Nintendo and the Ad Revenue Claims

Recently, Nintendo began claiming all advertisement revenues gained by Let's Play-ers, who profit from these videos, on YouTube. This move has gained much attention in the gaming community. Today, two sides stand: those who support the move and those who oppose it.

Here are some of the arguments from both sides:

Supper Buu wrote"As a Nintendo fan, I disagree with Nintendo's decision here. Let's plays alone are a way of advertising a game and it is free. You just open up Youtube, type in the name of the game you are looking for for (Part 1, 2, 3, etc) and that's it. This decision is unnecessary and as fans, we have to correct Nintendo. They're not always right, you know."

Steve wrote in response to Supper Buu "The problem is you have no right to profit from the content. PROFIT is the keyword in this issue. Many folks don't understand that.

If I cheat on a test by copying my classmate. Can I justify my action by saying I wrote down the answers? No, I may have wrote it down, but its still my classmate's knowledge I used.

Same here, you may have created the video. But the content (test answers) are still did not come from you."

Sui Leung wrote "It's pretty much cut and dry from a law stand point. Nintendo is going by the law. Sure you can claim "fair-use" but if you do, then the person using it can't profit from it. "Fair-use" pertains to the person not making any profit from using other's properties, and the Let's Play group definitely are making money from it. So by law, that's illegal, but Nintendo isn't stopping all profits from the Let's Play group, they are just inserting ads and getting a portion of that money."

JesseMiller wrote "This is really a non-story framed to look like a bigger deal than it is. Nintendo is perfectly in its rights to profit from their IP being played or used in some fashion on the Internet. A ton of companies do this already and I'm not hearing and flack about them. The videos are not being torn down or edited in anyway - they just now feature ads."

RobLucci wrote in response to JesseMiller: "But the person who uploads the videos aren't gonna make any money that's the problem."

jph89 wrote in response to RobLucci: "The people who upload the video's shouldn't be making money in the first place."

Okey, I think we have read enough. What are your thoughts on this issue. Did Nintendo make the right decision to claim the ad revenues?

Let us know in the comments below.

Do they have the right? Yes. Is it annoying that they are cracking down on this? Yes. Is it a problem? Not really.

It's not a huge deal, considering all they want is to place their own ads on videos that have their content. It's not as bad as, say, BBC, who wants to take down every single video on YouTube that has their content in it.

I think it's correct. The arguments for it are logical.