PewDiePie made $4 million last year

While I don’t think using the DMCA to punish hate speech is technically allowed, I’m not sure a court would move to defend against it.

As for fair use, as @Juan_Raigada says, Let’s Plays and other longform game video series generally do not fall under fair use, which is something that’s been argued about on this forum many times before:

It hasn’t been tested, so that’s just like, your opinion, man.

Yeah, gamer chat is incredibly toxic in part I suppose because 12 year olds gonna 12 year old. I remember seeing a lot of ‘Jew’ stuff bandied about in WoW, and homophobic language was so omnipresent that I barely remember it at all.

(That said, my own 12-year-old environment – the recess yard at Searles Middle School circa 1987 – seems positively quaint by comparison. There was rampant hostility but no racism I can recall.)

That’s the only reason I can think of why a Swedish dude would jump to the N word, unless he’s a big fan of Tarantino films. But then, Tarantino seldom employs the word as a straight slur/insult…

What does this mean? That if anyone is allowed to stream your content, everyone is? That once you’ve allowed one person to stream it, you can’t ever require people to get permission? I’m pretty sure you’re allowed to pick and choose who gets permission to use your copyrighted material, so the only question is whether this is a case of fair use (which would remove the ability to enforce copyright). I know DMCA is a trigger word for a lot of folks, but the idea isn’t invalid and evil just because it involves using DMCA rather than burning it to the ground.

Jim Sterling PewDiePie around half way through, gotta deal with those CSGO Lotto fucktards first.

Anyhoo, gets his @Timex on - “Free speech does not mean it’s consequence-less…”

We had a little discussion about fair use and youtube recently over in the Legal Law stuff thread

As noted , since fair use is determined on a case-by-case basis, I don’t think you’re ever going to see a blanket ruling here. Some works are transformative, some are not. But there are definitely let’s plays that one would be hard pressed to argue possess significant critical or parody value. While the case linked in that thread was pretty unambiguous about the critical content of a “reaction” video, that was a case of explicitly talking about the video and more like a review of that content. Streamers are often talking to the audience and merely using the game content as a context for that, they aren’t necessarily providing criticism per se of the game they’re playing.

It’s clear that creators need to have some rights to who their products are associated with. The question is where the line is drawn. While the copyright system is super broken, I feel like youtube streaming is kind of one of the least important battles within that broader fight for reform.

I wonder if any game publisher has ever made an exclusive streaming agreement with a single youtuber (probably time-based)? They would then be obligated to DMCA all competing streamers. While I don’t know if that’s a particularly good idea, I do think that kind of deal should probably be possible, if the parties involved agree to it.

(As with much of the considerations here, we need to differentiate between legal copyright and Youtube policy. That might fall less under legal DMCA takedowns as under the ContentID, etc. agreements between Youtube and the content creators. Youtube can recognize that exclusivity, even if they wouldn’t be valid DMCA targets.)

They aren’t “associated” in the manner you describe. There should be no way to block a convicted and unrepentent serial killer from streaming your game. No reasonable observer would believe you condone butchering hookers in Tennessee just because one of your customers happened to enjoy that pastime. There is no association, no relationship.

Well, nobody except Fredric Wertham.

More seriously, in this context I’m not convinced that there’s no implication of endorsement there. I don’t believe there necessarily is, but I also don’t believe that there categorically isn’t. The format of “person talking into camera” is different from “found in serial killer’s bedroom”.

How is any viewer to know what is endorsed and what is not when half these 'tubers don’t even have the decency to make it clear? Once you realise how much content on YT is sponsored and how few reliably make that clear, I don’t think you could be blamed for drawing a conclusion that a particular piece may have the endorsement of the creator. I am hardly surprised a creator is taking affirmative action to disassociate himself, even while his method is questioned.

Mr Sterling seems to be very upset about PDP fucking up the industry for everyone else.

It isn’t really about decency. They are required to disclose sponsorships, paid videos, and even that they got the steam code for free, by the FTC. Obviously many don’t, but they can be fined or exposed for that.

It’s fine to disassociate yourself. If Campo had said “We find Pewdiepie’s words disgusting, we repudiate him, and request that he take down all videos with our content and not play our games. We don’t want racists as customers.” that would have been perfectly fine and above-board and I would have applauded them for it.

But that isn’t what they did.


8:28 for those who want to skip the other stuff.

The whole video was worth watching, I forgot about them CSGO guys.

Yeah, one of the things that social media has done is obscure the identity of the viewer/interlocutor. If you went to an elementary school playground and heard the talk you’d be “geez these freaking 12-year olds are something else” but in game chat you have no way of knowing that it’s not a 35-year-old securities analyst.

Like Gordon, I don’t remember my elementary school playground being racist, but I definitely remember kids trying to say the most outrageous things possible to shock everyone. In 1979 that often involved religion. “I heard Jesus slept with Mary Magdalene!!” was a good one. One kid got detention for saying that. And it was a public school!

Exactly. I’ve been trying to excise “retarded” from my vocabulary, when describing someone/something that is really stupid. Every now and then, in the heat of the moment, it’ll slip out due to habit.

Racial slurs are not something that has ever slipped out accidentally, because I’ve never used that kind of language. He clearly does.

I always come back to MST3K in these discussions (or at least my understanding of their process). I don’t think anyone would disagree with the claim that their experience of the movie is the primary thing being sold, not the actual movie itself, and yet they still had to negotiate rights to everything they covered. And note that their solution for one of the rebirths of MST3K was to record their audio tracks and sell them independent of the actual movie. Obviously that doesn’t work as well with most video games where each playthrough will be slightly different and won’t sync up well, but that isn’t necessarily a reason to say that doing it with the game content must be okay then because there’s an overriding need for this meta-content to exist.

I watched a LP of 999 where on one hand the guy did say some amusing or interesting things and added some value, and on the other hand the “gameplay” in that is a handful of trivial puzzles and a lengthy story. The existence of the LP definitely cost them a sale from me.

I agree with you @wilykat - my perspective is an expression of how I think about what the law should favor, rather than what the law says or its likely outcome in court, since I have no expertise in that area.

just checked, PDP has 54 million subscribers… he must think he is god or something, if I would have 54 mill I would think I am god or jesus …

Heck, Jesus at one point only had like 12 subscribers.

  1. One was lying when he tweeted, “I’ll susbscribe, Jesus.”