IP law is complicated everywhere, especially considering the globalized world we live in and the fact that each country has it's own laws. Most lawyers don't know shit about it.

Don't take my post out of context. My arguments about IP protection were targeted at your example about the guy getting money by filming himself while driving a Porsche, not the LP case. Your example was flawed, if you make a video using a Porsche car for commercial use you're essentially using Porsche's IPs for yourself, which is basically the same as making a commercial game with licensed cars.

Oh, by the way, stop using the "appeal to authority" fallacy. If you do know so much about IP laws as you say, then please, enlighten us with your knowledge about the subject, it'll certainly help the discussion. But coming up with "i know more than you, therefore i'm right" simply won't do it.

Feel free to post it.

I used the expression intellectual property exactly because it's a genre that includes trademarks, copyright, design rights, patents and other stuff. While the rules are different, the essence is still the same: to grant the monopoly over the rights to use something.

Keep in mind that my argument was targeted at your car example, and a Porsche car isn't only protected by trademark, but also by design rights (and patents, but these don't apply to your example), which is why i used the genre "Intellectual Property" instead of naming the specific rights protected by it.

Yes, it's because of trademarks, which also apply to your example.

So i'm not being thoughtful because i disagree with you?

I've tried and I've tried to get you to take 10 seconds and Wikipedia yourself up an article, neither worked. So fuck it.
Movie reviews. Copying an entire photo for use as a thumbnail. Holy fuck, you probably stare at examples of this kind of thing every damned day. Stay stubborn though.
You realize in my example I wouldn't actually owe Porsche anything, right? You don't seem to.
No, because you don't seem aware of even common examples of media that show that your assertions are obviously incorrect.

Someone pointed out to me on the Steam boards a few days ago that they were collecting revenue for their reviews from advertisers on YouTube and as such they could get sued by developers for slandering those developers' games while earning money for doing so.

First and foremost by allowing yourself to adjust your opinion of a product for the sake of $ is a massive problem taking place on the internet today where political parties, working through advertisers, are shutting people up.

I've had entire threads censored and pulled from Rock Paper Shotgun to appease their advertisers.

Censored and controlled reviewers are NOT what we need. If Nintendo wants to lay claim on ad revenue I would say it better to make review videos WITHOUT add support so that you're free to slag the games as much as you like and as any REAL reviewer should be allowed to do so.

That's a fair argument, but Youtube advertising works quite a bit differently than direct site advertising and I think in this case the influence you're mentioning is going to be far less or non-existant.

I would respect Nintendo's decision more if they just took the videos down. Right now Nintendo doesn't want people to make ad revenue off of their IP, but then they get take the full ad revenue without paying the person for their commentary, editing, and whatever else it takes to make the video.

I'm sure there is something in YouTube's TOS that makes it legal, but it seems like a pretty hypocritical move by Nintendo and YouTube in my opinion.

Hypocritical is to use someone's IP without consent and expect to be PAID for it.

I don't think you're using hypocritical correctly in your sentence, but that's beside the point. Personally, I am still undecided on whether or not people should be able to make money on Let's Plays. I just think that if Nintendo has a problem with people making money off of them, then they should just get the videos removed from YouTube. I don't understand how Nintendo can think it's okay to profit on someone else's video.

How about this: If I go on YouTube and make a video of me singing Psy's latest song (he's still popular right), then can Psy put ads on my hypothetical video?

But that is completely unreal what you say. Nintendo could never remove other peoples ads from some site they do not control. And thats not what would have happened here.Maybe you misunderstood the situation, Nintendo did not want to remove the ads, they wanted to remove monetization for players and instead get the ad revenue themselves by extorting google with a content claim. Either Nintendo gets revenue from the ads, or the videos get taken down. Thats why I talked about their right to take down videos, which I dont think they have. But thats irrelevant because google simply agreed, instead of fitghting it in courts.

@OvaltineJenkins If google agrees, then yes he could. Regardless of the legal situation you could do nothing about it, because it is only googles choice where they put whos ads on their site and who gets the money.

In your example it is pertinent, Nintendo could remove the NINTENDO ADS from the site/magazine in question, they would be free to do it. Not all the ads in general. In the youtube situation, they are just enforcing their intellectual property rights by getting the ad revenue on videos using their material. They are not taking the vids down.
Solution? Don't monetize goddamn LPS

Not necessarily. There are games that I might like to watch but would hate to play myself. The early Tomb Raider games come to mind. Watching someone who knows the game well play it may be an enjoyable experience, but having to trial and error jump and gun my way through there would just make me rage quit the game.

But if you happen to be an independent reviewer of video games and happen to review a nintendo game while using game play footage to illustrate your point, then a nintendo ad would pop up and you wouldn't be able to make any money from this video since all the add revenue goes to nintendo. So that would not bring any food to your table. And this is precisely why TB is getting on this train.

Bad analogy. A review video is one thing, showing snippets of the entire thing in order to illustrate a point, a critical point. A Let's Play is not that, in a LP one shows off as much of the content as possible, not focusing on criticism, but adding commentary, in forms of video or screenshots (since youtube video LPs are not by any means the only way they can exist). Different focus. That's why critic video reviews are a different beast from rifftrax/MST3K.

Of course they could remove their own ads anywhere , why is that even an issue, why are you telling me that.

And what IP is concerned, I say that IP is not violated by posting pictures in reviews or commented video. Otherwise every freaking gaming website that monetizes their site is violating everyones IP.
Violating IP would be someone repackaging a Nintendo game and then redistributing it for their own gain. But not reviews or letsplays with pictures (even lots of pictures in fast sequence).

In your example, Nintendo getting angry at a negative review. I was considering it a magazine example, since that actually has happened (publisher getting angry at a negative review, not buying ad space on that magazine again). Reviews are different than Let's Plays since reviews focus on the critical aspect, while LPs are focused in showing off the contents. Nintendo in the case of Youtube LPs is not making anyone take down the videos, but is requesting the ad revenue for THAT video to be redirected to them.
Using snippets or parts of the media for reviews/critical purposes would go under fair use, wouldn't it?


Edit: That again is consistent with my opinion of "If you are LPing just to get ad revenue or e-penis, you are doing it wrong." Losing the ad revenue would be "well that sucks, but I still want to show off this thing" instead of "welp never doing it ever again", if you are LPing the game mainly for monetary gain there are other things that get you said money in more effective and efficient ways: Jobs. On the other hand, those are getting harder and harder to find but that's another discussion for another time.

It wasn't an analogy.

It is the way how youtube handles things. If the algorithm detects game play footage above a certain length in the video (and TB's videos are full of game play footage) it doesn't matter what type of video it is, the rule then fires and you get your nintendo ads. It's not like a human being is checking every flagged video and decides "Yes, this is an LP video, this one gets ads" and "No, that's a review with game play footage, that one gets home free". If you think that youtube is wrong and your video shouldn't be affected you then have to dispute the claim and see how that works out. Good luck with that.