Ok you are just making stuff up to fit your irrational hatred of moneymaking youtubers. Just inform yourself about fair use. Letsplays are obviously transformative, since they are not offering the game to play. And they do not impact the sales of the original product in a negative way, on the contrary.

http://fairusetube.org/guide-to-youtube-removals/3-deciding-if-video-is-fair-use

And yet you do not provide any counter to my claims or arguments.
But then again yes, I've mentioned MANY times that I think that LP monetization is the worst thing to happen to the hobby.

I did provide counters to your claim that monetizations makes everything bad,I provided real world laws that contradict your claim of infringing letsplayers. I agreed with some of stuff you said like letsplayers playing popular games to attract fans of those games, and I ridiculed you for your irrational hatred of moneymakers. How else would you like me to be responsive to what you say? Maybe you are just not reading or understanding what I am writing.

You did not provide a counter to "monetization of youtubes have not improved the quality of LPs". Hell they have even DECREASED IT considering the bandwagonning of scarecam LPs and other such things that focus on the players instead of the game. Those are bad.

Real world laws? Which? If LPs making money were protected, Microsoft not allowing for monetization would not have happened and there would be a bigger uproar for Nintendo taking the ad revenue instead of being mostly by some whiny commercial LPers (hell, monetization being disallowed period would not end the concept of LPs. It started without monetization, it does not need revenue).

My hatred is not towards money makers, it is towards bandwagon/popularity seeking LPs. Provide a quality product first, care not about the monetization. If you are LPing to get paid, you really are doing it wrong.

It could easily be a failure to communicate though, English is not my first language.


Edit: Alternatively, a completely opposite view of what Let's Play should be. From the beggining, I've never seen Let's Play in concept as anything more than a hobby without any financial incentive. It was all about the game, and caring about it.

This is a situation where society and technology has outpaced the law's understanding of copyright. Remember, copyright was invented to promote culture and science, but modern society has transformed tremendously since 1787. We now have computers that can send letters or ideas anywhere in the world, create movies, or copy data as many times as needed.

Simply put, copyright wasn't built with our modern technology in mind, so it has to be dismantled and replaced completely. Part of this would require accepting that the everyman can alter the works of others for profit - our culture has been enriched by the TotalHalibuts and Nolstagia Critics of the world, and we should encourage the law to reflect this understanding.

I did provide counters, you just dont agree. But the letsplayers I watch improved with monetization.

The real world laws are called Title 17 of United States Code, Section 107, Fair use, but I guess you just ignored the link that explains those specificly in regards to youtube videos.Its so much easier to stay wrong, when you can just ignore the laws, right? Those would be, btw, why they are no court cases you can shove in my face.

Microsoft putting some crazy stuff into their codes of conduct does not make laws, these are private agreements. Nintendo made a private agreement with google, this has nothing to do with laws, just mutual benefit without any regards for the letplayers rights.

Bandwagon LPs will occur with or without monetization, people with big egos want more fans, even without money. Again I already told you this, you ignored it. All you achieve by hating monetization is that maybe unmonetized LPs will be just as illegal.Being commercial or not is just a small part of whether something is infringement or not.
If you provide Nintendo games for digital download without a license, you will be infringing, even if you do not monetize that. By your logic unmonetized LPs are also illegal.

Edit: I am really not much interested in what letsplays ideally should be, we are discussing the legal situation and the dick move Nintendo and Google did here.

To put my position simply, I don't get the issue because SomethingAwful can still put out LPs and still do it without ad revenue even if other people could monetize their LPs. It's not like any other Let's Player is forcing SA to stop putting out content. Nobody is depriving SA of anything.

I haven't watched very many LPs and those few I have I haven't watched very long either because I was looking for something specific, so maybe the general overall quality isn't as good, but I don't see why that matters if SomethingAwful is still free to make LPs the same way and you can still watch them. It almost seems to me like you don't like what many other people are watching and wish to stop them. I might agree with what you like or don't like about LPs, I think a lot of popular music and TV shows are crap too, but I don't see why someone would want to keep other people from watching or listening to whatever they want to watch and listen to.

