Youtube video and is undoubtedly responsible for some percentage of those views. Looking at it that way makes it way less of a contentious issue for me. It's less about Youtubers having to share their revenue in that case and more about these ad agencies adequately compensating the parties whose content generated the views to give them an audience to market to.

[Deadpan]

Yeah hence more I think about it, simple permission with rights built into base cost along with just general acknowledgement of the process would be fine the way I see it.

 

If people don't acknowledge this, I think it has more to do with the fact that we universally prefer to think of owning games themselves (when we actually ever only own licenses to digital games) than it has with them rejecting the principle of licensing. I myself am arguing from the point of view that there should be no separate licensing fee since streaming should already be covered by the initial agreement, being a logical extension of the way we use games (the contemporary equivalent of watching your siblings play stuff in a lot of ways) and I think generally a lot of people base their rejection of revenue sharing on some variation of "I already paid for this"

 

Maybe the most realistic option for adding on top of this would be something like the Unity Engine model where you only need to share profit when you reach a certain threshold. But then the only games that contribute significantly to a streamers revenue all on their own probably don't need the extra support.

[syntheticgerbil]

I mean, aren't they kind of a big company though?

 

Again, the only reason these people even make money in the first place is because of the Google blanket that allows them to generate ad money from talking over other people's copyrighted material. There is no economy here without Google as they allowed it to happen. If I'm not mistaken the stream model has moved to Twitch somewhat, but hasn't Twitch run into the same copyright issues that Google gives a blanket to concerning DMCA on Youtube? To me, this is very obvious why Nintendo decided to launch it's program with them for Youtube because Google has the tech in place and can help them sort the vast amount of uploads of a million hours worth of video.

 

The precursor to this was the longplay uploads on archive.org, which is a nonprofit site. The whole idea from making money from game commentary is one that did not exist until Google's ad technology and allowance to upload increasingly long amounts hours of video.

I can't parse this post at all. What?

 

It honestly doesn't surprise me to hear that, so much of what you write feels like it's coming from a place of feeling personally threatened by something. And that's not exactly helping you.

Cool dudes, my mind totally changed when you took the route of biting at me personally!

 

Is really condescending.  You are practically doing 'you mad bro?' at this point man, let's dial that back because I'm genuinely interested in discussing where the good cutoff point is.  Me and synth thinks it should trickle down to LPers and streamers.  You and others don't.

 

Thank you.

 

[Jutranjo]

Twitch will mute huge parts of your video (30+ minutes) for a 3 minute song, just to be sure, but only after the broadcast is done. Only a human can stop your stream though, the system does nothing when you stream.

[Gaizokubanou]

If people don't acknowledge this, I think it has more to do with the fact that we universally prefer to think of owning games themselves (when we actually ever only own licenses to digital games) than it has with them rejecting the principle of licensing. I myself am arguing from the point of view that there should be no separate licensing fee since streaming should already be covered by the initial agreement, being a logical extension of the way we use games (the contemporary equivalent of watching your siblings play stuff in a lot of ways) and I think generally a lot of people base their rejection of revenue sharing on some variation of "I already paid for this"

 

Maybe the most realistic option for adding on top of this would be something like the Unity Engine model where you only need to share profit when you reach a certain threshold. But then the only games that contribute significantly to a streamers revenue all on their own probably don't need the extra support.

 

You are probably right about why people don't want to acknowledge licensing idea, but given that corporate entities are now involved in streaming, I think it's important to set the legal rights straight.  I don't see how broadcasting to 10k+ viewers watching with intention to make a profit out of ad revenue/subscription is an logical extension as watching your sibling play.  Commercial goals in the former makes it a completely different thing for me.  I'm just not seeing the automatic connection between right to play the game and right to broadcast playing of the game with its content for profit (if you can run a LP channel with no footage of the games that are being played, all the power to you (maybe with kinect you can do this lol)).

 

So the video itself is clearly not dev's creation.  But what about the assets used to create the video?

