amazon Amazon Games appears to be manually DMCA'ing youtube videos detailing game bugs

[SennaSet]

Initial news broken by Video Game DataBank (Link:

)

 

The individual above has noted some severe issues with Amazon support, particularly in regards to presenting and warning people of bugs and issues with the game and patches.

The above noted fellow found a bug in the games skill-leveling mechanic and had an issue where the support team did not understand what he was talking about so he linked a video that he had made to warn the community about the bug in question to attempt to prevent anyone from wasting their time, real money and in-game money on a buggy part of the game.

 

A few hours later, the video was manually DMCA'd by Amazon.com Services LLC (Seen below):

 

 

 

If this action was completed by amazon, I am in agreement with AsmongoldTV that this will be a terrible precedent for gaming journalism as all the other gaming developers will see amazon getting away with this and begin hopping on the bandwagon. As we've already seen in recent months from court cases and various revelations from former staff, all these large gaming companies have extremely dubious track records and will absolutely jump at the chance to be able to remove negative or potentially negative content, in order to falsely lure new customers into a seemingly 'perfect' game, the new customer being none the wiser that the game could be incomplete or full of bugs, but the content developers on that particular title no longer cover such topics out of a fear of losing their careers.

 

 

Edit: To add, I found a thread on new world subreddit discussing this and apparently they're also outright ignoring any issues that almost any players have, apparently AGS support is hot garbage.

This is from a fellow who was banned for reporting a hacker, and then AGS live chat confirmed it was a mistake and then his ban appeal was denied and they refuse to talk to him anymore.

For more:

 

Lol the thread is pretty spicy:

 

 

Edited December 20, 2021 by SennaSet
More info

[Salv8 (sam)]

wow a games company abusing an already broken copyright system?!

WHO KNEW!?!?!?!

[suicidalfranco]

1 minute ago, Salv8 (sam) said:

wow a games company abusing an already broken copyright system?!

WHO KNEW!?!?!?!

has never happened in the history of youtube

[IkeaGnome]

Just now, suicidalfranco said:

has never happened in the history of youtube

Must not have. There's no dislikes on the videos about it. 

[Master Disaster]

You gotta understand something about DMCA, since its a law the platforms operate on a "guilty until proven innocent" policy. They have to otherwise they leave themselves liable to incrimination by association. If Amazon send a DMCA YT will remove the content, no questions asked. It then becomes a legal issue between Amazon and the content uploader and the burden of proof lies with the claimant, if the creator appeals and the claimant doesn't provide proof of their claim they lose by default in 30 days and the content is restored.

 

Its a really shitty system since it allows anyone to make a false claim, no questions asked and with no repercussions for defaulting while the creator loses out on 30 days worth of views and has to deal with the stress of a potential incoming lawsuit.

 

Luckily though, in the vast majority of cases it never goes beyond the video being removed but that doesn't really help the creator out.

[Roswell]

According to comments on his channel and elsewhere, this dude has a history of posting game exploits, ways to destabilize servers, etc. He also goes on a rant about how he's never going to help his viewers again, blah blah blah.

 

Seems like there's a lot more to this guy's background and transgressions against the developers than he lets on.

[Master Disaster]

3 minutes ago, Roswell said:

According to comments on his channel and elsewhere, this dude has a history of posting game exploits, ways to destabilize servers, etc. He also goes on a rant about how he's never going to help his viewers again, blah blah blah.

And none of those things fall under DMCA. Its pretty simple, if you don't want users exploiting bugs in your game then try fixing the bugs in your game.

[Roswell]

6 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

And none of those things fall under DMCA. Its pretty simple, if you don't want users exploiting bugs in your game then try fixing the bugs in your game.

Amazon can DMCA for whatever reason they want, lawfully, as long as the content doesn't fall under fair use. Him acting like a fool is great motivation to lawfully DMCA his videos.

[SennaSet]

16 minutes ago, Roswell said:

Amazon can DMCA for whatever reason they want, lawfully, as long as the content doesn't fall under fair use. Him acting like a fool is great motivation to lawfully DMCA his videos.

I don't play new world, nor do I watch that guy, but the new world sub appears to be having this guys back pretty hard and they all appear to really appreciate his content and what he's done for the community, so I'm uncertain what your stance here is.

 

Additionally, there is nothing lawful about taking down videos presenting a faulty product so that you can avoid having fully informed buyers.

That's how we ended up in a crony-capitalist economy where people think gas stoves are still the cats meow. (IMO)

 

* I would posit that, if this was amazon (and not someone posing as amazon), this is an unethical utilization of DMCA and regardless of what issues they may have had, on a personal level, with the youtuber, I feel that this would negatively impact all gaming journalism and all future content creation, as noted above and within the second video and subreddit thread that goes into more detail on not just various youtubers having videos taken down, but individual players being banned instead of AGS fixing bugs in their game, they *permanently* ban the players that point out the flaws or bugs.

[Eighjan]

PMSL... If the video creator is the one pictured in the OP; he is a law unto himself & will do anything for views - pretty much...

[Spotty]

Thread cleaned. Stay on topic.

• "Don't be a dick" —Wil Wheaton
• "Be excellent to each other" —Bill and Ted

 

Moved to General Discussion for not complying with the Tech News Posting Guidelines (missing news article, quotes from news source). Doesn't look like any mainstream tech websites have picked up the story yet but if they do you can update the OP to include them to meet the Tech News guidelines.

Edited December 20, 2021 by Spotty

[Master Disaster]

1 hour ago, Roswell said:

Amazon can DMCA for whatever reason they want, lawfully, as long as the content doesn't fall under fair use. Him acting like a fool is great motivation to lawfully DMCA his videos.

