Youtube Monetization and Copyright Ownership

When you are waiting in line at the grocery store you probably see those trash magazines that claim various celebrities did some outrageous things. Most of those claims would prove to be untrue, yet virtually no celebrity ever sues those magazines. Why? Because whatever they say about you is better than when they stop talking about you if what you want is to be in the spotlight and remain relevant.

Same applies to games and gaming companies. Sure, there is such thing as too much negative publicity, and sometimes that happens no matter how much money you try to shut up honesty with, like in case of Star Wars MMO and Warhammer MMO, but overall gaming companies do want you to talk about their games, especially if you have something nice to say.



So this entire YouTube thing where they are killing independents who are posting gameplay videos, Let's Players, reviewers, etc, apparently to comply with what copyright holders want is bit insane. I monetize everything I do out of principle. I would not respect myself if I did not. Its bit too incredible for me to believe that any sane gaming company PR department would indiscriminately want YouTube to stop their customers from advertising their games for free.

Even worse is how many times YouTube automated matching system malfunctions and simply misidentifies something as 'song'. In my case it decided that gunfire is a song. Perhaps indeed there is a song out there matching my sound of gunfire, however I certainly could not find it using YouTube's provided info about content I was infringing upon. Now, they did not try to penalize me per se, they just want to show THEIR ads next to MY upload, but I have a problem with that.

My solution to deal with any game company which does not want to post clear policy publicly that we can link to YouTube which states clearly that we CAN MONETIZE OUR gameplay videos is to boycott. Of course, this being 2014, 21st century, all that means is that rather than paying those companies I'll pirate their games and screw them out of $60 they could have had from me. Its meaningless to me from financial perspective, but priceless from principle perspective. I suggest everybody else does the same so that money winds up going to those with some sense, more in touch with technology and times we live in, and not scam artists who want you to pay for each song for each device you own, per person, per imaginary audience, and for songs you might never touch after first day.

Thanks to Vedmak.