 

I also want to ask, say I make a 3d model.  No rigging, nothing, just 3d model with texture.  You would agree that outside of critical/educational/satirical works (I think fair use is actually pretty well worded), you would need specific permission to use it for commercial (including broadcast) purpose, right?

Then I apply animations.  Still same?

Then I apply rudimentary user friendly control for said animations.

Then I create environment, game ruleset and goals.

 

My point is, I can't accept the logic that adding more creative works diminish copyright protection.  Why should adding gameplay just tank our protection in regards to commercial broadcasting?

 

From smaller user end perspective, practically we are pretty much on the same boat (right to broadcast is included in base price), but I strongly believe that my framing (the said right is explicitly given by the devs, not implied) will be lot less problematic when it comes to general asset rights protection.

[Problem Machine]

Cool dudes, my mind totally changed when you took the route of biting at me personally!

Man, I literally could not understand what you were saying to me. If you want to parse that as an insult, then fuck it obviously there's some fundamental disconnect in our methods of communication and meaningful discourse is impossible.

 

 

I also want to ask, say I make a 3d model.  No rigging, nothing, just 3d model with texture.  You would agree that outside of critical/educational/satirical works (I think fair use is actually pretty well worded), you would need specific permission to use it for commercial (including broadcast) purpose, right?

Then I apply animations.  Still same?

Then I apply rudimentary user friendly control for said animations.

Then I create environment, game ruleset and goals.

 

My point is, I can't accept the logic that adding more creative works diminish copyright protection.  Why should adding gameplay just tank our protection in regards to commercial broadcasting?

I think part of the standard implicitly being used here is the 'whole work': If you include an entire work, in its full salable form, by someone else, that's obviously not fair use (outside of an educational context). However, if you use part of a work and thereby apply the transformative artistic choice of choosing which parts and how, that goes back towards fair use territory. The tricky aspect that you highlight here, though, is that components of that excerpt may themselves be salable works. The presumption, I think, is that in most cases all licensing costs for these were covered by the creator of the original long-form work.

[Gaizokubanou]

The presumption, I think, is that in most cases all licensing costs for these were covered by the creator of the original long-form work.

 

Right, usually game sellers would have near complete licensing power over the assets featured in the game.  But that's not the troubling part (outside of games with licensed music or IP) for me.  The troubling aspect is that addition of gameplay would just simply lessen copyright protection if you don't care for explicit permission (again, given the current market, it would 99.99% of the times would be freely given).  That's just so bizzare in my view.

 

I can draw and it has protection against non-fair-use-commercial-broadcast-without-permission.

I can write it has that protection.

I can voice act it has that protection.

Put them all together and ADD gameplay and bam, no protection???

 

 

However, if you use part of a work and thereby apply the transformative artistic choice of choosing which parts and how, that goes back towards fair use territory.

 

I think so many LPs and streams would fail the test because so many of them don't sufficiently transform the actual base assets.  They just use it (pretty much all singleplayer, non-sandbox games).  If that's considered as transformative then gameplay is something that actively diminishes asset rights protection and I'm having extremely difficult time buying that train of thought.

[Problem Machine]

Well gameplay itself is an engine of transformation. Adding gameplay is like adding a bin of crayons and a sign telling people to go nuts next to your drawing: Maybe they don't completely own whatever they make then, but neither do you.

[Gaizokubanou]

Well gameplay itself is an engine of transformation. Adding gameplay is like adding a bin of crayons and a sign telling people to go nuts next to your drawing: Maybe they don't completely own whatever they make then, but neither do you.

 

That application of gameplay applies to multiplayer and sandbox games but certainly not most of other genres, at least not 1-to-1.  And given how broad the definition of video game is getting, that distinction needs to be clear or I think stuff like web-comics will get destroyed by this.

