With specially written software, game developers can make the Game Boy Advance and GameCube talk to each other. Some games require a specific GBA game inserted and booted in the handheld, while others utilize the GBA's ability to store programs into its internal memory. Using the GBA's 256K of system RAM, programmers can create miniature programs and games that can be executed on the handheld without the need for a cartridge in the slot.
So far, Wii U games only use a single GamePad, and only one GamePad is supplied with the console with no option to by a second one separately at retail - presumably due to the expense of a controller containing a touch screen and its many other innards (Note: multiplayer games are achieved using Wii U Pro Controllers and/or Wii Remotes). Because of this, Miyamoto plays down the viability of dual-GamePad support being a system that's fully utilised any time soon.
"In the future, perhaps when we get closer to something that, an environment where everybody or a large majority of people would have two GamePads, that might be a time where we look at how we can leverage a system of that nature."
This is, in my opinion, one of the Wii U's largest faults: giving a potentially amazing input device, and then limiting it to one. And even if they were to start supporting multi-Gamepad games, "multiple" in this case means "two". No grand four-player RPG adventure, where they take turns controlling movement in the larger area and have their own screens for battle, not to mention giving each player conversation response options and the majority wins. No massive 2-on-2 Pokemon tournament where the GamePads are used to check stats, use items, and give commands.
Asymmetric gameplay may have a lot of potential, but so far it hasn't been in big ways (the asymmetric gameplay in NSMBU is akin to using the second controller in Mario Galaxy as an assist, so even that isn't anything new.) Nintendo did pretty much everything wrong with this console, so this isn't surprising.
There is benefit to such tracking of vehicles, but done in an anonymous fashion. (Of course, as we know from the Netflix prediction data, you can't just give something random numbers and call it a day.)
Sending simple data to a mile marker (as an example) that says simply "I am an X pound, Y wheeled vehicle" would, I think, be extremely useful in prioritizing which roads get priority in maintenance and when the best time of the day (or night) would be good to do that. Set it up such that a marker sends out a ping signal with a UID and the car responds with the above information only once every A minutes and you remove dupes without giving the car a UID, so the markers get useful data while the drivers' identities remain private.
Of course, that's why it would never be adopted by an existing government. The problem lies in having something that is useful AND altruistic. That's why I agree that reading license plates is bad.
Honestly, I'd love to see Congress do something stupid like this and the rest of the world to call their bluff, or better just ignore us outright. Yeah, they'd hurt a bit as the flow of money from our country was cut off, but as they pick up trade with each other and just ignore the U.S. they'll recover and continue. (Not sure how plausible this is as I don't know what, if anything, the U.S. is the sole exporter of, and a quick Google doesn't help.)
Really, as an American citizen, I'd love to see the world stick it to my country to make a number of my fellow citizens wake the hell up, because it doesn't seem any inside actions will do that. Unfortunately, the Congresscritters and other high political figures will tout it as the world being jealous of America, American Exceptionalism, or some other crap and the media will parrot it (because that's all they can do now) and no one will wake up until we take the full tilt into $BAD_FORM_OF_GOVERNMENT, at which point it will be too late.
Slashdot will never fix their unicode issues. Or their lack of editors who edit. Or their sensationalist and, sometimes, completely wrong summaries. All of that costs time/money and, if they even still cared about value over money while owned by GeekNet, they certainly don't now that they're owned by Dice.
IMHO, Slashdot is dead as a proper "nerd news" site, and has been for some time. Unfortunately, I've yet to find a site (nerd or otherwise) that has the same comment moderation system (which is still the best one, in my opinion, though not without its flaws) and a large, informative/funny/insightful community. Slashdot still enjoys popularity thanks to its community, which is always more worthwhile than the summaries, which almost seems like a catch-22 setup. At least, it's the only reason I'm still here.
Perhaps it would be worthwhile for the comments for this story to be hijacked and used to suggest good alternatives to/.?
NBC actually cut Zimmerman's 911 call to make it seem like he was making racist remarks - I am fully expecting ZImmerman to sue NBC, and settle for something in 7 figures.
