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- Feb 25, 2013
No actually, even though it's mostly shit criticism, it still classes as such and therefore falls under Fair Use.
"angry" gamers/critics
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No actually, even though it's mostly shit criticism, it still classes as such and therefore falls under Fair Use.
- Joined
- Jul 17, 2014
So did Phelan and Allison just give up, or follow in CA's methods of opening patreons and slowing down actual content? All I see that's new is that he's not doing Halloweenie because he didn't get paid enough and Allison's new movie reviews are insanely boring so she has to do about five Baywatch episodes to distract people.
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2013
Surprised to say, but no. As much as I'd like to see these people get sued (especially morons like Doug), it still fair use because they're adding their own stuff on top of just using the footage.
ZepFloyd94
kiwifarms.net
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- Dec 28, 2014
Just intoning "fair use" doesn't mean something is. For instance, if you posted an entire movie, and then at the end, just said "this is shit," your intention may have been to criticize the movie, but it certainly wouldn't be fair use.
Even something like MST3K done without permission to a movie might not pass muster. The case hasn't been tried. The legal issues surrounding it is why they do RiffTrax instead. (For those who don't know, this is basically an MST3K treatment of a movie distributed as just the audio. The end user syncs it to the video of the actual movie.)
While, for instance, the kind of reviews you see on something like an actual TV show would almost always qualify as fair use, those usually just use brief sections of the movie interspersed with commentary, with the commentary being the bulk of the content.
A lot of "Internet critics" do what basically amounts to just playing the entire movie or game, or large chunks of it, while babbling over it occasionally.
This is actually pretty questionable.
Personally, I think gameplay videos are more something created using a software program created by someone else, and claiming copyright over it is somewhat like Adobe claiming copyright over anything altered with Photoshop. However, they also generally contain specific assets and content that is copyrighted as well, like copyrighted characters and graphics.
This puts it in a no-man's-land that isn't settled law.
It really comes down to what the game company is willing to put up with, unless you really have the money to litigate it or get something like the EFF behind you.
For instance, upload a Let's Play and you're probably okay. Monetize it, and get ready for trouble. Make a video about how the game is shit, and wait for the frivolous C&D.
- Joined
- Feb 25, 2013
They quit. Allison was fucked about by Mike Michaud and The Walkers and they fired her for not being on Skype within 15 minutes notice. Phelan and Andrew Dickman left in solidarity.
- Joined
- Mar 25, 2015
I was actually a bit curious, so I quickly jumped onto Channel Awesome to see how many of the producers I still recognize as someone who used to watch their material a lot around 2012.
I recognized two people: ChaosD1 (who technically gets most of his funding and his audience from MMO Grinder and he has his own separate website and Patreon anyway - he's barely affiliated with CA) and Nash, who still puts up the WTFIWWY segments of Radio Dead Air on CA. Everyone else appears to be new blood, which means that a good portion of CA's original staff has left.
Now, that's not really surprising. E-Fame is an extremely fleeting thing and it's not uncommon to see some popular YouTube artists rise and fall in the span of two or three years, depending on how dedicated they are to their channel or if they simply lose relevance. Fred use to be one of the biggest things on YouTube but he's since been usurped by Let's Players like PewDiePie. I remember hearing about how some producers like That Chick With The Goggles have simply stopped producing videos and have basically left their Internet relevancy behind to live a more normal life off the computer.
However, given CA's history with people like LordKaT, Holly, and Lupa, losing a lot of producers in a span of three years shows to older fans that there was a fallout between management and staff that caused a lot of their content producers to leave for greener pastures. Not to mention that losing all of these people means that you also lose the fans that they attracted. If someone was on TGWTG for Lupa and Lupa leaves the site, they don't have any incentive to join anymore, do they?
The biggest issue the site has, imo, is the fact that most of their newest content are YouTube producers. Unless they put some sort of clause stating that all of their new videos now have to go through the Channel Awesome channel or if they've formed their own YouTube network that encompasses these channels, most of their fans don't see the reason to visit CA if they like this one guy off of YouTube if they can just catch their videos on YouTube. The loss of Blip, a lot of their old staff and a lack of incentive for new fans to visit the website means that their website is growing increasingly irrelevant. The funny thing is that a lot of their producers probably see that as well. Linkara, as some people have said, still contributes to Channel Awesome but he also has a Patreon up. They're setting up fallback incomes for their Internet careers when CA shuts down.
And let's be honest here. Barring the creation of some huge Internet phenomenon like a second Nostalgia Critic, we'll all be surprised if CA lives to see 2020.
I recognized two people: ChaosD1 (who technically gets most of his funding and his audience from MMO Grinder and he has his own separate website and Patreon anyway - he's barely affiliated with CA) and Nash, who still puts up the WTFIWWY segments of Radio Dead Air on CA. Everyone else appears to be new blood, which means that a good portion of CA's original staff has left.
Now, that's not really surprising. E-Fame is an extremely fleeting thing and it's not uncommon to see some popular YouTube artists rise and fall in the span of two or three years, depending on how dedicated they are to their channel or if they simply lose relevance. Fred use to be one of the biggest things on YouTube but he's since been usurped by Let's Players like PewDiePie. I remember hearing about how some producers like That Chick With The Goggles have simply stopped producing videos and have basically left their Internet relevancy behind to live a more normal life off the computer.
