Is Nintendo Wrong?

Under copyright law, they're well within their rights to do so. But that's not to say that certain provisions of copyright law aren't in any major need of reexamination, because they most certainly are.

Anyway, from a logical viewpoint, it would benefit companies like Nintendo to allow content creators to showcase their games as it basically amounts to free advertisement. Sure, they could pay to produce TV commercials that, at best, will prompt people to roll their eyes at their usually zany nature. But there is kind of a sheep mentality among fans of the big-name gamers on YouTube (Tobuscus, Pewds, Markiplier, etc.), in that when those guys endorse a game, their fans tend to check those games out en masse. And we're not just talking guys with a couple thousand subscribers, here - these guys reach millions of people on a daily basis.

That said, I can also see a bit of logic on the side of game developers to not want any negative press; as a business entity, you have to protect the "good name" of your product, even if you know your product sucks ass. But at the same time, if you're putting out games that are unpleasant to sit through, then you're doing something wrong in the first place. You necessarily forfeit the "right" to prevent people from badmouthing your schlock if you...well, produce schlock, don't you?

 

Free Speech and Freedom of Information! Anytime some corp goons squash someones free speech it pisses me off to no end. Devs need to be less like Derek Smart and actually take the criticisms in stride. and Free Speech specifically defends satire. Only content they should be taking off is if someone posts full vids of Super Marios Bros cartoon or Nintendo Power Hour or something anything else should be left alone. The more people cry about copyright and whine about protecting their intellectual property the more it makes me want to download torrents. :ahh:

 

They don't want to admit that they suck then

 

Part of the problem, as I understand it, is that YouTube doesn't look into whether or not the copyright claims are even being filed by the companies themselves. There are some supposed claims that have been made on popular videos by the companies who own, say, the video game whose clip was used in the aforementioned video. However, when questioned about the copyright claim, some of these companies have said they know nothing about any such claim, which in turn implies that anyone can file for a copyright claim on behalf of a company and YouTube will see the video in question taken down.

Another piece of the issue is, as you may obviously have guessed, that rules of Fair Use grant some monetized YouTube "partners" the ability to host content using copyrighted material. They are not, however, reproducing the material or redistributing it, yet many of the companies seem to want to treat these YouTube "partners" as if they are doing just that. I've held this stance on this issue for years and still, even when it's getting this much attention, nothing is being done about it.