Nintendo ID Claims Youtube LPs

[Kriven]

Using humor brings up an entirely different section of fair use under the Satire heading.

Gors: Your recap is spot on except for a few things:

Fanworks and recordings of works are considered the copyright of the recorder, however this does not mean they can be legally monetized. US copyright law was not written with fanworks in mind, and ever since Star Trek our copyright system has become a major patchwork of contradictions, which can make it difficult to determine the legality of such material.

With recordings of video games which contain commentary it's even more confused, because the viewer of the video is not experiencing the programming, just the visual and audio. Let's Plays themselves aren't illegal, but the use of the trademarked characters is. When dealing with LPs you're talking more about trademark than copyright, which is another conflated system in itself.

I still think Nintendo has made a dumb move and could have simply requested a percentage of the revenue from Lets Plays of their work. Half to them, half to the LPer, and a newly endorsed job market has been created which progresses our social media.