Let's Play Copyright Infringement.

[Dunlap]

Let's Plays are good exposure in the way that music downloads are good exposure.

[Fe 26]

While certainly games over the last 40 years were trashed, outside of a few truly rare items there was always enough to go around for everyone that wanted them at relatively decent prices.
Not the case anymore. And guess what, old stuff is still getting trashed. A regular of mine works at a recycling center. He's scored a multitude of hard to find crap literally from the trash.

It would still be worse without the volume of presence this shit currently has online. Anyone with a little effort can google and see going prices and make the decision to not put them in the garbage.

The alternative is like early comics. Kids didn't know, shit went in the trash. Mom's didn't know, in the trash, etc.

What's there even to argue about this? A lot more of early gaming is going to be passed on than early comics. And a lot of that is how the web is constantly refreshing interest and makes going prices easily accessible.

Sure, some shit still goes in the garbage because of YellerDog and his mom, but at a much lower rate than even 20 years ok.

[kedawa]

I wouldn't care if every old game got tossed into a live volcano as long as the ROMs are dumped.

[Fe 26]

yeah, yeah, tnl doesn't want clutter because they need every surface smooth enough to snort a line. I get it.

[GohanX]

Man, I picked the wrong week to quit doing coke.

[gamevet]

While certainly games over the last 40 years were trashed, outside of a few truly rare items there was always enough to go around for everyone that wanted them at relatively decent prices.
Not the case anymore. And guess what, old stuff is still getting trashed. A regular of mine works at a recycling center. He's scored a multitude of hard to find crap literally from the trash.

I saw a pristine looking SNES sitting in a recycling center. I was tempted to offer an employee $20 to take it off of their hands.

[Frogacuda]

I don't like copyright enforcement, but if we're going to have it on a site like YouTube the consequences should be the same for all types of media. Inconsistent enforcement seems to value music first above everything else.

Fair use is not clear cut like that though. From wikipedia, the four factors to consider are:

1) The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2) The nature of the copyrighted work;
3) The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole;
4) The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

So not only does a game get held to a different standard than a movie, but literally different kinds of games and even different kinds of Let's Plays can land differently under the law.

[Satsuki]

I have little to add as far as evaluation goes as some of my fondest memories were just watching others play vidya. I suppose it's quite a bit different if you're an eight year old going over to your neighbor's house to watch him play Super Mario but not actually buying the game yourself. Or....maybe it's not. I'm not sure yet. I like the idea of having older games ("vintage" as it were, maybe 10+ years old) being of easy accessibility like ROMs are. The more modern ones, I really don't know.

However....is there actually modern Let's Plays without dumb, constant commentary? If so, I'm going to watch some. Additionally, why don't companies simply solicit YouTube to block out the copyrighted material, like when they silence licensed music? Just put a black box over the footage, or st. I'm very surprised they don't already.

[Cowutopia]

You can't just draw a line based on story or companies will start shoehorning in story to meet the non streaming requirements under whatever black and white law you came up with.

[Bacon McShig]

Yea, I don't even think it has to be years. The vast majority of sales happen in the first month and these games are usually 50 cents on Humble Bundle in six months.

But if a developer says please don't stream our game for two months that strikes me as very reasonable.

Yeah, this is where I'm at with it.

Unfortunately, the types of games most negatively impacted by this are also usually the least equipped to monitor and urge enforcement of any such violations.