Guild Wars 2

Over the last couple of days we’ve seen controversy erupt over youtube’s use of a content ID system which seems to flag and ‘hijack’ video content (such as reviews, live stream recordings and the like) which contains excepts from games.

The content creators then have to go through a dispute mechanism to try to reclaim the ownership of the content they created.

http://kotaku.com/youtube-copyright-chaos-continues-game-publishers-to-t-1481517758

A few games companies have come out and published their stance on it (such as blizzard,capcom and square enix) while others have adopted a ‘sort it out amongst yourselves’ approach

Since fan content creation (such as SPvP/livestreams etc) is such a key part of game awareness and community participation I’m wondering does Arenanet have a position on youtube’s content ID system and how content producers should go about resolving any content flagged up.

Note this isn’t a demand, calling out or anything like that just a player asking a question about an area of concern

The change will also affect us players who have or had posted guild wars 2 copyright game play videos on you tube; channel.

What i’m worried about are the builds and the walk through guide videos.

I encourage Arena.net to comment on these changes.

http://www.tubefilter.com/2013/12/11/youtube-official-statement-contentid-claims/

“Our biggest story of the week has concerned the recent wave of ContentID claims against gaming YouTube channels. We initially reported that the changes would be tied to a new monetization review system for multi-channel networks that was set to debut in January. The story changed on December 10th, however, when thousands of videos across the site were flagged by ContentID.

The result has been chaos. Twitter has exploded, response videos are popping up en masse, and some creators are halting production on their videos as they try to figure out which claims are legitimate and which ones come from patent trolls or unrelated third parties.

In the latest development, YouTube has released an official statement that helps clear up the situation a little bit. The site has confirmed that the recent explosion of copyright claims is indeed related to a new system that will subject affiliate partners of MCNs to ContentID scanning. As a reminder, “affiliate” refers to most network partners, while the other category, “managed”, refers to channels where the network itself has taken a more active role.

Here is the unedited statement, in full:

“We recently enabled Content ID scanning on channels identified as affiliates of MCNs. This has resulted in new copyright claims for some users, based on policies set by the relevant content owners. As ever, channel owners can easily dispute Content ID claims if they believe those claims are invalid.”

This statement confirms what most creators already knew about the situation, but some troublesome elements are still unexplained. Why are so many claims coming from third parties with no apparent ties to game publishers? Why did YouTube enact this change much sooner than the January date it initially told Maker Studios? More philosophically, why would game publishers want to tear down a system that provides incalculably valuable exposure for their products?

We hope to get some more answers from YouTube soon. In the meantime, a video from YouTube gamer DPJ gives a nice overview of the ContentID system, explains what creators can do to fight against unjust claims, and shows off some impressive sniper rifle skills to boot".

Why is this in GW2 general? An old video sharing website of yesteryear having issues with copyright claims… I just don’t see the connection, even when video games are specifically mentioned.

Basically, why should we care about youtube copyright claims?

A lot of people post videos as guides and information for other players. It could be an issue for information distribution for those staples of our community

Aeonblade.8709:

Why is this in GW2 general? An old video sharing website of yesteryear having issues with copyright claims… I just don’t see the connection, even when video games are specifically mentioned.

Basically, why should we care about youtube copyright claims?

If you had read the article; this upcoming changes is not about youtube, it’s about company copyrights being used without their permission.

Arena.net is a company.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

A lot of people post videos as guides and information for other players. It could be an issue for information distribution for those staples of our community

So….just use one of the hundreds of other video sharing websites? It’s not like we HAVE to use youtube, especially if it’s having problems like this. I guess I just don’t see the issue when there are other better options available anyway.

Good luck to those affected by this situation, I hope they work it out

GOOD!

YouTube cutting down on their own revenue is just what Blip.tv and Vimeo need.

On the bright side, while big publishers are busy trying to take down negative reviews and lets-plays of their games through abuse of the copyright claim system – thereby eliminating a large chunk of their advertising – PC and Indie games that have relied heavily on word of mouth will flourish as a result.

I highly doubt ANet would go as far as to take down videos of people playing their games or using their trailer footage. That would be a touch too… evil... and pretty dumb… which is usually EA, Nintendo and Capcom territory.