Acting like a fool =/= Copyright infringement? It takes some mental gymnastics to squash those 2 things together.

[Avocado Diaboli]

1 hour ago, Roswell said:

Amazon can DMCA for whatever reason they want, lawfully, as long as the content doesn't fall under fair use.

I hope this is a woefully incomplete assessment. Because otherwise I have to point out that no, Amazon can't file a DMCA claim for whatever reason except when it comes to fair use. A DMCA can only be issued if they have a valid claim that falls under copyright. That's what the C in DMCA stands for. In fact, the DMCA even requires that you as the IP holder need to make sure that if you're filing a DMCA claim, you are convinced that your rights are being infringed, under penalty of perjury. Disclosing bugs is not something that falls under copyright unless Amazon want to go so far and claim that bugs are an inherent part of their game and part of the intended experience, so an active creative choice.

 

Now I stress that I haven't watched the video or looked at what exactly sparked Amazon's wrath here, I don't have an iron in the fire here. I just wanted to clarify that a DMCA can't simply be issued for everything that doesn't fall under fair use.

[Roswell]

2 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Acting like a fool =/= Copyright infringement? It takes some mental gymnastics to squash those 2 things together.

 

1 minute ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

I hope this is a woefully incomplete assessment. Because otherwise I have to point out that no, Amazon can't file a DMCA claim for whatever reason except when it comes to fair use. A DMCA can only be issued if they have a valid claim that falls under copyright. That's what the C in DMCA stands for. In fact, the DMCA even requires that you as the IP holder need to make sure that if you're filing a DMCA claim, you are convinced that your rights are being infringed, under penalty of perjury. Disclosing bugs is not something that falls under copyright unless Amazon want to go so far and claim that bugs are an inherent part of their game and part of the intended experience, so an active creative choice.

 

Now I stress that I haven't watched the video or looked at what exactly sparked Amazon's wrath here, I don't have an iron in the fire here. I just wanted to clarify that a DMCA can't simply be issued for everything that doesn't fall under fair use.

Seems like there's confusion here. Amazon can lawfully DMCA a video that contains their copyrighted work if it doesn't fall under fair use. This dude's channel is full of him sitting idle in the game playing its music while he rambles on about unrelated topics.

 

That is not fair use and can be legally DMCA'd. Whether the public likes that kind of behavior is another story but it doesn't change the law.

[TetraSky]

Another company abusing the broken DMCA system on youtube... Who knew that could happen.

[GDRRiley]

1 hour ago, Roswell said:

Amazon can DMCA for whatever reason they want, lawfully, as long as the content doesn't fall under fair use. Him acting like a fool is great motivation to lawfully DMCA his videos.

you don't understand copyright

and revealing bugs almost certainly falls under fair use. it would be considered news

 

25 minutes ago, Roswell said:

 

Seems like there's confusion here. Amazon can lawfully DMCA a video that contains their copyrighted work if it doesn't fall under fair use. This dude's channel is full of him sitting idle in the game playing its music while he rambles on about unrelated topics.

 

that 100% comes down to how the game allows you to use the music. in most cases games allow you to use the music while the game is playing, they can't carve out an exception like but not talking about things we don't like as thats far to loose and wouldn't stand up in court

[YoungBlade]

50 minutes ago, Roswell said:

 

Seems like there's confusion here. Amazon can lawfully DMCA a video that contains their copyrighted work if it doesn't fall under fair use. This dude's channel is full of him sitting idle in the game playing its music while he rambles on about unrelated topics.

 

That is not fair use and can be legally DMCA'd. Whether the public likes that kind of behavior is another story but it doesn't change the law.

It also depends on the license terms of the game. Most games these days have clauses that allow for let's plays, as it has been shown time and again that let's plays improve sales of the game way more than it hurts. And Amazon does, in fact, allow for that under their Content Usage Policy, and this is even mentioned in the video. So the YouTuber had the permission to make that content under Amazon's own policy. And, if taken to court, the YouTuber could point to that Usage Policy as a way to argue that the videos were made with the understanding that he had permission from the copyright holder.

[Nesy]

Well that's terrible, but not totally unexpected.

[Mark Kaine]

On 12/20/2021 at 10:30 PM, Avocado Diaboli said:

Because otherwise I have to point out that no, Amazon can't file a DMCA claim for whatever reason

Err, yes they can, thats the (underlying) issue here, not trying to be pedantic.  Thats what happens when consumers or "creators" in this case are trapped between 2 evil mega corporations,  they can do anything they want, and laws to protect the individual might exist, are almost certainly insufficient though. 

 

 

[Vishera]

On 12/20/2021 at 9:17 PM, Roswell said:

Amazon can DMCA for whatever reason they want, lawfully, as long as the content doesn't fall under fair use. Him acting like a fool is great motivation to lawfully DMCA his videos.

No,It's a false claim.

Capturing footage from a video game is as DMCA-able as a footage captured in real life on the streets...

In reality you have shops and buildings with trade marks and copyrighted logos on them,yet we see no one that DMCA people for that.

 

Imagine Apple DMCAing people just because they captured footage inside their stores...

[thrasher_565]

7 hours ago, Vishera said:

No,It's a false claim.

Capturing footage from a video game is as DMCA-able as a footage captured in real life on the streets...

In reality you have shops and buildings with trade marks and copyrighted logos on them,yet we see no one that DMCA people for that.

 

Imagine Apple DMCAing people just because they captured footage inside their stores...

they can but dont because its free advertising...