It's like hating Nickelback. I might not like Nickelback, but I just ignore them and their fans. It takes too much energy and time to hate them.

YouTube Let's Play videos certainly aren't fair use. These people are making money by using Nintendo's intelectual property. You should ask yourself a question if current state is okay, shouldn't we start also uploading full movies on Youtube with occasional comments to make it legit?

I don't have any solid opinion about the case, though. I guess it would be fair if lets-players send a part of profit to IP owner.

Movies and games are quite different though, are they not? Watching an uploaded movie gives you the exact same experience as watching the original movie, watching a someone else play a game is quite different from playing it yourself. So different it's a completely separate experience if you ask me. That's why I play games and never watch Let's Plays.

But this point should have been argued earlier on the thread, if I'm not mistaken.

It depends. Given that a majority of Let's Play uploaders like talking about how average their lunch was, the experience is distorted by other player's experience. It'd be same with movies.

For example, Dreamfall is the type of game you can either play or watch since a player basically runs from one cutscene to another with minor exceptions.

Indeed it depends. Some games are cutscene heavy, they are basically movies. I can see an issue with those. Others, I think most, say Borderlands for instance, must be really boring to simply watch. A tycoon game where you see someone else take decissions could only be interesting to learn from those decisions. And what fun is an RPG where you don't get to choose how the character acts? Or a platformer where you see a guy flawlessly complete a level, I just don't see the point of watching that.

I think that when people say "LP is more about the guy playing than the game itself" they mean that if they simply put the game out, it would be so boring nobody would watch. The fun in watching has to be on their skillfull commentary, and I'd say that if this is indeed their selling point, they should have the chance to get money out of it like any other entertainment. Because they are the ones drawing views to the adds. And this isn't the case, why not have a publisher upload a video of a playthrough of their game, monetize it and take down everything else? It would be the same, would it not?

This all said, I still don't see a point in let's plays. I've never seen one, and I have zero interest in ever watching one. But while I can understand publishers of movie-like games being against LPs, and I don't have any respect for people who would upload a movie-like game effortlessly and get money out of it, I see no reason to block the kind of people who can make interesting entertainment from an originally boring footage. Even if that entertainment is not for me.

And sure, nobody stops anyone (yet) from doing it as long as they don't get paid for it, but if they do get paid and have their full time to dedicate into it, it stands to reason that there will be more content of higher quality. And quality entertainment with variety is always good by my book.

I use them mainly to get better idea how the game works. This is usually the issue when trailers are all cutscenes or I'm uncertain that it's my type of game. Or if I'm stuck in a game and need a hint (*shakes a fist at the damn incinerator in Heavy Rain*). It doesn't require more than a couple of minute.

I do believe that companies have every right to demand a profit share. Claiming the ownership of these videos seems a bit extreme. I mean it's a perfect revenue for them; they can just take a small percentage of uploader's profit while don't drive the interest of people away.
I suppose the idea was that people watching Let's Play would otherwise pay for the game/console and this will legally shut monetary leaks down, in a theory.

Personally, I'd rather play a game myself that watching someone else play, so if I want to try out a game I'm unsure about without paying a single €, I'd rather pirate than resort to a LP. A matter of preference, I suppose.
Now, I'm curious. How much do these youtubers make? I'm guessing it's enough to earn their livelyhood, not enough to go filthy rich. And if I'm right, that kind of money is just peanuts to a huge company such as Nintendo. I've worked on a big company before, that amount of money is so low that they consider it to be benath them, not worth their time. If LP are making obscene amounts of money, then yes I understand Nintendo wanting a piece of the pie. If however they are not making that much, then money is not the issue here, Nintendo must have other goals in this.

I don't have the slightest idea.