After how NBC (and the media at large) handled this whole thing, I hope they get drug through the dirt over this. Guilty or not, they twisted and convoluted the whole scenario--as you mentioned--all in the name of ratings. The media doesn't care about news or reporting anymore (did they ever?), it's all about ad sales and ratings. Their general fear-mongering and giving opinion as fact is a part of the problem with discussing political issues in America, IMO. Damn them all to hell.
Square-Enix has revealed exactly how many copies of Tomb Raider, Sleeping Dogs and Hitman it expected to sell, after announcing that they all failed to hit targets last month.
Astonishingly, the publisher hoped to sell between 5 and 6 million copies of Tomb Raider in its first month, which would have placed it amongst some of the fastest-selling games ever. It managed 3.6 million, which by most standards is an extremely impressive launch.
So even in the face of amazing sales, they're "disappointed". I think that unrealistic expectations from all sides are what will kill much of the market--not all of it, I don't see another Crash coming up like we had in '85, but there will be an internal revolution in the gaming market in the next few years.
How nice that, after these revelations, suddenly all of these companies are coming forward with data and vows to fight or announcing requests to reveal information, etc. Where were these Brave Defenders of Consumers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HCitizens before Snowden?
(Of course, without the public knowledge it would be a lot easier for the government to silence businesses or influential people who did try to fight this stuff, but something tells me that all of this is about trying to re-establish consumer trust and loyalty, and is shit-all about trying to protect our Fourth Amendment rights.)
I switched to NetVibes, too, and so far I like it. What I especially like is having distinct "pages" that can have distinct feed categories, making it easy for me to set up a "work" page (/., Ars, Hack a Day, etc.), a "home" page, and an, uh, "other" page. At work I just keep the work page open, and if that runs out and I'm bored I can switch to "home" to read some webcomics or gaming feeds.
I have a few complaints, the primary one being that you can't sort ASC which I liked to do so I can easily read the oldest news first, but nothing that would turn me away from it. (I also really like their grid layout, useful for things like checking deals on NewEgg and just seeing a quick thumbnail to know if the product may interest me or not.)
To other readers, if you visit their site, you'll see a lot about "company" this and "metrics" that. Don't be fooled--while they have a subscription model for data analysis or something, the free version is perfectly fine for just RSS feeds. (They have a few extra widgets outside of feeds, but nothing I find useful.)
I had heard a lot about Feedly, but having to install an extension for an online RSS reader rubs me the wrong way.
I don't believe the Libertarian party would do any better (and would make some things worse,) nor do I agree with all of its ideas. However, since they do seem to have the largest third party support, I go with them when I can't find a candidate I actually like in an attempt to send a message to the major parties.
You know, I (and everyone else) should be outraged at what is not only an invasion of privacy (citizens or not), but also a use of taxpayer money.
And, yet, all I can do is sigh. PRISM, Verizon, NSA, TSA, IRS, HLS, I just find it all overwhelming and disheartening. Sure, I could e-mail/call/mail my congressman or representative, but the cynicism I've gained over this past decade of political bullshit just tells me that my Congressman is already well aware of whatever is happening and is quite happy with the situation, no matter their party. (I see lots of scrutiny from the GOP, but not a single bill from the "we've voted to repeal Obamacare 37 times" House trying to rein in the President's actions or the actions of the various 3-letter organizations.) I'll do research every time I go to vote but I know that I'm in the minority that does so, while the voting population at large will blindly follow that D or R regardless of the candidates' viability, platforms, or intelligence, so it all seems for naught. I encourage my relatives to vote third party, but none of them heed my pleas to actually research who they vote for. (I have no circle of friends in which to do the same.) For all the abuse and impropriety of this, I just can't see a way to affect change.
I'm not even mad about this, though I should be. I'm just depressed. Circus and bread, indeed.
(Actually, if I adjust my tin-foil hat slightly, I wonder if all of this isn't coming out at the same time to be just that: overwhelming, numbing the average American, so that they just give up and don't raise hell about it.)
I give it five years, max, until we see at least one unit like this in every Home Depot. It's unlikely to accept user-created models, but it would have an immense database of odds and ends that are hard to maintain an inventory of because they take up so much space and sell so little. Even better would be going to Home Depot's (for instance) site, ordering something printed, paying for it, and they'll hold it until the next time you go there so you're not having to wait at the machine for it to print.
