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So, after about a week of the ‘Content ID Wave’ causing claims to spread like weeds across the accounts of many a gaming Youtuber and plenty of content owners having to hold their hands up and say “It’s not us guys! We don’t have a clue what’s happening!”, Google has finally sent out a reply to the general Youtube population.
And oh boy do I have some words to say about it…
Hi from YouTube,
You might have heard about, or been impacted by an increase in copyright claims made on videos over the past week. We’re getting in touch to explain what’s happening and how you can get back to creating and monetizing great videos.
What’s happening
Content ID is YouTube’s system for scanning videos for copyrighted content and giving content owners choices on what they want us to do with them. Last week, we expanded the system to scan more channels, including those affiliated with a multi-channel network (“MCN”). As a result, some channels, including many gaming channels, saw claims appear against their videos from audio or video copyright holders.
Understanding Content ID claims
Keep in mind one video may contain multiple copyrighted works, any of which could potentially result in a claim. For example a record label may own music playing in the video (even in the background), a music distributor may own a game’s soundtrack, or a game publisher may own in-game cinematic content.
Also, online rights are often resold to companies like music labels and aggregators. While you might not recognize the owner, this doesn’t necessarily mean their claims are invalid.
Deciding what to do
When a claim is made, you’ll see what’s been claimed, who’s claimed it, what type of claim it is (audio or video), and you can play back the part of your video that it matched. We want to make it as easy as possible for you to act on Content ID claims, and you can find out all your next steps, dispute options, and other troubleshooting resources here.
If you’re creating videos with content from other people, remember that rights ownership can be complicated and different owners have different policies. Be aware of music. Many games allow you to turn off background music, while leaving sound effects enabled. And if you’re looking for music you can freely use (and monetize!), check out our Audio Library.
Whether gaming, music or comedy is your passion, know that we love what you do. We’ve worked hard to design Content ID and other tools to give everyone — from individual creators to media companies — the opportunity to make great videos and earn money. As YouTube grows, we want to make sure we’re providing the right product features to ensure that everyone continues to thrive.
Sincerely,
The YouTube team
Now I’m glad that Google has finally acknowledged that something is going on. That a minor state of havoc has been created…
But this message solves nothing. They don’t even admit that there is a problem, instead taking a passive “Not our problem” approach. The message is somewhat patronising in tone, at least it sounds that way to me, and while it’s not exactly scolding in nature, it’s clear that Google is not on the side of the creators that helped make the site what it is today. The sentence “While you might not recognize the owner, this doesn’t necessarily mean their claims are invalid” especially just feels like a slap to the face of someone who spent hours trying to make a good video and is now finding themselves dealing with having their hard work making money for someone else.
Game developers have (mostly) come out in support of those who make the gaming review videos for Youtube, and removing claims from the videos of those creators who have taken up the offer to e-mail the developers to get them removed is just putting a greater load of work onto companies who could be working on the games. The Youtubers themselves are now having to shoulder the burden of how they deal with the claims, with some channels electing to remove videos, hide them or in a few cases, leave Youtube for good. Of course, a good deal of the claims are related to music and while certain developers have been leaning on the music companies they use for their games’ music, the music industry has a reputation for being inflexible about issues relating to copyrights and don’t seem to be showing the same support as the game developers are to the Youtubers right now.
Unfortunately, what this message seems to confirm more than anything else is that Google has decided that it won’t help its user base, leaving them and the developers shouldering a burden that came out of nowhere and has caused disruption to what is a large section of its website.
Stay tuned for more articles as this story continues to develop.
Last night the person in charge of Starbound’s development team released an entry on the game’s website setting out a list of the upcoming changes the team at Chucklefish are hoping to make to the game through its Beta development and potentially even after release.
Tiy explains that the list was made by a fan called Xealaz on the Starbound Reddit had made a nice list and that though there are plenty of other things they are working on that it was a pretty nice way of listing everything players can expect from later updates.
The full post is linked at the bottom of the article but among the expected changes are the implementation of ‘spaceship dungeons’ and spaceship combat (including boarding, pirates in spaaaaace!), biome hazards, NPC spawners and NPCs with better AI (they’ll know if you’re stealing their stuff!), story-missions with bosses at the end and the ability to drastically alter a planet’s surface from your spaceship.
Yesterday the Playstation Europe blog announced something that I think many fans of Sony’s console have been wanting for a while: that Minecraft was getting a console version for the Playstation 3 within the week.
In the blog ‘Owen from Mojang’ gives a quick overview of the game, introducing its concept for those not aware of it yet and answering the questions that are most likely to be frequently asked. The release will be a download from the Playstation Store with planned versions for the Vita and the next-gen Playstation 4 in the works although these version don’t yet have release dates. Upon download Minecraft: Playstation 3 Edition will be as up-to-date as its Xbox counterpart and both console versions of the game should now be released at the same time.
Skins and other content will also be available to download from the Store soon after the release, although there’s not yet word on if any of it will be Sony-exclusive. There’s also no word on compatibility with the upcoming Vita and PS4 version and as always Herobrine will remain a mere myth within the game (maybe, that question was answered with a ‘probably not’ so…)
Minecraft: Playstation 3 Edition will be available to download from the Playstation Store from the December 18th.
