Video game gameplay videos and copyright

Marty81

tl;dr - Does my posting of a video of me playing a game constitue copyright infringement?

Longer version of post:

Recently, a friend of mine had a video of his deleted from youtube for alleged copyright infringement. It was one video in a series of videos of him playing through Devil May Cry 1 under some self-imposed challenge conditions. It contained no music overlays and no cutscenes.

Personally, I think it was accidentally deleted (youtube was recently ordered by Viacom/MTV/Nickelodeon to delete approximately 100,000 infringing videos), but he suspects something more sinister and is unwilling to jump through the ridiculous hoops youtube has in place to contest it.

I can understand the posting of pre-rendered or pre-determined cutscenes to be considered copyright infringement. But what about gameplay? It's not like Capcom owns the rights to how I chose to play through mission 2 in DMC3. Also, it's not like someone is going to watch a video of my gameplay and be like, "Well, I was going to buy this game, but I don't have to anymore because I've gotten the full experience of it thanks to this guy who posted his gameplay videos!"

Also, if the posting of gameplay videos is considered copyright infringement, what does that say about:
1) Speed demos archive
2) Filefront
3) TAS
4) Youtube itself?

I mention youtube because it has a category specifically dedicated to video games. If you can't post gameplay footage there, what can you post in that category?

scootch

Marty81 wrote:

tl;dr - Does my posting of a video of me playing a game constitue copyright infringement?

Longer version of post:

Recently, a friend of mine had a video of his deleted from youtube for alleged copyright infringement. It was one video in a series of videos of him playing through Devil May Cry 1 under some self-imposed challenge conditions. It contained no music overlays and no cutscenes.

Personally, I think it was accidentally deleted (youtube was recently ordered by Viacom/MTV/Nickelodeon to delete approximately 100,000 infringing videos), but he suspects something more sinister and is unwilling to jump through the ridiculous hoops youtube has in place to contest it.

I can understand the posting of pre-rendered or pre-determined cutscenes to be considered copyright infringement. But what about gameplay? It's not like Capcom owns the rights to how I chose to play through mission 2 in DMC3. Also, it's not like someone is going to watch a video of my gameplay and be like, "Well, I was going to buy this game, but I don't have to anymore because I've gotten the full experience of it thanks to this guy who posted his gameplay videos!"

Also, if the posting of gameplay videos is considered copyright infringement, what does that say about:
1) Speed demos archive
2) Filefront
3) TAS
4) Youtube itself?

I mention youtube because it has a category specifically dedicated to video games. If you can't post gameplay footage there, what can you post in that category?

youtube is a bunch of spineless shit heads.
viacom listed 100000 video to be kicked not on it's content but by it's tags that contained a certain word. rather then fight it, youtube just pulled them all.

chances are your vid was pulled for the similar reason.

FreddyD

Yes, a video of gameplay is copyrighted footage. But if youtube got rid of every copyrighted video it wouldn't be nearly as popular. In fact, it might have been a failed concept. So I would take the deletion with a grain of salt.

StriderEdge

I think recently youtube has done alot of crackingdown on gameplay/video game vids. Recently all of the Mega Man videos posted up by Rockman Perfect Memories were taken down and their account disabled. This comes as a rather strange event as Capcom has actually told the community in the past that its ok to post up their materials. They have allowed the sites to post up nearly every OST released, and they still have good ties with the sites that are providing the materials.

halkun

It's Sony, not Capcom though. (I hear whisperings from my Sony ties)

Sony is the one who has the distribution rights for the game, and yes, making a video of a playthrough is copyright infringment. Technically speaking, there has been a documentry almost shut down because an interview had a picture of Homer Simpson on the wall in the background. Even though M.G. gave the OK for the footage, Fox wanted to be dicks about it.

Lawsuits have been fought over simple samples in a song and lost.