4 ms·

I'm confused. It appears that the justification for this DMCA was that they felt that PewDiePie was making their product look bad. Are you really allowed to DM

I'm confused. It appears that the justification for this DMCA was that they felt that PewDiePie was making their product look bad. Are you really allowed to DMCA anything that makes your product look bad? Because that would surely include criticism of your product. If that is the case, then that is a very bad precedent to set. Companies like Warner Bros were forced to issue refunds for their buggy game Arkham Knight[1] because people uploaded videos to YouTube which made their product look bad. PewDiePie himself, along with many other YouTubers, did severe damage to Warner Bros brand, when he uploaded video of himself trying to play their buggy game. I suppose Warner Bros should have DMCA'd his videos. [1] http://www.pcgamer.com/warner-bros-is-suspending-sales-of-batman-arkham-knight-for-pc/ http://www.pcgamer.com/warner-bros-is-suspending-sales-of-ba...

detaro 9y ago
No, you are not allowed to DMCA anything that makes your product look bad, e.g. a game critique/review likely can use game footage under under fair use. For a normal game stream the assumption seems to be that fair use likely won't work, so those can be DMCAd for the simple reason of "using our material and we don't like it/haven't allowed it". In this specific case, they publicly gave permission to streamers though, so it wouldn't be a copyright violation anymore. Question is if they can just go and revoke that for the individual case. Would need to be tested in court, which I suspect is unlikely to happen.
- apostacy 9y ago
  I still don't see how Warner Bros could not have used exactly the same justification to DMCA streamers to cover up their defective product. That's exactly what Samsung did to people making jokes about their exploding phones. [1] Well, I know that I would certainly think twice about streaming any games now, and risking getting a DMCA strike on my channel. I guess I'd have to watch my mouth and not say anything that would anger the developers, lest they punish me. [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/10/samsung-sets-its-reputation-fire-bogus-dmca-takedown-notices https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/10/samsung-sets-its-reput...
  - detaro 9y ago
    That's the underlying issue to DMCA and how it's implemented: they can DMCA everything, even if they are in the wrong doing so, since it doesn't really have bad consequences for them.

detaro 9y ago

No, you are not allowed to DMCA anything that makes your product look bad, e.g. a game critique/review likely can use game footage under under fair use. For a normal game stream the assumption seems to be that fair use likely won't work, so those can be DMCAd for the simple reason of "using our material and we don't like it/haven't allowed it". In this specific case, they publicly gave permission to streamers though, so it wouldn't be a copyright violation anymore. Question is if they can just go and revoke that for the individual case. Would need to be tested in court, which I suspect is unlikely to happen.

apostacy 9y ago
I still don't see how Warner Bros could not have used exactly the same justification to DMCA streamers to cover up their defective product. That's exactly what Samsung did to people making jokes about their exploding phones. [1] Well, I know that I would certainly think twice about streaming any games now, and risking getting a DMCA strike on my channel. I guess I'd have to watch my mouth and not say anything that would anger the developers, lest they punish me. [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/10/samsung-sets-its-reputation-fire-bogus-dmca-takedown-notices https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/10/samsung-sets-its-reput...
- detaro 9y ago
  That's the underlying issue to DMCA and how it's implemented: they can DMCA everything, even if they are in the wrong doing so, since it doesn't really have bad consequences for them.