What sort of copyright-flak do the evo-DVDs get?

[Missle Launch]

It's somthing I've been wondering about? Are those things just sold all willy-nilly, and no one complains?

[Rhio2k]

Green Trench Coat will come to your house if you pirate...

[SNAAAAKE]

shame on you if you bootleg evo dvds. SUPPORT THE GOD DAMN SCENE !! :mad:

[Panicked]

shame on you if you bootleg evo dvds. SUPPORT THE GOD DAMN SCENE !! :mad:

He's not talking about bootlegging Evo DVDs. He's talking about the fact that Evo DVDs are copyright infringement.

Where is UltraDavid? He's our resident intellectual property/copyright attorney in training.

[SNAAAAKE]

copyright infringement for what...exactly :confused: ??

[Panicked]

copyright infringement for what...exactly :confused: ??

Using Capcom/Namco/etc's image and music for profit.

[Gasp]

http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=123269

In a nut shell, yes, capcom/snk/arc sys/namco bandai/nintendo/sega lets all this copyright infringement slide because it helps sell their product.

[rsigley]

http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=123269

In a nut shell, yes, capcom/snk/arc sys/namco bandai/nintendo/sega lets all this copyright infringement slide because it helps sell their product.

didn't sega threaten to sue srk which is why they had to stop selling virtua fighter footage from an older evo?

[UltraDavid]

didn't sega threaten to sue srk which is why they had to stop selling virtua fighter footage from an older evo?That's what I've heard but I've never asked to confirm it. I've also heard that SBO had to get Sega's written permission to show VF vids.

If you copy an Evo disc, there's no chance SRK will sue you. SRK is infringing on the game makers' rights already, and you can't have any legal rights on something that's infringing, so they have no grounds to sue you as far as the actual vids go. SRK COULD sue you for infringement of the parts of the videos that they created, like their select screen, extra non-game footage, etc, but that would be stupid and counterproductive for them. You don't want to go making a lawsuit that would only alert companies to the fact that their copyrights are being infringed upon and you don't want to assert rights to a tiny percentage of an overwhelmingly infringing whole; all that'll do is make Capcom etc want to sue you, and the court won't be very sympathetic to your cause.

That said, don't copy Evo vids. I'm all for infringement, to be totally honest (I want to work in copyright policy to change the current rules to be more internet- and user-friendly), but even when things are free, you should still give money to their makers if you want them to continue. Who cares if Britney Spears sings another song or has to perform to make money, but I care (and I imagine you do too) about whether SRK wants to keep this site going, hold another Evo, and produce match vid DVDs.

[Missle Launch]

For the record, I do not plan to pirate the DVDs. I was just curious about EVO's operation.

[Arsenal]

I always wondered that too... Like, if Capcom caught wind of people making money off of their products (like Evo DVDs), but it was probably generating legit sales for them in the long run (people buying copies of SF:AC, SFAA, CCCv2, etc), what would they do?

[UltraDavid]

Actually, Capcom DOES know about the Evo tournaments and DVDs. A couple of old-school guys work for Capcom now and they've responded to me about this issue before. Capcom knows, but Capcom likes it because, as you said, it generates interest in their products. They're not going to do anything to hurt SRK, Evo, or any other similar group or event.

[Arsenal]

Actually, Capcom DOES know about the Evo tournaments and DVDs. A couple of old-school guys work for Capcom now and they've responded to me about this issue before. Capcom knows, but Capcom likes it because, as you said, it generates interest in their products. They're not going to do anything to hurt SRK, Evo, or any other similar group or event.

That's pretty cool. However, at point does Capcom intervene and say, "hey, we want a piece of the pie too?"

[rsigley]

yes they want a piece of the negative money evo makes every year

[Missle Launch]

While reading this (http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/comics/digital.php) comic up to page 46, I came to this conclusion:

Gameplay-footage is NOT within the copyrights of the IP-owner. Games are largely interactive audio/video applications, and match/combo-videos are largely noninteractive audio/video streams. Portions of a game where the focus of interaction is upon the elapse of a video-stream (such as a cutscene) ARE within the copyrights of the IP-owner, in regards to selling footage. The grey-area of this case is (1) in-game cutscenes, and (2) date-sim style games, where the entire application is based upon manipulating the course of a primarily noninteractive audio/video stream. (1) is best decided on an individual basis, and (2) forbids profiting off of footage, as the footage is the heart of the game.

Trademarks become an issue when the footage is not a direct feed, but a secondhand(?) recording. In such a case where the indirect feed portrays a confusing image (a bunch of fuckers lighting up and getting violent during/after playing CvS2, for instance), favor would go to the IP-owner.

And, beyond all that, it's free marketing; as people'd think "holy shit! I can make a living by playing fighting-games! I'm-a get as many fuckers as I can to buy this and play it a whole lot!"

[Arsenal]

yes they want a piece of the negative money evo makes every year

I wasn't thinking now, but if Evo grows (which it has, in terms of scope and $$$), and keeps growing, then I'm sure there will come a point where Capcom says, "we want in or we shut you down".

Maybe not that extreme, but you understand my meaning.

