Obviously, this law has the potential to cover a lot of stuff, and to have a chilling effect -- to make people scared to upload even borderline things because they're afraid of running afoul of the law -- on even more. For gamers, the implications are obvious: Certain websites or official gaming blogs might be able to get wide-ranging license rights to display videos of gameplay sessions or tutorials, but your average Joe gamer may be unable to put up high score videos, how-tos, or a whole host of other things. Those videos that help you to find secrets in your favorite role-playing games and platformers? Those will be toast under this law, for sure.
Now, the real question isn't so much whether or not this is "fair," but whether or not it can pass in the Senate and actually become a law. My personal view is that the law is overbroad and vague, and won't survive a free-speech challenge in the Supreme Court -- but remembering that the Objection! audience eschews a knee-jerk reaction of any kind, I do want to at least give a little lip service to the other side's argument. Remember that intellectual property laws at least ostensibly protect the interest that developers (including the guys who make tutorial videos and such) have in making such intellectual property in the first place. Now, it's pretty obvious that the makers of this law aren't super-concerned with gameplay videos, and that gamers have gotten caught up in this maelstrom more-or-less inadvertently. But lawmakers are concerned about countless movie and music clips, full videos, sports highlights, and other types of videos that are going to draw off viewership (and therefore revenue) from their originators, thus removing or reducing the incentive for those originators to make the videos in the first place.
No more of the crazy Bubsy savant!
I'm not here to support an argument on this one way or another, but it's important that we all understand that "corporate" interests sometimes do have some real points worth understanding. That said, it is both unfortunate and indicative of the overbroadness of this law that it encompasses so many seemingly innocuous (even helpful) videos and performances in its field of vision.
Conclusion
And that, really, may be the law's ultimate downfall. The Supreme Court has consistently held that any restrictions on speech -- even those encompassing so-called fair use of copyrighted materials -- must be narrowly tailored and non-vague. So, one hopes that the law's going to be changed from the way it stands on the Senate, one way or the other. If you support these kinds of copyright protections, you want it changed to be more narrow so that it'll pass Supreme Court review. If you're against them, you want it narrowed as much as possible for obvious reasons.
Years ago, Eric Neigher went into law school, and started writing about games on the side. These days, he splits his time between pwning noobs on the Internet and pwning noobs in the justice system. His column, Objection!, was the 2010 recipient of the Neigher award for his own works.
Spy Guy says: How do you feel about it? Think this is a bad idea that's going to turn the Internet into a boring wasteland, or do you think it's going to give companies just the protections they need to break YouTube's stranglehold on any and all Internet videos?