I guess I’m a peon. I know nothing about other video sharing sites. YouTube is the end all be all for me in terms of internet videos.

man, good luck with me finding jumping puzzle guides o.o

Google is well known for constantly shooting itself in the foot. Content creators can just switch to another video hosting site, while Google bows down to their corporate overlords, then wonders why they’ve lost a large majority of revenue the site generates. All great things come to an end. It’s time to move on.

Just move to other video uploading sites.

It’s pretty simple.

Angry Joe’s review is why I and a bunch of friends bought this game.

No review = No purchase

It makes no sense for any publisher/developer to back this.

This discussion would be a lot more interesting if someone uploading GW2 footage had one of their videos affected and was posting about it. Has this actually happened to anyone with GW2 videos? Or are we just discussing “Oh, it happened with other games! It’s probably happening with us soon!” ?

I don’t see a reason to start panicking until we have details on something specific to panic about. It’s a strange situation. For example, some people in this thread are discussing the stance of game publishers on it, when a lot of the claims are actually coming from music companies, and many of them are being automatically generated, leaving a lot of supposed claimants nearly as confused as those affected.

So, are GW2 videos even being affected?

Peetee.9406:

Angry Joe’s review is why I and a bunch of friends bought this game.

No review = No purchase

It makes no sense for any publisher/developer to back this.

That guy’s for casuals x999999. Any hardcore gamer see’s gameplay footages of the games they wanna play and judge it by that. But yes youube matters at you gotta see gameplay

^ I would rather hear or read a review. Frankly, a lot if amazing gane look absolutely terrible just from gameplay, and a lot of terrible games look amazing from gameplay.

Turn off the GW2 Music when streaming/recording. The bots are mostly aiming at the music.

I think people are confused as to why people use youtube for their videos. You can monetize your videos now more easily. Most sites dont offer to pay you for your video uploads.

I was wondering the same thing when I read about that yesterday.

Angry Joe did a nice video on it, where he even used a Guild Wars 2 review of his as an example, which was receiving PlayNC ownership flags.

I hope both PlayNC and Anet come to the aid of their players in this respect, and help out with the digital right nonsense. People posting videos of your game is the best sort of advertisement for your game. But these content creators need to be protected against insane policies like this.

This may very well spell the end of YouTube by the way.

They have said before they don’t mind people putting videos up. The the monetization factor is something that’s against the terms and conditions but they also said that they wold not go after anyone doing it. As far as YouTube flagging videos on their own… I don’t know if anet would even bother stepping up to help since the majority of videos do make it into YouTube.

This new policy is a big problem to both game companies and it’s players. Because its a big hassle to go and approve all these content flags. Their customers are now stuck with hundreds of their videos auto-flagged and stripped of ad revenue.

Heed my words, this could kill YouTube. There might be a massive migration now to other video services, and all the content creators that made YouTube as big as it is, will leave them. That’s what happens if you first let all your users help you get rich, and then taff them over so badly.

I hope Ncsoft and ArenaNet stick up for their customers, and release some sort of a statement denouncing this YouTube policy. But I wouldn’t even hold it against them if they didn’t, because this is just ridiculous and a huge amount of work for everyone.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Angry Joe did a nice video on it, where he even used a Guild Wars 2 review of his as an example, which was receiving PlayNC ownership flags.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAi81_uvztM

I hope both PlayNC and Anet come to the aid of their players in this respect, and help out with the digital right nonsense. People posting videos of your game is the best sort of advertisement for your game. But these content creators need to be protected against insane policies like this.

This may very well spell the end of YouTube by the way.

Just watched the Angry Joe video and came to ask the same thing

Good, people will stop using youtube and it’s archaic sharing policies will be moot.

There’s no way Google/Youtube could have intended for their copyright filter whatever the hell automated system to block celebrities with millions of views and subscribers without notice.

If they did it individually, yeah, that’s different, but most of this is being caused by an automatic content filter

I’d chalk it up to buggy software/poor implementation. Either way, it’s a dumb move on Youtube’s part and I, like many others, am interested in Arenanet’s stance and/or policies on the change.

Basically, on the latest Angry Joe Video, at the 3 minute mark (Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAi81_uvztM#t=180), we see that “PlayNC” has thrown a copyright claim at Angry Joe for showing a picture of him and his Guildmates dancing in the background.

