Nintendo is very hesitant to be okay with gameplay videos/streams in general. Though in terms of TASing in particular it might have to do with emulation
I'd prefer human history shutting down rather than this. When something that created your childhood now tries to kill your youth and maturity.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
This Nico user's article (linked in the NeoGAF thread) notes that there was a similar occurrence in 2008, where many Mario romhack / "automatic Mario" videos were taken down.
This year, romhack and TAS videos are being targeted; from the article's graphs it seems that the romhack videos have been steadily targeted starting around mid-February, whereas TAS takedowns have been mainly the past day or so.
For those who want to save more videos, there's a Firefox addon called Nicofox that downloads Niconico videos along with the comments that you see during the video. (It doesn't save the video description though, so you have to save that yourself in a txt file or something.)
Nicofox doesn't seem to be working with Firefox 36 and up, but it does work with 35 or below, including FirefoxPortable 35.0.1.
You can also use DownloadHelper to download any media files that are loaded into the page. For Nicovideo, just load the page with the movie on it and its download option will appear at the DownloadHelper icon in the bar.
Ew that addon try to make you pay to use it. FlashGot is far better free.
Huh? DownloadHelper is free and it works for me. It's never bothered me with pay messages either.
Edit: Just to clarify, I am referring to the Firefox extension, not the Chrome one.
I remember years ago when someone tried to monetize TAS videos on YouTube and I warned that they should not do that. Gameplay videos technically speaking infringe copyright, and the only reason they are allowed is because companies do not care. But if someone starts making money out of them, they might start caring, which is why we should tread very carefully. We do not want to draw too much attention of the IP owners, especially to the main tasvideos site.
(I seem to remember that some people argued that they do not infringe copyright. They do; get over it. Perhaps if their audio is muted there might be a case, maybe, but even then it's dubious. Copyright also protects the graphics assets, and derivative works. The concept of "fair use" is fuzzy, and mostly protects reviews, criticism and parody, and it depends a lot on the jurisdiction.)
For some reason big Japanese companies seem quite dickish about it lately. First Square/Enix, now Nintendo. (And I'm sure Sony has done something like this in later years as well.)
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Are you an attorney specialized in copyright law, or otherwise have extensive knowledge and experience on the subject? Because if you are not, and this is not intended to be in any way derogatory or offensive, then your personal opinion doesn't matter much.
Granted, I'm not a lawyer either, nor do I have that much extensive knowledge nor experience. However, I do know that in most jurisdictions (including those where tasvideos.org is hosted, as well as most of YouTube servers) copyright not only protects the original work, but also derivative works.
Perhaps a bit surprisingly, many people don't know about copyright extending to derivative works. For example, the vast majority of so-called fanfic of existing works infringe copyright (but here, too, IP owners seldom care, even though they would have the legal right to shut it down). It also applies to other kinds of derivative works. For example, when Square Enix shut down the unofficial Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes fan-made mod, they had the legal right to do so, because it was a derivative work of their IP.
In other words, you can't even use concepts and ideas from a copyrighted work in your own derivative work, not to talk about using actual assets, such as music and graphics. No matter how much you claim that "let's play" and "speedrun" videos are "original work", they use copyrighted assets, including music and graphics. They are pretty much derivative work, and they infringe copyright if you don't have the express permission of the owner of those original assets.
Granted, "let's play" videos are in that gray area between genuine copyright infringement and legally supported fair use, but from what I have seen, they tend to lie a bit on the wrong side of the fuzzy line. IP owners do seem to have the legal right to shoot down such videos if they so desire, and there's nothing you can do about it.
In most jurisdictions "fair use" covers moderate use of the original material for the purpose of review, commentary, criticism and, in some jurisdictions, parody. It does not cover extensive use of the original material in "let's play" videos.
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
If Nintendo takes down charity TAS videos, like those from AGDQ, they don't care about cancer research.
How about including a message in each published TAS: "This video is totally free. It was done by a happy person who probably has no cancer. Please donate to the following cancer research organization. Thank you."
This way every TAS would be a charity event and then anyone who removes a TAS from any site would be a total jerk.
Incidentally, this kind of thing is one reason (among many, many others) why you should support greater restrictions on copyright terms. The original USA terms were 14 years from creation, with the option to renew once for another 14 years -- that would mean that any games from 2001 or 1987, depending on renewal, would be in the public domain and you could do whatever you wanted with them.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Joined: 12/8/2012
Posts: 706
Location: Missouri, USA
To my knowledge, nobody was making money off of niconico encodes. I don't understand why Nintendo seems to dislike free advertising (technically valid legalities aside).
"But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." - 1 Corinthians 2:9
It's not like Nintendo (or any other company) is actually losing a cent from people making videos or something. But hey, capitalism isn't supposed to make sense, right?
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