Could even have two separate styles: the "consumer-facing" model that has a nice container and touchpad for selecting the product, and the "industrial" model that is more bare bones and is used in the back for online orders or in-house stuff.
The linked article is far more about the internal 'robot' and very little about the beer fridge. While perhaps the intent of the/. post, I was far more interested in how the beer fridge could have caused such an issue. Thankfully, TFA has a link to another, far more interesting, FA:
Telstra engineers say any electric spark of a large enough magnitude can generate radio frequency noise that is wide enough to create blackouts on the 850mHz spectrum that carries our mobile voice calls and internet data.
Engineers said the motor in the beer fridge was causing the interference.
It includes an image of said fridge, which looks like something from the 50s/60s (maybe? I don't know, I still have people yelling at me to get off their lawns.) More modern models probably have much better, efficient motors that don't cause this kind of issue.
Mr Halley said Telstra was increasing its black-spot detectors as Australians flocked to smartphones, and the rapid expansion of services revealed some very odd "ghosts in the machine". [...] These included faulty automatic teller machines, lights and illegal phone and TV antenna boosters.
No mention of the resolution, but I assume it involved unplugging the fridge. (I wouldn't be surprised if he paid more in electricity for that thing per year than just buying a new, medium-sized fridge.)
The difference, though, is that games are fundamentally different from the type of works that Congress had in mind when they wrote those rules.
"They couldn't have known" is an extremely dangerous (and wrong!) line of thinking. It's the same way people are trying to gut the first, fourth, and fifth amendments with statements like "the Founding Fathers couldn't have known about the Internet, so it doesn't count" and the second with "how could they possible conceive handguns and rifles when they wrote it?"
And for most games, no, you don't have a large number of options, especially popular ones like Call of Duty.
A book review can summarize the entire plot, because doing so doesn't substitute for the experience of reading the book.
But if they read the entire book to you in video, it wouldn't be covered by Fair Use, even though they're recording the video with your their equipment and using their own voice to read the words. LPs don't summarize (again, to my knowledge), so there's no comparison.
While a Let's Play might not cover 100% of the game, they cover the vast majority (so like someone reading a book over a video, and going "this part is boring so we'll skip ahead a few pages"). The fact that you aren't personally playing it doesn't change the fact that they're still using Nintendo's copyright, which is on the characters, settings, and story within the game as well as the game itself. Whether we are inputting the commands or reacting to it ourselves, or even getting enjoyment from watching the game, is a moot point. If someone were playing live in front of a sufficiently large audience, you can be sure that permission to broadcast the gameplay to the crowd was obtained at some point, in the same way that is done for movies.
I don't disagree that the experience is different between watching someone else play and playing it yourself. However, legally, that does not matter at all. Put another way, if someone streamed a theatrical release for free over the internet, but it was upside down and briefly played vuvuzelas at random intervals, we'd have a very different experience than seeing it in theaters, but it would still be copyright infringement because it is transmitting the vast portion of the movie.
(Again, IANAL, so this is all to the best of my understanding.)
Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair.
The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
The nature of the copyrighted work
The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work
(Emphasis Mine) It doesn't matter that it's video of someone playing instead of someone playing live. "The experience" doesn't matter; copyright is on the contents of the game, not on the enjoyment someone gets from said game.
Sounds like ya'll have a far more sane copyright system than we do here in the States. Down here, the allowed use of copyrighted works without permission is based on "fair use". Here's a quick overview of how the law looks at it, but that's like taking a scoop of water out of an ocean; "fair use" is a very complicated topic, and the variety of factors are often argued and fought tooth and nail, both in and out of courtroom.
Will a company be able to sue successfully because it's product appears in a scene of a movie it dislikes?
As stated by the GP, many companies will pay studios to use their products in movies as a form of advertising, so this would be rare. I did find this article:
Legal experts say fairly recent product placement practices, in which companies pay producers to use their products in TV and movie scenes, have mistakenly given corporations the idea that they can control the use of their products on camera.
Experts say studios are not obligated to get permission before featuring a product in their work. [...] Filmmakers, legal experts say, are protected under federal "fair use" privileges for use of trademark products without getting the OK of the rights holder.
