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My point is that copyright law gives video game publishers the power to set restrictive policies. Your point appears to be that most relevant publishers have not chosen to assert restrictive policies, and that their policies can change and have changed. But they can change in both directions.

It turns out Blizzard has a video policy that as of today grants essentially blanket noncommercial rights and specifies when a "content use license" must be negotiated. But it doesn't give any examples of how much such a license is likely to cost or whether the conditions that Blizzard imposes on licensees qualify as a fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) regime. Another page implies that a commercial license is not available to individuals: "Blizzard Entertainment® does not enter into licensing agreements with individuals." It also supports the point that policies can change: "we reserve the right to revoke this limited use license at any time, for any reason, and at the sole discretion of Blizzard Entertainment®." And here's a story from 2015 about Blizzard takedowns. Finally, Blizzard's parent company also publishes Guitar Hero, which contains third-party music to which more restrictive policies have been applied.

A post by a moderator implies that Capcom also grants blanket noncommercial rights. In fact, both Blizzard and Capcom have announced that they are working with the noncommercial YouTube community to resolve copyright strikes.

But to me, the "sports" ecosystem includes broadcasting the events on subscription or ad-supported television. A blanket noncommercial license does not cover such commercial use. So I'm still confused as to how much an organizer of a video game tournament shown on TV should expect to have to pay for a nonexclusive license to stream each event or what other conditions a promoter will be expected to follow.

I can attest to this, and can back it up with the Capcom forum for BC2. This is one of the first posts complaining about DRM usage and there are immediately people defending it implying that if you don't like it - you're a pirate.

I think it boils down to this: The people who only have a cursory inference of what DRM is or how it would work (i.e. Joe AverageConsumer) are 'buying' what the companies are feeding them - "We're hurting because of pirates and we only do this because we have to!"

Until we change that, nothing else will change IMHO. Below is the link to the forum...

http://www.capcom-unity.com/bionic_commando/go/thread/view/102981/26821089/PSN_login_required&pg=last

Epic not evil? Read up on the working conditions of their game developers, and how they sabotage any initiative to improve industry-wide conditions, then come back and say that.

Back on topic: Capcom is actually pretty good about not just tolerating, but actually supporting fanmade stuff. Their official blog often has links to fan projects they think are awesome, including a 2.5D remake of Mega Man 2.