 

And yeah I already agreed, devs don't own the gameplay footages of someone else playing them.  But the player certainly don't own the right to commercially use the game assets without permission.  Deadpan was saying that the permission is built into the gameplay and game's cost.  I think that is the case in a layman's term and that is the de-facto rule of the market and popularity.  But I'm talking about legal pedantic here for legal protection because LPs and streaming now have massive corporate entities like Disney attached.  I'm saying that permission should be explicit and never be assumed just cause gameplay is attached so that protection of individual assets aren't sabotaged against such entities.

 

I'm not worried about average joe streaming game and making a living without permission.  I'm talking about preventing worst case scenario of corporations just sacking indies working on games' asset rights by using this weird logical hole it makes if gameplay somehow automates the permission to commercially broadcast.

 

It's like that disclaimer you see where the user claims no ownership.  Might seem dumb and unnecessary but that's what I'm seeing this permission as.  Most of the time, utterly mundane and seemingly pointless, but essential for those critical moments when rights are contested.

 

Or like why EULAs are so anal about how much you don't own the game because otherwise the whole issue of 'digital production' could really screw over games.  For most of us it's either pointless or seem extra aggressively pedantic, but without it games industry (or software industry at large) would be so F-ed up because that hostile pedantic language is how law at large operates.

[syntheticgerbil]

Man, I literally could not understand what you were saying to me.

I am not a writer so I was going to assume I wrote a bunch of babbling nonsense even though i tried to directly quote you on why I said that and did not mean disrespect, but considering Ben understood what I said 100% I'm going to assume it's not me.

 

I find it obnoxious that somehow what I'm saying should be tied to my attempts to have a career, and then be discounted on it. I don't own popular IP or characters myself, almost everything I have done has been work for hire for someone else who makes all the profit. Perhaps one day I can be a self starter and get something going for myself and really face these issues, but my sympathies simply lie in the artists/directors/writers/animators I like and what I have noticed some of them say on copyright issues such as this.

 

But I'm talking about legal pedantic here for legal protection because LPs and streaming now have massive corporate entities like Disney attached.  I'm saying that permission should be explicit and never be assumed just cause gameplay is attached so that protection of individual assets aren't sabotaged against such entities.

Now I'm wondering if there are any huge and wealthy Let's Players that aren't a part of Disney/Polaris/Maker or any sort of media franchise?

 

Also I didn't really think about it until now, but because of the Total Fuckwit ownership, we can say Disney had their hand in Gamergate.

[Problem Machine]

...I think stuff like web-comics will get destroyed by this.

 

... I'm talking about preventing worst case scenario of corporations just sacking indies working on games' asset rights by using this weird logical hole it makes if gameplay somehow automates the permission to commercially broadcast.

How is it you think something like one of these scenarios would happen? I'm not sure I see the connection

 

I find it obnoxious that somehow what I'm saying should be tied to my attempts to have a career, and then be discounted on it.

I completely fail to understand how that follows in any way from anything I've said.

[Gaizokubanou]

How is it you think something like one of these scenarios would happen? I'm not sure I see the connection

 

If mountain is a game, webcomics are a game.

 

And as for the loop hole, I already showed you.  According to you and deadpan, assets in gameplay is considered to be transformed enough to be a new work of art... so all you need to do is define play, which is already pretty freaking broad, and now all smaller game creators who don't have resources for legal recourse will just get their assets taken because hey, someone played it, it's a new art, they own it, they will now repackage it and sell it in some other ways.

 

If play is transformation in and of itself, then every asset that filters through that is in for anyone to grab.

 

Remember, all I'm pushing for is to put the permission and its scope into writing to prevent exactly that, and idk why you want to oppose doing that, and think no written rules will magically result in corporations just naturally respecting boundaries that doesn't exist except in everyone mind as different things.

[Mawd]

Now I'm wondering if there are any huge and wealthy Let's Players that aren't a part of Disney/Polaris/Maker or any sort of media franchise?