Emphasis mine. Of course, this is different from Let's Plays because the products in movies are usually auxiliary (often being swapped with anything similar, fake or real; though the article doesn't say one way or other, I think Paramount will remove the cans to avoid the potential of a lawsuit, regardless of standing), whereas in Let's Play they are the primary product, front and center. The only thing about the videos is the voice-over added by the video creator and any editing that went into its creation. You can't switch out in this case, because then you wouldn't have a video. Taken in more legal terms:
Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair. [...] 3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
IANAL, but since LPs tend to cover the entire game, that means they use a substantial portion of the copyrighted work, and so would not be considered "fair use". (The other factors come into play, but this is the big one IMO.) If someone was doing a review, using footage of the game, then that might be fair use because the review would only use a dozen or so minutes, a very insubstantial portion of the game. (It may, however, break the first factor about commercial uses, where applicable, so overall it may not be fair use.)
Nintendo are apparently trying to lose money by discouraging people from uploading videos that promote their games.
While I'm sure that people liked the ad revenue that they got from their video being viewed (anyone have any idea how much they get?), my understanding of LPs is that they are almost always a labor of love, not of cash. So Nintendo taking away the ad revenue might discourage some that were using it as a business (though if your business relied entirely on one company's completed product, protected under copyright, you need to rethink your business plan), but the majority will probably continue doing what they do.
In fact, this might even increase LPs: while I don't imagine it was a huge group, there might be some worried about a lawsuit for using Nintendo's IPs. By Nintendo taking the ad revenue, this is explicit permission to use video of their properties, which may bring more people to the table who just wanted to share but were concerned over copyright.
On the face of this, I'm of two minds: on the one hand, the videos don't exist without the users who spent their time to edit and upload them, and they do act as free advertising (or the opposite, if the game turns out to be bad and the videos show that off). On the other, the user would have nothing to upload if not for Nintendo's product, and they do properly own the copyright on those games. Personally, I think it should be split (50/50 sounds good, though I'm sure both sides would prefer a larger slice,) but the power is all with Nintendo here (the big company, the copyright holder, etc.), so that's not going to happen.
Full disclosure: I've done one basic LP (Bioshock Infinite), posted to Livestream, got no ad revenue. (And it doesn't exist anymore since I had a free account.)
While I agree wholeheartedly about challenging tickets when you get them, I've found a far easier approach: I avoid getting a ticket in the first place.
(Granted, I live in an area not known for bullshit tickets, and my vehicle has Army plates (civilian plates marking me as a prior service member), so I may have a leg up, but even before the plates I never had a single ticket.)
Slashdot Mirror
Not entirely. The Ultimate List: Cube Connection - Get more out of your Game Boy Advance by linking it to the GameCube. (February 26, 2004)
But you're right, it hasn't been done on a scale where it's HD graphics and a standard part of the system. Too bad Nintendo isn't really doing it, either (5th Mar 2013):
This is, in my opinion, one of the Wii U's largest faults: giving a potentially amazing input device, and then limiting it to one. And even if they were to start supporting multi-Gamepad games, "multiple" in this case means "two". No grand four-player RPG adventure, where they take turns controlling movement in the larger area and have their own screens for battle, not to mention giving each player conversation response options and the majority wins. No massive 2-on-2 Pokemon tournament where the GamePads are used to check stats, use items, and give commands.
Asymmetric gameplay may have a lot of potential, but so far it hasn't been in big ways (the asymmetric gameplay in NSMBU is akin to using the second controller in Mario Galaxy as an assist, so even that isn't anything new.) Nintendo did pretty much everything wrong with this console, so this isn't surprising.
There is benefit to such tracking of vehicles, but done in an anonymous fashion. (Of course, as we know from the Netflix prediction data, you can't just give something random numbers and call it a day.)
Sending simple data to a mile marker (as an example) that says simply "I am an X pound, Y wheeled vehicle" would, I think, be extremely useful in prioritizing which roads get priority in maintenance and when the best time of the day (or night) would be good to do that. Set it up such that a marker sends out a ping signal with a UID and the car responds with the above information only once every A minutes and you remove dupes without giving the car a UID, so the markers get useful data while the drivers' identities remain private.
Of course, that's why it would never be adopted by an existing government. The problem lies in having something that is useful AND altruistic. That's why I agree that reading license plates is bad.
