A consideration about #WTFU

Recently, Jim Sterling and many others have been making a lot of noise about Youtube's awful Content ID system, going with the slogan of "Where's The Fair Use". I fully agree with the sentiment, because that Content ID system sure is ill-thought out bottom of the barrel garbage.

But here's a thing to consider before you claim the content you made is "a clear-cut case of Fair Use".
Firstly, what is 'fair use' exactly? It's a copyright exception[1] which works only in certain circumstances. So an author has produced a work and you're using it without his consent. Following normal copyright doctrine, they get to tell you to stop. In certain circumstances you get to invoke the fair use exception, and continue using the work anyway without their consent.

Alright. That's not so hard. But most countries in the world don't have a fair use exception in their copyright law.[2]

Most countries do have a WIPO-compliant copyright law, so they have all kinds of other exceptions available to you. So if you're doing parody or criticism or research, you're generally going to be covered by some kind of exception in most countries, as those are really common. But trying to invoke fair use specifically does nothing in those countries, of course. It's not in their copyright law. And the exceptions they do have can have requirements different from those in the fair use exception.

Now you might think "Why should I care? I'm in the United States and so is Youtube, so surely US law counts." Well, not so much. It's pretty hard to decide which law is used in an international situation, and you quickly run into politics and treaties and all kinds of complicated stuff. But if you're using, say, Nintendo's works in a Youtube video, the aggrieved party is in Japan. One can also watch said video in Japan, so there's consumers of that product in that country. A Japanese court could easily decide Japanese law is applicable in this situation. And if it is, you could talk about fair use until the cows come home and it would avail you nothing.

Even if something would clearly be covered by the fair use exception in your opinion, that might not help you at all. In conclusion,

#Where's The Fair Use? Well, in the United States.
  Where are you showing your videos? (Also) outside the United States.

Just a little thing to keep in mind.


[1]So if they have a patent or a trademark or a databank right or whatever, fair use does nothing.
[2]Like the EU and Japan, for example.

SF5 and sharing things on PS4

I purchased Street Fighter V last week. It is a flawed game. It launched with few single player features and has serious server side issues. Though it is gradually improving, the matchmaking is poor and slow and lobbies often don't work. There is no penalty for ragequitting so those happen much too frequently. I have some ideas about the ragequitting situation, which I'll expound on in a later post I think.

Despite this I enjoy the game a lot. The basic gameplay is more fun to me than a Capcom fighting game has ever been[1], and it has many nice features geared toward the competitive player I have not seen before. For example, the netcode is generally good, definitely a first for a Capcom game. My old PS3 pad just works with no fuss. You can watch replays of the last 100 fights for any player you can find, so you can look up replays of your rivals or of the highest ranked player of your character.

The lack of single player features is definitely worrying and it might make for poor sales, especially since Capcom has been so vocal about focusing on the more casual players leading up to launch. But personally I feel nothing but gratitude that I can already play and practice on this competitive focused version of the game, rather than having to wait until both single and multi player features were entirely finished.

So in all I'm having fun with SFV. Yesterday I had a very entertaining match against a solid Laura player, so I decided to investigate how sharing things from a PS4 works. It is very easy! You just double click the 'Share' button to start recording, then single click again to stop. You can then upload it directly to your Youtube (or other) channel. Of course I had to make one of those first, but that was a matter of minutes.

So behold as I eke out a win against a good player somehow:

Fun times.
 

[1] I'd rate Tekken and some anime games above it, but both Tekken 7 and BlazBlue Centralfiction are not available yet, and might not release in 2016 at all.

Backpedaling is the best

About the Fine Bros situation

Update: 
The Fine Brothers backpedaled like champs and basically said goodbye to the whole plan. As expected, and probably the best thing to do in this situation.

Original post:
So the Fine Bros are making a lot of noise about IP protection of their brand/format. In short, they have a popular series of youtube videos with a largely similar premise and name, they want their youtube video format protected under IP law somehow, and they want everyone else making such videos to pay them for permission to make them.

I'm not too worried about this situation. I'll explain some things: (this is according to Dutch law, other countries may have different rules. Generally not as different as one would think though.)

The different types of legal protection the Fine Brothers may get for their creations are
1) copyright protection
Copyright protection of their creations is fairly simple and easy to obtain. They don't have to do anything! The creation only needs to qualify as a work to enjoy copyright protection. This only means it has to meet some minimal standards of originality, which is no problem for any video they create.
However, copyright protects a work only against copying, i.e. other people blatantly ripping off your stuff. It does not protect ideas, so if someone wants to make a video about the exact same topic, copyright can't help you there. 'Formats' as of a TV show are a biiit of a grey area in copyright law, as in some very rare cases the integral copying of a format has been ruled copyright infringement. In general though, the format itself is just an idea and copyright law can't help you.

2) trademark protection
By contrast, trademark protection is not easy to obtain at all. As the name implies, a trademark is the symbol or name that serves to distinguish your product or service. There are strict requirements to a trademark, and it costs money to maintain per country you want to use it in. One should keep in mind that a trademark is -not- the right to sell products under that name/symbol, but the right to stop others from doing so. This is why a trademark is (generally) not allowed to be descriptive, because you're not allowed to stop people from describing their products.
In any case, a trademark protects the name or symbol under which a product is marketed. It has nothing to do with formats or content. A trademark on "Teens React!", though I personally would call it descriptive and deny it, may be possible. This does not stop people from making reaction videos in any way. They just can't sell them under the brand "Teens React!".

3) patent protection
Patent protection is even harder to get, as it takes a long time and a lot of money to acquire. A patent is probably closest to the kind of protection the Fine Bros want on their creations. It protects an invention and stops competitors from exploiting it at all for a certain period of time. They don't even need to have copied said invention from you, you can stop them doing almost anything in any situation.
However, one can't get a patent on artistic (literary, dramatical, musical etc. etc. ) works. So patents do nothing for youtube videos or formats thereof.

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In conclusion, legally speaking the Fine Bros don't have much to go on in my view. Sadly, that does not mean they can't abuse the youtube Content ID system for more than they are actually entitled to. Or that they can't pretend to have far-reaching IP protection of their works, and that everyone must have a license from them to be in the clear. And of course they can also send intimidating legalese letters to bully people into settlements. Anyone can do that, whether they actually have proper grounds for it or are just bluffing.

I thought i should try writing some things occasionally. This might be a good place for it. 

I'll see about making things look nicer later.