However, given CA's history with people like LordKaT, Holly, and Lupa, losing a lot of producers in a span of three years shows to older fans that there was a fallout between management and staff that caused a lot of their content producers to leave for greener pastures. Not to mention that losing all of these people means that you also lose the fans that they attracted. If someone was on TGWTG for Lupa and Lupa leaves the site, they don't have any incentive to join anymore, do they?
The biggest issue the site has, imo, is the fact that most of their newest content are YouTube producers. Unless they put some sort of clause stating that all of their new videos now have to go through the Channel Awesome channel or if they've formed their own YouTube network that encompasses these channels, most of their fans don't see the reason to visit CA if they like this one guy off of YouTube if they can just catch their videos on YouTube. The loss of Blip, a lot of their old staff and a lack of incentive for new fans to visit the website means that their website is growing increasingly irrelevant. The funny thing is that a lot of their producers probably see that as well. Linkara, as some people have said, still contributes to Channel Awesome but he also has a Patreon up. They're setting up fallback incomes for their Internet careers when CA shuts down.
And let's be honest here. Barring the creation of some huge Internet phenomenon like a second Nostalgia Critic, we'll all be surprised if CA lives to see 2020.
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2013
I'd be more surprised if it manages to live past 2015, given the direction it's heading in.
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2015
@AnOminous makes a lot of good points on current copyright law, but ultimately, I think what needs to settle the issue is for people to go back and look at what copyright law was actually created for. It wasn't created to reward originality, and it wasn't created to compensate large corporations. Copyright exists to provide content creators with a better means of financial compensation than the patronage system.
Unfortunately, we've gotten to the point in society where we support copyright law simply because it's the law, which is never the reason you should support anything. There needs to be serious reform in numerous areas in order to fix this problem, and while hacks like Doug Walker will have it a bit easier as a result, it's a small price to pay for actually structuring the law around common sense and basic morality.
Unfortunately, we've gotten to the point in society where we support copyright law simply because it's the law, which is never the reason you should support anything. There needs to be serious reform in numerous areas in order to fix this problem, and while hacks like Doug Walker will have it a bit easier as a result, it's a small price to pay for actually structuring the law around common sense and basic morality.
If anything, the CA crew is probably a lot worse off for staying behind than they'd be for not getting involved at all. Now that blip.tv has finally shed the mortal coil, most of the benefits they gained from Google is actually more worthless than it was with the changeover from thatguywiththeglasses.com to channelawesome.com.
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2014
Actually, it was specifically created for that reason. The language in the Constitution which enables copyright, often called the Copyright Clause (even though it also suggests patents), goes like this:
Progress implies originality.
Unfortunately, the courts really don't seem to give a flying fuck about the original purpose of copyright law, and legal arguments invoking the actual purpose of copyright law, as well as the language about "limited Times" have basically fallen flat. The "limited Times" language basically means nothing. Congress can just extend the copyright term whenever Mickey Mouse is about to go into the public domain ad infinitum. So if they extended the copyright term to "15 million years and a day" that would presumably be okay.
That's pretty much what the 2003 case Eldred v. Ashcroft stands for.
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2015
I guess a better way of phrasing it is ワタシワバカガイジンデス。But an even better way of phrasing it is that when we use the term originality in modern context, we're speaking in very narrow terms of the word. Like when people say Hunger Games shouldn't be published since it's a ripoff of Battle Royale. What matters is fostering a better method of payment than the patronage system, whereas modern copyright law has actively created a new patronage system enforced at gunpoint to benefit large corporations like Viacom and Disney which need it less than anybody.
Which is stupid anyway since Disney only ever uses Mickey Mouse for marketing nowadays. Their trademark on him is never going to go away, but that's just as fine as the trademark on Coca Cola never going away. It's absurd, and downright offensive given how much Disney itself has always ran on reimagining public domain characters in their own works, that their own actual characters like Mickey aren't in the public domain by now.
Hellsperger
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2015
You know, corporate works are supposed to start becoming public domain again on January 1, 2019, as on that day everything published as work-for-hire in 1923 will be PD. Let's hope corporate interests are kept at bay this time.
- Joined
- Jul 17, 2014
No, I mean after they quit CA, on Phelan's own site. I worded that badly, I meant that they feel they're being just like CA despite their issues with it, with the whole lack of content despite being paid for it even more. They still were doing their own thing of reviews and suddenly after both had their Patreons up they've done nothing but release a trickle of content, even after Allison got rid of her regular movie reviews for a campy 80s feel with her just standing there explaining the movie. I forgot what it's called.
- Joined
- Feb 25, 2013
Ahh right I get you now, Phelous does a lot of bootlegged toy reviews now and released an episode on The Real Ghostbusters recently, but yeah, Allison has slowed down recently.
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- Dec 28, 2014
Just wait for the new law extending copyright terms another 20 years, as Eldred prefigures.
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- Jun 23, 2015
if he is doing that, then it is a bad thing to block everyone you see.
- Joined
- May 25, 2013
I could buy the fair use argument back when the reviews were less than 10 minutes long. Now it seems like some of these reviews are using 20% of the movie.
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- Sep 3, 2014
That and most of them give out the entire plot in a synopsis, not a review.
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- Feb 3, 2013
And if they ever did give a review in their synopsis, it would come off as half-assed compared to their synopsis.
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- May 25, 2013
What I found really irritating was Walker's argument that he was helping The Room by giving it exposure, as if the movie was not already a massive cult smash, as if Walker found it toiling away in obscurity, plucked it up, and declared that he would do for it what MST3K did to Manos.