 

Well I might be totally wrong on this but streamers like Summit1g are people who got huge mostly through their own competitive gaming communities and went on to stream fulltime once they realised how viable that was for them. 

Looking at Summit's about page in particular the only reference to a coporate media house is to Carbon Network Gaming which solely links to a forum which is run by people who link their steam gamer pages as their main source of identification. Which feels pretty grass rootsy but hey maybe they do have poorly disclosed backing from a larger conglomerate.

Anyway in terms of wealth, fame, and style Summit is the type of streamer who has a staple of games but tends to dip into everything, usually with a large following. He's the type of streamer which boosts a niche or old game up to 10k viewers purely off the back of his own channel.

Other people like Fairlight Excalibur and GoldGlove are of the same vein although I dunno if they made their name through comp gaming. Now these people do usually end up with sponsorship from places like G2A.com, Corsair, and all the other usual companies that you used to just mainly see sponsoring proffessional gaming. However I'm fairly sure you're talking about organisations that actively go out and find, coach, and train talent with the staff they have that specialise in media management.

 

Anyway yeah these people are mostly known for playing multiplayer or sandbox games but they're generally the first to be trying out the big new single player games, or even just the indies that have popularity right now.

 

Maybe I've overly conflated twitch streamer with Let's Player? Maybe I'm thinking about 'wealth' in the wrong way; if a streamer goes fulltime they likely earn over a few grand a month from it which is considerable seeing as they're community funded. But that's not Total CookieDough money. I'm not sure. I don't actually put a lot of time into either mode although probably more than many.

[Problem Machine]

If mountain is a game, webcomics are a game.

Um. What?

And as for the loop hole, I already showed you.  According to you and deadpan, assets in gameplay is considered to be transformed enough to be a new work of art... so all you need to do is define play, which is already pretty freaking broad, and now all smaller game creators who don't have resources for legal recourse will just get their assets taken because hey, someone played it, it's a new art, they own it, they will now repackage it and sell it in some other ways.

If play is transformation in and of itself, then every asset that filters through that is in for anyone to grab.

This is extremely abstract and blue sky. How do you actually see this happening? How exactly would corporations abuse this, and what exactly is the 'this' they'd be abusing? The loop hole right now isn't a legal one so much as a cultural one: Whose side the law is on in the matter of fair use re: game streaming/recording is still an open question. Is your concern that if the current status quo were turned into a law that it would be one prone to abuse?

The scenario above frankly doesn't make a lot of sense, since the assets as they're present within the game are very different from the assets that are used to make it. Extracting the models and using them is then reverse engineering a competitor's product in order to steal their in-house assets, which seems fairly cut-and-dry illegal. I guess the argument might hold more water if someone took screenshots and used them as sprites or backgrounds, but tbh if a AAA dev did that they'd be laughed out of the market so I think it's kind of an absurd hypothetical.

Remember, all I'm pushing for is to put the permission and its scope into writing to prevent exactly that, and idk why you want to oppose doing that, and think no written rules will magically result in corporations just naturally respecting boundaries that doesn't exist except in everyone mind as different things.

I'm not sure I'm comfortable having it inferred that I oppose codifying the current state of relations into writing, though I think I may be opposed to then codifying those writings into law, since, as you observe, any law thus created would be vulnerable to abuse (as, incidentally, most laws are eventually shown to be).

[Gaizokubanou]

The scenario above frankly doesn't make a lot of sense, since the assets as they're present within the game are very different from the assets that are used to make it. Extracting the models and using them is then reverse engineering a competitor's product in order to steal their in-house assets, which seems fairly cut-and-dry illegal. I guess the argument might hold more water if someone took screenshots and used them as sprites or backgrounds, but tbh if a AAA dev did that they'd be laughed out of the market so I think it's kind of an absurd hypothetical.

I'm not sure I'm comfortable having it inferred that I oppose codifying the current state of relations into writing, though I think I may be opposed to then codifying those writings into law, since, as you observe, any law thus created would be vulnerable to abuse (as, incidentally, most laws are eventually shown to be).

