Japanese YouTuber convicted of copyright violation after uploading Let’s Play videos::A 53-year-old Japanese man has been convicted of copyright infringement after uploading gameplay videos of visual novel Steins;Gate: My Darling’s Embrace and videos summarizing Spy × Family and Steins;Gate anime episodes.
This is a complicated situation because it’s a real life embodiment of an argument often used in the copyright and reaction content debate: the game is a visual novel, which means that unlike say The Witcher 3, the creator can indeed argue that by showing the entirety of the game as a recorded video, the final customer does not need to buy the game to have pretty much the same experience.
For a big game, irrelevant. For a small indie developer? Your visual novel being a YouTube longplay or a streamer react could be the end of most of your revenue.
That’s the devil’s advocate instance on it. My own worldview is very much radical to the opposite extreme, so I’ll refrain from talking much.
Yeah, avoiding copyright infringement (at least in the US) usually requires that your derived work is transformative in some way. And in most games’ cases, simply playing the game and adding some commentary is enough to qualify. Basically, the argument is that you’re transforming the game from being something played to something watched. That the game was originally meant to be played, so the streamer is transforming it into something new by playing it in their own unique way and adding their own commentary about the game.
But for a visual novel, this all goes out the window. At best, the games are a Choose Your Own Adventure book. You make some small decisions to direct the game’s story, but the game is largely just something that you watch. You make those decisions, then you watch it play out until it’s time for another decision. So the added commentary by itself isn’t enough to transform the game into something new.
But all of this happened in Japan, and I have no idea what their copyright laws are like. I know part of their laws require rights holders to actively attempt to shut down infringement, or else they risk losing rights. That’s one of the big reasons Nintendo is so notorious for taking down emulation sites, because they risk losing the rights to their own IPs if they can’t prove that they’re actively defending them. That’s probably a large part of what started the original lawsuit.
What is the purpose of jail time? Wouldn’t a fine be enough to stop him doing it again?
The studios he offended are trying to make an example out of him. Reminds me of Nintendo suing Bowser for $10 Million.
yeah japan is really cruel when it comes to sentencing
Thank goodness they caught this one guy who made these videos without any distribution from a billion dollar company, which for sure did not make any money off of copyright material as well. Smh
Did a billion dollar company stole your gf buddy?
YouTube would need to ban 90% of its videos in Japan to protect its uploaders from copyright violations.
That would probably force Japan to update its copyright laws, but YT won’t do it because they’d loose profits for one quarter
Why is this man getting years in prison for a copyright violation? People shouldn’t be jailed for that, monetary fines is enough. There’s no reason this man should be jailed for uploading gameplay videos online.
I saw this happening eventually and I agree with the copyright strike. I love Let’s Play videos and I have them on in my house all the time. However, spoiling the entire game for a story based game really does cut into the developer’s efforts. But 2 years in prison plus a million yen fine is ridiculous. Prison time is too far. This should be just a copyright strike.
