#dmca takedown

[justcakethanks]

Okay, AI trash version of my comic taken down! Apparently they can formally challenge the decision but I would hope they wouldn't, since they can't prove they made it originally.

[clockworkcanary]

A little entertaining lawyering for the day:

When ‘Lol, No’ Is Not Enough: Lawyer Explains Why Bogus Takedown Over ‘Fuck The LAPD’ Shirt Should Result In Paying Legal Fees

You may recall last month’s hilarious story of lawyer Mike Dunford’s response to a vexatious angry demand letter from IMG, representing the

[spockvarietyhour]

Someone got their hands on early Beetlejuice 2 footage, leaking a screenshot on Tumblr. Warner Bros. is now trying to identify the culprit.

[fanhackers]

“I’ve had people ask me to refer people to Addison Cain’s GoFundMe over a lawsuit where she is being sued for DMCA abuse, saying it was similar to #CopyPasteCris. I held off saying anything because federal lawsuits have public documents, and allegations may or may not be true.”

Sooooo, you may or may not have seen on Twitter that there is currently a case in an Oklahoma court about A/B/O fanfiction. Courtney Milan provides a good summary in the thread above, but the tl;dr is that a romance novel author has been claiming that they invented A/B/O (specifically, f/m A/B/O) and sending DMCA takedown notices to authors of other A/B/O works. One of the targets of these takedown notices is now taking them to court. So this seems like a good time to remind everyone of Netweight's very well researched piece on the origins of A/B/O. And if you're interested in what fan studies scholars have to say about the Omegaverse, Fanhackers' very own elmyra has published a paper on consent in A/B/O. (If you'd like a copy, hit @elmyra up on Twitter, where they're much more likely to see your message.) There are other fan studies scholars who work on A/B/O, though most of that work has so far made the conference circuit but not print. But here's a guest post by Elise Vist about her work on monstrous, hockey-robot Omegas. We'll be keeping an eye on that court case and update you if anything exciting happens.

[thenuanceddebater]

Let’s Talk About DMCAs, Let’s Plays, and Fair Use

As you may or may not know, there is quite a bit of drama in the internet gaming sphere at the moment. Most subscribed to youtuber PewdDiePie made a bit of a racial gaffe (for the third time) when on a livestream he called another player in Player Unknown Battlegrounds a “n***er” (yes hard “r”). You can hear the stream in question here . PewDiePie has since apologized for the slur in a video entitled “My response” which I will link below.

But, we’re really not here to talk about PewDiePie’s statement. We’re here to talk about the fallout from his statement-- particularly DMCA (which stands for “Digital Millennium Copyright Act” claims) against his channel. In response, to PewDiePie’s outburst, Campo Santo, a game developer of indie games like Firewatch, decided to issue a DMCA takedown notice on all of PewDiePie’s content related to their game. One of their co-founders Sean Vanaman issued a series of tweets explaining their decision was motivated on moral grounds and that they did not wish to be associated with PewDiePie based on his statements, and did not want him to be able to make money or grow his brand using their games. Cue the outrage.

First it is important to point out that DMCA claims have been egregiously misused by game developers in order to censor unwanted reviews or commentary on their games. One example of this misuse of copyright was the lawsuit filed by shovelware developer Digital Homicide against game critic Jim Sterling which you can hear about in the below video or read about in this article. 

However, the DMCA claim made by Campo Santo appears to be significantly more legitimate than these erroneous claims. Why? Well, for a couple of reasons. 

Quick DMCA Law and Fair Use as they Apply to Videos of Video Games

To start off with, no one denies that video games are under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In fact, the music, appearance, dialogue, and gameplay of a video game can all be subject to copyright because video games are considered “audiovisual content”. This means that developers can limit how their games are monetized for other people. There is however on massive exception to the DMCA’s provisions protecting copyright owners: Fair use. 

The fair use provision can be understood as any use of copyrighted material for a “limited and transformative purpose”  The most common  fair use exceptions are commentary, criticism, and parody. However, the idea of the content as “transformative” is incredibly important: This means that your content must in some way shape or form change the experience of the video game (or the movie, or musical selection, etc.) in order for it to qualify even if it meets all of these other requirements. A review or video done by gamespot or an internet critic like Totalbiscuit would likely qualify as “fair use”. These reviews critique the game, show sections of the game out of context, may mute sounds or skip dialogue, etc. If I was to just play the game, I likely would not get the same experience as I would watching a Totalbiscuit or gamestop video on the game. So, this kind of content is likely safe from an improper use of DMCA. 

However, content typically referred to as “Let’s Play” is likely not. A Let’s Play video is essentially a person recording themselves playing and reacting to a video game. A typical Let’s Play shows cut scenes, plays music (although some of them mute the music), and goes through the game from either beginning to end or until the point where the person playing the game decides to stop. There’s no real transformation of the content here because the game is being played as it was meant to be played (or being played with modifications that change the game but still being played normally as opposed to taken out of the context it is meant to exist in). Yes, there is technically commentary in a Let’s Play, but unlike a review or a more in-depth video the game is the focus more than the commentary, or the game is the focus at least as much as the commentary. PewDiePie or another let’s player screaming in terror at a scary event in a video game does not transformative content make. So, it is quite likely that the Fair Use exception does not apply here. 

What Does This Mean

Well first of all, it means that Campo Santo is likely legally in the right here. So, if they were to actually make this into a lawsuit it is entirely likely that PewDiePie’s videos would stay down-- perhaps permanently. But this is a highly significant ruling for the online gaming community. There is currently very little precedent about how fair use applies to video games and no precedent about whether or not fair use applies to Let’s Plays. According to prominent video game personalities, everyone has essentially made an unwritten agreement that everyone would just assume that Let’s Plays were allowed until someone rocked the boat. And PewDiePie and Campo Santo just rocked the boat. 

If a court does find in favor of Campo Santo against PewDiePie (as they very well might), then that could mean the end of Let’s Plays as they are currently understood. Companies could use their DMCA takedown notices significantly more aggressively to essentially ban Let’s Play content from anyone who wasn’t an approved provider of Let’s Plays. This means corporate streamers and corporate Let’s Players. Quite a few channels both large (PewDiePie over 57 million subscribers and his channel is predominantly Let’s Plays) and small would be affected by this and it may limit a person’s ability to gain exposure and a following in the internet gaming community. Additionally, streaming websites like Twitch.tv could also take a massive hit as most of the smaller scale streamers could be wiped out by provisions that essentially require them to get the permission of a company to show their games. There could even be contracts in which streamers and Let’s Players would have to pay the company in order to be able to stream or show the game. That is essentially an inverse of the current system. And that’s... less than good. 

In conclusion, most people on youtube probably don’t want this action by Campo Santo against PewDiePie to turn into a lawsuit as it could change the way video-gaming on the internet works forever and upends the community of livetstreamers and Let’s Players that PewDiePie himself is a part of. 

[vondehnvisuals]

Hades Heat Melts a Snowflake: Linda the Satanic Sumbo Cries to Isaac the Barbaric Bayor

Hello every One and welcome to the Magical Monday Motive a Sean Edition, thank King or Queen You for joining Me, it is always an Honour to be Gifted with Your Presence.  It is an especially Motive a Sean all Monday because yesterday I received My first formal legal request to remove content from My blog for alleged ‘copyright violate-Sean’.  Now, I guess to ‘Honour’ the legal process I can’t Show…

Hades Heat Melts a Snowflake: Linda the Satanic Sumbo Cries to Isaac the Barbaric Bayor