 

That's 3D models.  2D stuff, designs and audio are all right there.  And not just literal asset rips off a video (yeah those are silly (except for mobile and indie)), I mean the IP, story, character, etc.  Take any famous indie IP and imagine others just using it with zero compensation because oh, it's not based on the game, it's based on our play of the game.

 

And yeah this hypothetical is absurd cause situation is absurd because that's how I see this.  I think removal of all asset protection right against commercial entertainment videos because there is gameplay and that creates a wholely new product requiring no permission of the original creator is that absurd.  So if that passes through, I'm imagining absurd shits coming to be in the wake of it.

 

It won't even be a new law, it's just practicing the current one.  I never said "let's codify this new law".  I'm saying state this clearly in EULA or on company website.  This is what I was pushing for past few posts: Streaming and LP for non-critical-education-archie-research purpose should require permission to use the in game assets, just like how it is currently done with certain specifics, like in-game audio for example.

 

Current law protects all the assets individually, so I'm actually arguing not to overwrite it because they are in a game that can be played.

 

The webcomic thing should be self explanatory.  It's a format that relies a lot of ad revenue, so original creator can't survive their being 'transformed' into another viewing platform that's also free.

[Problem Machine]

That's 3D models.  2D stuff, designs and audio are all right there.  And not just literal asset rips off a video (yeah those are silly (except for mobile and indie)), I mean the IP, story, character, etc.  Take any famous indie IP and imagine others just using it with zero compensation because oh, it's not based on the game, it's based on our play of the game.

I mean that already basically happens just without the justification. Copyright basically doesn't cover stealing someone's story wholesale with only very slight changes, and so that happens all the damn time. The only thing that is litigible at all in that example are characters, and that's primarily because Disney made it that way because Mickey Mouse. Gameplay doesn't even have to come into it.

The webcomic thing should be self explanatory.  It's a format that relies a lot of ad revenue, so original creator can't survive their being 'transformed' into another viewing platform that's also free.

Well, again that fails the 'whole work' test I brought up before, and also fails to be transformative because it doesn't integrate it into a greater work. What if it rearranged the strip order to make the reader's interpretation different? Or if it edited out one of the central characters? Or if it superimposed characters making jokes based on what was going on in the strip?  These are all way more borderline cases.

 

I think there also needs to be some test of proportionality, like what degree of the finished work is original vs appropriated. That's one that gets super tricky though, because what about a song made entirely out of clips of someone else artfully rearranged into a whole new piece

? What's the proportionality there?

[Gaizokubanou]

I mean that already basically happens just without the justification. Copyright basically doesn't cover stealing someone's story wholesale with only very slight changes, and so that happens all the damn time. The only thing that is litigible at all in that example are characters, and that's primarily because Disney made it that way because Mickey Mouse. Gameplay doesn't even have to come into it.

 

Yes but that's because it's mostly nameless entities that phase in and out of the market in high volume to make sense of it.  I'm saying imagine if EVERYONE did it, like all the big companies, etc, and this time, with no changes.  Just straight up using the same IP because everyone owns their variation of that game from having played it.

 

Well, again that fails the 'whole work' test I brought up before, and also fails to be transformative because it doesn't integrate it into a greater work. What if it rearranged the strip order to make the reader's interpretation different? Or if it edited out one of the central characters? Or if it superimposed characters making jokes based on what was going on in the strip?  These are all way more borderline cases.

 

I think there also needs to be some test of proportionality, like what degree of the finished work is original vs appropriated. That's one that gets super tricky though, because what about a song made entirely out of clips of someone else artfully rearranged into a whole new piece

? What's the proportionality there?

 

Working with someone working on an web comic, arguing that cut and pasting warrants sufficient change to web comics to ignore copyright is seriously insulting, but perhaps I should never have brought up web comics given how close I am to it.  Still, I think that's too far and it's hard to follow that as genuine thought, not one to troll and provoke anger out of those working in art, like syntheticgerbil.