I would like to know if this is just an automated Youtube thing (and what steps they are taking to correct it) or if NCSoft is deliberately trying to take down Angry Joe’s videos despite the praise he has given the game.

Please see this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Areanet-s-stance-on-Youtube-content-ID/first#post3367471

I don’t know if this is related/connected in anyway…

But loads of gaming videos are being taken down/censored off youtube, something to do with goggle apparently…anyway a lot of the gaming companies themselves don’t want this. Blizzard, Ubisoft others have said they are fine with the gaming videos and want them left alone.

Its a big mess about copyright laws apparently…a overreaction…

The problem is mainly on googles policy, right now people can copyright troll youtube videos and submit false copyright claims via content ID without having to prove the request is a reasonable one – as seen when a bunch of blizzard games got flagged.

That is really great to hear. I did not think we would get an answer soon because of all the legal issues, so much appreciated.

Splendid, and thanks for responding so swiftly. We understand that this is a complicated mess that YouTube has placed a lot of game companies in.

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

Hi everyone,

During the last few weeks, there have been a lot of discussions about YouTube and the hot topic lately has been policies about posting to YouTube video content that contains videogame assets. This situation is continuing to develop and we’ll be monitoring YouTube changes, but we’d like to provide some clarification on the matter of our policies.

To use assets (e.g., screenshots, footage) from our games, any content creator needs to comply with the Guild Wars 2 Terms of Use that are detailed here: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/guild-wars-2-content-terms-of-use/. These rules are pretty explicit and haven’t changed since we put them together. They define what content ArenaNet considers out of line. Content creators are not permitted to use our assets to create a commercial product and use of our assets for non-commercial purposes is permitted. Monetizing a fan-created Guild Wars 2 video on YouTube via its partner program is generally not against these Content Terms of Use, just as serving advertising (Google Ads, for instance) on a fansite is not against the Content Terms of Use.

We actually support people sharing their experiences with our game, such as Let’s Play, guides, reviews, or other types of fan videos on YouTube. We generally do not take any action against YouTube videos using our game assets. We will investigate what’s happening with the PlayNC claims. You can contact us at community@arena.net if you have further questions. We’re also going to start reviewing our policies to make sure they’re clear on where we stand regarding content creation. Keep in mind that this will take quite some time since it involves legal reviews.

Thanks a lot for supporting the Guild Wars 2 community by creating awesome content to show your experiences with the game!

So, I’ve been thinking about recording all of the Living Story cinematics and major story events and putting them up on a YouTube channel. I wouldn’t be adding any commentary or anything to it, it would be more of a historical “Catch up on the story so far” series of videos.

Would this be something that you guys would be okay with?

Ms. Lo Presti,
Inactivity is the fertile field in which the thorns of tyranny grow.

Right now its a game reviewer, in the future if you criticize the powers that be, will they flag and take down your video if you were wearing a nike shirt, In the name of the company without their involvment?
In so far as you tube using your company name for these claims, this is how I see it…

“You are responsible for any use and related liabilities with respect to your company name whether or not such use and related liabilities were in any way authorized by You, and it is Your responsibility to safeguard your company name”

I use the same standards that your company uses in its user agreement.

neurojame.8570:

Inactivity is the fertile field in which the thorns of tyranny grow.

Sylvari business lawyers? Hm, maybe we all could use a little more of Ventari’s teachings in our lives.

Act with wisdom, but act.

neurojame.8570:

Ms. Lo Presti,

I believe you mean “Mr.”, but back to the topic at hand, great that there’s been a clear response on this.

This is what I’d Like to see….

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NC Soft and Joe Vargas AKA angry Joe
Plaintiffs
Vs
Google Inc.
Defendant

Nature of the action

Claim 1: Defendant Google inc, knowingly used the name of NC play as a claimant against the review video of Mr. Vargas without the express written permission of NC soft and therefore violated copyright law.

Claim 2: Defendant Google inc, libeled NC soft by publishing a claim against the review of Mr. Vargas which was not initiated by NC soft, thereby damaging the reputation of NC soft and resulting in lost revenue by NC soft ( see https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/I-ve-bought-my-last-gem/first#post3370672) Defendant is seeking damages for lost revenues.

