My
company, Nova Shock, is a video production company centered on creating video
game play throughs, with live action videos and films in the future. There is a big video game play through
movement on Youtube, with other companies and individuals, and with success
usually comes with some setbacks. Many
of these setbacks started with companies going after Youtube and the fall back
from those lawsuits affect those who upload videos onto the platform. The first lawsuit focused on Global Music
Rights group suing Youtube for one billion dollars over copyrighted music being
used without prior consent (Video, 2014).
With this, any user who uses any copyrighted music not only has their
video removed but could potentially have themselves in a lawsuit by the
original artist.
To go along with copyrights, Nintendo is bringing
down the hammer with content-creators using any of their games or brand in any
of their videos (Joseph, 2013). Nintendo
does this so that no one can collect ad-revenue from videos featuring their
copyrighted materials. Unlike the other
consoles like Xbox and Playstation and their game publishers, who have no
problem with fans creating content based off their materials, Nintendo now has
a Partner Program like Youtube where they split the ad –revenue with themselves and Youtube before giving
the revenue to the fan.
The third lawsuit focused on Max Sound
Corporation suing Youtube because of alleged patent infringement. According to PR Newswire, Max Sound Corp. is
a “holder of a worldwide license of the patent EU 2
026 277, which allows for economically efficient transport of digital content
due to greatly optimized data capacity” (PR, 2014). Max Sound Corp. “claims that all products on
the market that use the format H.264 for video compression infringe the
asserted patent” (PR, 2014). Since a
court ruling has not been decided yet, there has not been any direct effect to
Youtube so far. If a ruling in favor of
Max Sound Corp. passes, it could affect the type of video compression content
creators can use when uploading their videos onto the site.
In conclusion, there are
lawsuits that have affected what content Nova Shock is able to create and what
can be included into those videos. Since
no copyrighted music can be in videos without permission, the only viable
choice the company has is to use either stock music or original music. In regards to Nintendo and their terms,
unless there is an absolute need to make videos with their materials, then the
company should stay away. On one hand,
it is a shame that we cannot make video games based off Mario games, but on the
other hand, Nintendo is a business and they are just protecting their family
friendly appeal. The lawsuit involving
Max Sound Corp. should not have a huge effect in how the company produces
videos. If H.264 video compression is no
longer a choice when uploading a video, there are in fact other compressions to
use.