 

If you meant if they were to actually re-draw the whole thing from anew, then that's so different from LP... like if someone LPed a copy of a game that they re-built from ground up with their own asset, well you can just rename it and call it a whole new game.

 

I think proportionality of most LPs are actually pretty easy to solve... it's just too much without permission.  I think it's fair to say you need permission if 90% of your video in video series is, well, someone else's work.  Ironically enough short LPs with heavy editing that just shits on the game might be best protected under parody/satire and ends up using far less of the original content.

 

And it's not like this will in any notable way change the professional status of LPers.  If anything, I'm asking they act like professionals that they are and ask for permission (or more accurately, play the 99.99% of games that are already happily giving out these permissions in advance (so actual practical change I'm arguing for is actually more on devs end to explicitly state the permission... and as for others, just acknowledge the ownership of the assets)) to use other's work for their non-critical-educational-archival purpose.

[Problem Machine]

Yes but that's because it's mostly nameless entities that phase in and out of the market in high volume to make sense of it.  I'm saying imagine if EVERYONE did it, like all the big companies, etc, and this time, with no changes.  Just straight up using the same IP because everyone owns their variation of that game from having played it.

Okay, for funsies let's imagine that. Since all of the high-value IPs belong to major corporations, we have essentially the same climate of fan-work now except people could actually sell their fan stories on major sites. Big companies could steal and sell existing IP, but they can basically do that now anyway with only minor changes, then through the force of marketing power position their clone as the original in the minds of the mass audience which, again, they do all the damn time. The only thing that would change would be that they could use the real names -- which they don't actually have any motive to do, since it's more profitable to rip off the story, slap mickey mouse on it, and sell it as a new plotline. Except obviously not mickey mouse any more since he's relatively irrelevant. And then, as now, the only thing keeping them honest is that people notice when they do that shit and occasionally raise a fuss about it. And so we get Lion King, which was actually a pretty good movie in its own right.

 

Working with someone working on an web comic, arguing that cut and pasting warrants sufficient change to web comics to ignore copyright is seriously insulting, but perhaps I should never have brought up web comics given how close I am to it.  Still, I think that's too far and it's hard to follow that as genuine thought, not one to troll and provoke anger out of those working in art, like syntheticgerbil.

I'm starting to get really fucking peeved at seeing this framed as though I have no personal vested interest in the status of art while the people I'm arguing with do. I draw art commissions to pay my rent, I write a weekly blog, I compose music which I put up online, I'm two years into developing a one-man game project: I am not an outsider or a moocher, and I'm getting sick of being painted into that corner just so those who disagree with me can position themselves as being 'on the side of the artists'. I'm on the side of the artists too, okay: I'm just a bit less choosey about who I give the privilege of being called a real artist to.

 

That said, what about Garfield Minus Garfield? What about DBZ: Abridged? What about the Pogo video I linked? These are works which are largely cut and pasted versions of existing works, but are certainly significant in their own right. What amount of cutting and pasting is enough to transform an original work into something else?

I think proportionality of most LPs are actually pretty easy to solve... it's just too much without permission.  I think it's fair to say you need permission if 90% of your video in video series is, well, someone else's work.  Ironically enough short LPs with heavy editing that just shits on the game might be best protected under parody/satire and ends up using far less of the original content.

So if you make a video of walking through a beautiful cathedral and it gets a million views you should owe the architect money?

[Gaizokubanou]

You know what, clearly we are just going to step all over each other's toes for absolutely no benefit to either of us so whatever, I'll agree to disagree on what counts as sufficiently trans-formative work to void copyright in both legal and ethical sense.

 

Edit:  Also looking back my hypothetical in regards to breech of rights is probably way off base more I think about it so if anyone is upset over the ridiculousness of that, my apologies.  Not the weirdness in gameplay == less right, but the hypothetical part.