Honestly, I'd love to see Congress do something stupid like this and the rest of the world to call their bluff, or better just ignore us outright. Yeah, they'd hurt a bit as the flow of money from our country was cut off, but as they pick up trade with each other and just ignore the U.S. they'll recover and continue. (Not sure how plausible this is as I don't know what, if anything, the U.S. is the sole exporter of, and a quick Google doesn't help.)
Really, as an American citizen, I'd love to see the world stick it to my country to make a number of my fellow citizens wake the hell up, because it doesn't seem any inside actions will do that. Unfortunately, the Congresscritters and other high political figures will tout it as the world being jealous of America, American Exceptionalism, or some other crap and the media will parrot it (because that's all they can do now) and no one will wake up until we take the full tilt into $BAD_FORM_OF_GOVERNMENT, at which point it will be too late.
Slashdot will never fix their unicode issues. Or their lack of editors who edit. Or their sensationalist and, sometimes, completely wrong summaries. All of that costs time/money and, if they even still cared about value over money while owned by GeekNet, they certainly don't now that they're owned by Dice.
IMHO, Slashdot is dead as a proper "nerd news" site, and has been for some time. Unfortunately, I've yet to find a site (nerd or otherwise) that has the same comment moderation system (which is still the best one, in my opinion, though not without its flaws) and a large, informative/funny/insightful community. Slashdot still enjoys popularity thanks to its community, which is always more worthwhile than the summaries, which almost seems like a catch-22 setup. At least, it's the only reason I'm still here.
Perhaps it would be worthwhile for the comments for this story to be hijacked and used to suggest good alternatives to /.?
He tried to back in December, but it was stayed pending the outcome of the criminal trial. And, now that the verdict is in, he will resume the suit.
After how NBC (and the media at large) handled this whole thing, I hope they get drug through the dirt over this. Guilty or not, they twisted and convoluted the whole scenario--as you mentioned--all in the name of ratings. The media doesn't care about news or reporting anymore (did they ever?), it's all about ad sales and ratings. Their general fear-mongering and giving opinion as fact is a part of the problem with discussing political issues in America, IMO. Damn them all to hell.
It's funny you mention Square-Enix and Tomb Raider specifically (or perhaps you mentioned them for this reason), because many gamers are completely aware of how unreal their sales expectations are: http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/04/09/square-enix-reveals-sales-expectations-for-tomb-raider
So even in the face of amazing sales, they're "disappointed". I think that unrealistic expectations from all sides are what will kill much of the market--not all of it, I don't see another Crash coming up like we had in '85, but there will be an internal revolution in the gaming market in the next few years.
From what I've read, Google is the only one claiming to have tried to fight these before the reveal. Everyone else is playing damage control.
How nice that, after these revelations, suddenly all of these companies are coming forward with data and vows to fight or announcing requests to reveal information, etc. Where were these Brave Defenders of Consumers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HCitizens before Snowden?
(Of course, without the public knowledge it would be a lot easier for the government to silence businesses or influential people who did try to fight this stuff, but something tells me that all of this is about trying to re-establish consumer trust and loyalty, and is shit-all about trying to protect our Fourth Amendment rights.)
I switched to NetVibes, too, and so far I like it. What I especially like is having distinct "pages" that can have distinct feed categories, making it easy for me to set up a "work" page (/., Ars, Hack a Day, etc.), a "home" page, and an, uh, "other" page. At work I just keep the work page open, and if that runs out and I'm bored I can switch to "home" to read some webcomics or gaming feeds.
I have a few complaints, the primary one being that you can't sort ASC which I liked to do so I can easily read the oldest news first, but nothing that would turn me away from it. (I also really like their grid layout, useful for things like checking deals on NewEgg and just seeing a quick thumbnail to know if the product may interest me or not.)
To other readers, if you visit their site, you'll see a lot about "company" this and "metrics" that. Don't be fooled--while they have a subscription model for data analysis or something, the free version is perfectly fine for just RSS feeds. (They have a few extra widgets outside of feeds, but nothing I find useful.)
I had heard a lot about Feedly, but having to install an extension for an online RSS reader rubs me the wrong way.
I don't believe the Libertarian party would do any better (and would make some things worse,) nor do I agree with all of its ideas. However, since they do seem to have the largest third party support, I go with them when I can't find a candidate I actually like in an attempt to send a message to the major parties.