Yesterday I wrote up an article on what I called the ‘content ID claim wave’ that is currently sweeping Youtube, having a large effect on Youtubers who make gaming content. To do this and because I value accurate journalism (because hey, that’s my job at the end of the day here) I had to do a lot of research. This led me to a few websites with articles on the same subject and everywhere I went I saw an awful lot of the same comment…
“No sympathy, they got what was coming to them. You’ll have to get real jobs now Youtubers!”
Now as someone who used to hear the latter part of that sentence addressed to myself often 2-3 years ago, only ‘Youtuber’ was replaced with ‘media student’, I have to take issue with the assumption that content-creation or anything artistic can never be a ‘real job’.
Here you have people who spend their days putting in hours of work to make videos that might only end up being 15 minutes long. Some bigger groups put up at least one of these videos EVERY DAY. That’s a lot of filming, editing, tweaking and uploading to do. As well these Youtubers interact with their audiences and colleagues/fellow Youtubers through social media and e-mail, they have to find the best equipment both hardware and software to make sure they produce the best quality of content they can, they need to plan and schedule their days accordingly to get everything done, sometimes working ridiculous hours just to get something finished, they need to know the copyright and other related laws like the backs of their hands. Why? Because for the ones that have quit their day jobs to pursue a dream job they are constantly having to budget and watch their money flow. If they drop the ball or screw up in some way, it could have dire consequences for them. Just a pitfall of self-employment. And this is what the content ID wave has made a lot more likely for so many Youtubers caught in it, that is why they are complaining.
Boogie2988 covers this part of the argument better than I could in his video though:
Best part is so many of the ‘real job’ comments seem to assume that Youtubers love exploiting the game developers, but no this isn’t the case. I’ve seen so many creators, even before this episode that said time and time again “developers if you have a problem with what we are doing, let us sit down and talk about this so we’re both happy”. Then you have the fact that many of the developers are coming out in the last few days and saying “we’ve no idea what’s going on, e-mail us and we’ll help you” to a lot of people affected by the wave so it seems both sides here are willing to work towards a common good. Maybe this is hope for an agreement finally being made and the ‘grey area’ that a Let’s Play or Game Review video has been for years finally having a light shined on it and tidied up.
I know it seems that making videos for Youtube is an easy job but I can tell you from experience that it’s far from it. Setting up even the smallest necessary amount of equipment takes time to fine-tune and the number of times I’ve recorded something for an hour or more only to watch back the footage and find that either the sound is off or the picture quality not good enough are too many to count. Video-making is frustrating yet I keep trying because I want to get better at it, and the videos I have completed I’ve gotten some positive feedback on. For me having finished a video and thinking that it’s ‘good but I can do a little better next time’ is an amazingly positive feeling. And doing it isn’t even my job.
I know that I am biased thanks to my degree and my job, but if you still have doubts about any sort of media career as a job remember this. If you watch television, listen to the radio, read a book or indeed consume any type of media after coming home from your ‘real job’… well, you’ve benefited from the efforts of those you are saying don’t have important or useful jobs.
Don’t tell me that the media isn’t useful to society when it keeps you entertained. And as Boogie2988 says in his video – ‘Have a heart’.
Some news stories make you smile or laugh, others make you cry or rage. Then there are the elite few that make you go “WTF?” Put this firmly in the latter category.
When Democracy 3 – the latest title in Positech Games’ series of PC-based Political Strategy games – was preparing for its US launch, not one person broke a sweat. The game, self-dubbed “the ultimate political strategy game,” was launched on Steam on October 14, 2013 – as well as a retail game for PC, Mac and Linux – with nobody raising an eyelid to its game-play simulating the career as president or prime minister of a democratic government, the very theme of the series’ eight-year history. So why, in all seriousness, is a “major U.S. advertising agency” refusing to run banner ads promoting the game due to its “political content”?
Cliff Harris, the founder of Positech Games, reported on his blog yesterday that an ad for the recently-released Democracy 3 was deemed by a “BIG game-advertising agency” to be inappropriate to run on a particular website. When Harris asked why, he was told, “We can not promote any politics as this is a sensitive topic.”
Harris was noticeably unimpressed with the response, believing politics is a MUCH less sensitive subject than some of the OTHER things commonly featured in today’s games that go without criticism – as evidenced by the next statement on his blog:
“I bet ads for games like Hitman, or GTA, or games where you get slow-mo closeups of people’s skulls being blasted apart by high-caliber bullets are just fine. But discuss income tax? OH NOES THE WORLD WILL END! It’s stuff like this that sometimes makes me ashamed to be in this industry. Half of the industry wants to be grown up and accepted as art, the other half have the mentality of seven year olds. I’m pretty cynical, but I never expected my ads for a game about government-simulation to be too controversial to be shown (for money no less…).”
True enough. What’s more, the whole controversy smacks to me as discriminating against Democracy 3 rather than a genuine concern. After all, politics in video games is not exactly unheard of – there have been games as far back as the NES era where you played as a president of the United States or leader of some fictionalised land. For example, how about Civilization? A real-time strategy series inviting players to “Build an empire to stand the test of time”, Civilization has a much longer history than Democracy, beginning in 1991 in the DOS computer era and still going 20 years later. The games involve you making decisions on places to build; wars to fight; and even setting diplomatic rules – which makes them also political in nature even if it’s not as obviously signposted. If political content is really as big a problem as this unidentified agency is implying, why has Civilization had a free pass for so long? Here’s hoping common sense prevails – though sadly, it seems to do so less often these days…