[UltraDavid]

Gameplay-footage is NOT within the copyrights of the IP-owner. Games are largely interactive audio/video applications, and match/combo-videos are largely noninteractive audio/video streams. Portions of a game where the focus of interaction is upon the elapse of a video-stream (such as a cutscene) ARE within the copyrights of the IP-owner, in regards to selling footage. The grey-area of this case is (1) in-game cutscenes, and (2) date-sim style games, where the entire application is based upon manipulating the course of a primarily noninteractive audio/video stream. (1) is best decided on an individual basis, and (2) forbids profiting off of footage, as the footage is the heart of the game.
Yeah, well, that's the same argument I made to my copyright professor last year and he dismissed it. I tried to separate the game qua game from the mere audio/visual works (in which game creators definitely have copyrights). I said that by playing the game, the players reinterpret the fundamental facts of the game in a way that's wholly new each time, and that the players should therefore have some rights regarding their gaming sessions and any video footage taken of them. My prof said no, gamers don't gain any rights by playing a game just like book readers don't gain any rights from reading a book (in case you're wondering, no, you don't gain any rights from reading a choose-your-own-adventure book). This is the same argument and response made in Williams v Arctic in the 80s, where a guy tried to argue that people who played the game Defender were coauthors because by playing it they were reinterpreting it; the court said no, that argument doesn't fly, gamers are not coauthors and they have no rights regarding the copyrighted material.

This is also basically the premise of a 50-page research paper I'm gonna be writing next year.

I don't think it's a dead argument because games today allow for waaaaaay more control on the part of the player than ever before. For Defender you could only control a very limited part of the game. There was no storyline to speak of, the playing field was tiny, and you couldn't play with other people. Today, in games like World of Warcraft, the player essentially uses the graphical interface given him by Blizzard to make his own story, to change the world as he sees fit, to control all sorts of stuff, to work alongside other people, and so on. In playing these kinds of games the player is actively creating new things all the time. I don't think it's at all like reading a book now because the book equivalent to Wow would be where the reader actively writes a large portion of the story (and I don't think it's a great comparison anyway, I mean it's impossible to film your mental interpretation of a book's storyline). I think the argument that the player could be considered a coauthor or at least the author of an implicitly-approved derivative work is pretty strong with games like WoW.

With games like Street Fighter I think the case is still there, but that it's a little less strong. It's instructive to think about chess, which is similar to fighting games in many important respects. Chess is obviously in the public domain, so the only possible copyright considerations are in whether a game played by two players can be considered a joint work with the two players as authors (unlike reading a book, playing a game of chess can be recorded by writing down the moves). And the answer to that is no, it can't. I don't remember any case names offhand, but a couple decisions have made clear that unannotated games have no copyright implications. This means that SF players who play a game against each other probably don't have any rights in the game they played either. However, for chess, an annotated game, which is basically a game with commentary inserted into the moves (things like exclamation points for great moves and question marks for crappy ones), is copyrightable. I'm not real sure how to analogize this into SF. Maybe it's like a game of SF with commentary from an announcer, but I'm not sure that's really the same thing because with chess the commentary is inserted into the actual game, not just written around it; the chess equivalent of Rock commentating on Denjin Video is probably more of just a page with a chess game on the left side and some dude's written thoughts placed separately on the right side. In any case, there's a potential argument there and it's certainly stronger than in the days of Defender, so it's a possibility for sure.

[Missle Launch]

My argument is not that the players have created anything unique via the game, but that recordings of gameplay are fundamentally different from any game, as the interactivity that defines what is a game is stripped. If one were to record themself describing a painting--every detail, down to the individual brush-strokes--and sell that recording, the painting is not plagerized, since paintings are entirely visual, and the audio-recording is entirely devoid of a visual element.

[UltraDavid]

My argument is not that the players have created anything unique via the game, but that recordings of gameplay are fundamentally different from any game, as the interactivity that defines what is a game is stripped. If one were to record themself describing a painting--every detail, down to the individual brush-strokes--and sell that recording, the painting is not plagerized, since paintings are entirely visual, and the audio-recording is entirely devoid of a visual element.

A work can have copyrights in several different component parts, and should the copyright owner choose, those rights can be exercise in regards to the work as a whole or just to the component parts. For example, an author of a picture book has copyrights in the work as a whole, in its written phrasing, in its pictures, and possibly even in its arrangement. It's not the case that he can only sue someone who photocopies it or otherwise takes both the pictures and the words in the exact arrangement they were in in the book. He can do that, of course, but he can also sue someone who copied a chunk of text and put it into a different format or who took a picture out of context and used it in some unrelated way (assuming no fair use is implicated).

Same thing for a game. A game has a few different aspects to it and one of them is the audiovisual work, that is, the video and sound used in the game; the copyright owner owns the rights to that audiovisual work, and if anyone infringes on it, he can sue them. A direct feed taken from a game of Street Fighter directly infringes on the game owner's copyright in the audiovisual work, and barring fair use, that makes such match vids infringing.

You're right about your painting scenario, the painter can have no copyright infringement claims against you, but in that situation you're not taking (that is, infringing against) any of the aspects of the copyrighted work; the painting is completely visual and your recording is completely audial. This isn't a great analogy for a match vid, though, since a match vid does reproduce the audiovisual component of a game. I see what you're saying, the match vid is devoid of the interactivity that is a vital component of the game and without which the overall work would not be a game, but again, the fact that something doesn't take the whole of a copyrighted work doesn't insulate it from copyright infringement. You can still get busted for just taking the audiovisual work.



Oh, hey, maybe the way a Street Fighter vid is like an annotated chess game is if you don't take a direct feed but film the guys playing and watching and reacting as well.