Quote Originally Posted by Vyk View Post
And now Atlus has threatened YouTube and Twitch users to not stream their game or face legal action if they go past a certain point, and/or have their livelihood in that medium threatened by spurious claims and strikes against their channels and accounts

People guffaw at the idea of making a living on streams and lets play or really on any kind of content creation medium, but it's still a job, it's how people eat and pay bills, and if I want to watch someone play a game for me, and pay them to do so, then it's bulltrout to threaten them with only the explanation that they don't want to spoil the game for me. If I'm watching someone else play your game, then I'm not buying your damn game, and therefor don't care if it gets spoiled

Now, I do plan on buying Persona 5, and am seriously considering buying it used in order to speak with my wallet. And the funny thing is, it's worded that "our masters in Japan" have made it this way, so the American Atlus team probably has no say in the matter whether they agree with it or not, and it'll be their finances that are on the line, since they're the ones publishing it here. This may be one of those situations like with Activision and Transformers, or BioWare and Mass Effect, where you buy the game, but don't let that money talk for you and throw a big enough hissy-fit that they never consider pulling a stunt like this again

You get one mistake like this, Atlus. Just one. Having a company that only makes niche games, stab their niche community in the back is damn near suicidal. This isn't Nintendo, this is a fairly small crowd. It doesn't take many of them to be offended to have a big impact. Maybe next time just stick with the requests and check the threats at a the door


I think this is worth a watch on the subject. See the perspective from the point of view of a copyright lawyer (and who has tended to side on the gamer side of most of the legal copyright issues).

OVERALL, I actually think this is a good thing. Simply because it's an attempt by a company to make an effort into understanding and addressing the matter. Given that no one is even attempting to push the matter of revamping the DMCA to their representatives, this is literally the only way progress on this front will ever be made.

There are clear guidelines set forth for how they expect the content to be used. You can't upload videos where the sole focus is on the cutscenes (ie: no "Here's this story event" cutscene videos that are rampant for many games on YouTube, like the "FFXV as a movie", for example, which fairly clearly violates copyright). I think that's an understandable restriction. What's more, it offers clear and explicit authorization to make the content. Most videos are made under the defense of it being Fair Use, whether said content is Fair Use or not. However, this is an explicit authorized derivative work. This is, in itself, a good thing. It should mean LESS legal trouble going forward for those who make such work, and the copyright owner themselves, as the authorization is explicitly given by the copyright holder.

As such, if you are making a work, not as an expression of Fair Use (which again, requires the work to be transformative, used for educational or critique purposes, etcetera), but as an authorized derivative work, then this gives a fairly clear cut set of restrictions for the authorization, as well as sides with the YouTuber on one of the more vague restrictions ("use your best judgment").

I don't find it at all surprising that the only companies I know of which have made an attempt to address this issue come from Japan (Nintendo with the Creators program, and now ATLUS), as they are attempting to address a clear gap between legal systems and expectations, as well as the gap between consumer behavior, that exists between Japan and the West. I think attempting to shut down these efforts entirely is going to have an ultimately negative affect on the YouTube and streaming space going forward, if it convinces companies that such services are only going to treat them with enmity even if they try to take a step forward, which ATLUS is doing.

I honestly don't even think that any of their restrictions go too far, I just think that some comment should have been made regarding Fair Use, a warning to ensure that your content IS Fair Use if it goes beyond the bounds of these restrictions, and that ATLUS would consider whether or not the content is Fair Use before issuing a strike, as required under the Lenz vs Universal Studios court decision.

Is this an ideal? Nope, not by a long shot. But it's better than we've had in many cases, and I think it's something that can be worked with to help ensure Japanese developers that streaming and videos are not a threat to their business, and that hopefully in the future less restrictions could be needed.