Claim 3: Defendant Google inc, violated the ability for Mr. Vargas to collect revenue by the use of video or audio clips within the online review of video games. Use for criticism or comment are explicitly exempted from copyright law under the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 107. As Mr. Vargas’s source of income is based on the online reviews, the claimant is seeking damages for lost revenues as well as pain and suffering (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQfHdasuWtI)

I know this seems extreme, but keep in mind that this is against google who won a lawsuit after aruging fair use after copying complete books for google books.

Draygo.9473:

The problem is mainly on googles policy, right now people can copyright troll youtube videos and submit false copyright claims via content ID without having to prove the request is a reasonable one – as seen when a bunch of blizzard games got flagged.

Like Mike B mentioned he got a video flagged because he used the word “poop”. Some kitten claimed the word poop was a copyright infrigment.
I just hope Google sort this kitten out.

I would like to see some of the youtube content providers give google a nice lawsuit for damages.

I do actually think it helps this game a lot. I have totally enjoyed watching videos about Guild Wars 2, even before it was released. Woodenpotatoes probably made me decide to buy it along with a few other Youtube podcasters. If anything, those people are very important for both players and the developers. Players get a chance to see what the game is like, know if it will fit them and enjoy watching. Developers get free advertisements.

What more can you wish?

I don’t know if WoodenPotatoes gets ad revenue on his account, but if he does, he would be a victim of this new policy as well. Because all of his videos would automatically be flagged.

I always wondered how these “YouTubers” “got away” with posting such videos with music and clips, because as soon as I post a video of our guild doing Guild Mission, it is almost always flagged and I have to either remove the music or use one of the pre-set sound of YouTube, it’s ridiculous. Sometimes, I can get thru without the flagging, but that’s an exception, rather than the norm.

I feel for these YouTubers…

For fansites the situation is less about loosing money, it is about loosing the advertisement monopoly those fansites often sold to their hosts.

Who cares what ArenaNet rules say. The more immediate contract is with the hoster who expects that in exchange for hosting and funding a fansite, the advertisement revenue goes into his direction. Not in the pockets of fansite individuals placing additional banners on the website or Youtube videos and certainly not to third parties. Even if they own the assets the content is based upon.

If PlayNC disables all the monetization, they can claim what they want on a fansite channel without bothering anybody. If PlayNC keeps monetization turned on, fansites are forced to turn videos private and remove them from the site.

For people earning their money by only monetizing on Youtube, the situation is more dire. They are driven out of business, they do not have a partner backing them. They just got stabbed in the back by Google.

ArenaNet needs to acknowledge the different needs of those tow groups and act differently for both. Fansites can be happy with no ads being on the site, professional Youtube channel operators require the money to still go to them.

Looks like this is an issue again.

“Why did you do this? GuildWars2 I’ve done nothing but promote your game.”
-Angry Loe

Prophet.6257:

Looks like this is an issue again.

“Why did you do this? GuildWars2 I’ve done nothing but promote your game.”
-Angry Loe

ANet knows about it and is working to resolve the situation. Apparently NCSoft is the one that made the claim. https://twitter.com/AngryJoeShow/status/421630568321646592

Prophet.6257:

Looks like this is an issue again.

“Why did you do this? GuildWars2 I’ve done nothing but promote your game.”
-Angry Loe

Is this a NEW claim or just from the Video Joe posted on 13th December 2013 linked above ?
Edit: Ninja’d by Berelious

It’s from Angry Joes facebook page. He started posting about it again around 8:00 am eastern 1/10/14

https://www.facebook.com/goangryjoe

Wow I thought that it will be already resolved. Sooooo no more reviews of guild wars 2 allowed or just Joe is out of luck?

idk, They seem to be working on it still.

I hope it gets fixed. I love watching reviews, commentaries, and podcast about GW2 while I play. It would really suck to lose that aspect of the the game.

Without people like Matt Visual, Wooden Potatoes, Bog Otter, and even Angry Joe’s initial VERY positive reviews I think the community would suffer.

Yeah, what’s the deal on this? This stance conflicts with what’s been stated by Gaile Gray, and with NC Soft as your parent company, do they get the final say? I have old GW1 videos that I never monetized getting flagged for 3rd party content now. Am I going to lose my good standing on YouTube?

It seems NCPlay has yet to resolve the “dispute” despite several other companies having done so (which is BS since they don’t have the right to even make a claim because it’s protected under fair use.)