You know, I (and everyone else) should be outraged at what is not only an invasion of privacy (citizens or not), but also a use of taxpayer money.
And, yet, all I can do is sigh. PRISM, Verizon, NSA, TSA, IRS, HLS, I just find it all overwhelming and disheartening. Sure, I could e-mail/call/mail my congressman or representative, but the cynicism I've gained over this past decade of political bullshit just tells me that my Congressman is already well aware of whatever is happening and is quite happy with the situation, no matter their party. (I see lots of scrutiny from the GOP, but not a single bill from the "we've voted to repeal Obamacare 37 times" House trying to rein in the President's actions or the actions of the various 3-letter organizations.) I'll do research every time I go to vote but I know that I'm in the minority that does so, while the voting population at large will blindly follow that D or R regardless of the candidates' viability, platforms, or intelligence, so it all seems for naught. I encourage my relatives to vote third party, but none of them heed my pleas to actually research who they vote for. (I have no circle of friends in which to do the same.) For all the abuse and impropriety of this, I just can't see a way to affect change.
I'm not even mad about this, though I should be. I'm just depressed. Circus and bread, indeed.
(Actually, if I adjust my tin-foil hat slightly, I wonder if all of this isn't coming out at the same time to be just that: overwhelming, numbing the average American, so that they just give up and don't raise hell about it.)
The link in the summary is /. masturbation, so here's the Reuters article that it links to, no extra ad impressions needed. (wtf is "Slashdot Cloud"?)
I give it five years, max, until we see at least one unit like this in every Home Depot. It's unlikely to accept user-created models, but it would have an immense database of odds and ends that are hard to maintain an inventory of because they take up so much space and sell so little. Even better would be going to Home Depot's (for instance) site, ordering something printed, paying for it, and they'll hold it until the next time you go there so you're not having to wait at the machine for it to print.
Could even have two separate styles: the "consumer-facing" model that has a nice container and touchpad for selecting the product, and the "industrial" model that is more bare bones and is used in the back for online orders or in-house stuff.
The linked article is far more about the internal 'robot' and very little about the beer fridge. While perhaps the intent of the /. post, I was far more interested in how the beer fridge could have caused such an issue. Thankfully, TFA has a link to another, far more interesting, FA:
It includes an image of said fridge, which looks like something from the 50s/60s (maybe? I don't know, I still have people yelling at me to get off their lawns.) More modern models probably have much better, efficient motors that don't cause this kind of issue.
No mention of the resolution, but I assume it involved unplugging the fridge. (I wouldn't be surprised if he paid more in electricity for that thing per year than just buying a new, medium-sized fridge.)
It's like you Hulk out, and pick up a car, and throw it into the ocean. ...What? It's not my fault you don't understand the analogy.
This is Gawker we're talking about.
"They couldn't have known" is an extremely dangerous (and wrong!) line of thinking. It's the same way people are trying to gut the first, fourth, and fifth amendments with statements like "the Founding Fathers couldn't have known about the Internet, so it doesn't count" and the second with "how could they possible conceive handguns and rifles when they wrote it?"
And for most games, no, you don't have a large number of options, especially popular ones like Call of Duty.
But if they read the entire book to you in video, it wouldn't be covered by Fair Use, even though they're recording the video with your their equipment and using their own voice to read the words. LPs don't summarize (again, to my knowledge), so there's no comparison.
While a Let's Play might not cover 100% of the game, they cover the vast majority (so like someone reading a book over a video, and going "this part is boring so we'll skip ahead a few pages"). The fact that you aren't personally playing it doesn't change the fact that they're still using Nintendo's copyright, which is on the characters, settings, and story within the game as well as the game itself. Whether we are inputting the commands or reacting to it ourselves, or even getting enjoyment from watching the game, is a moot point. If someone were playing live in front of a sufficiently large audience, you can be sure that permission to broadcast the gameplay to the crowd was obtained at some point, in the same way that is done for movies.
I don't disagree that the experience is different between watching someone else play and playing it yourself. However, legally, that does not matter at all. Put another way, if someone streamed a theatrical release for free over the internet, but it was upside down and briefly played vuvuzelas at random intervals, we'd have a very different experience than seeing it in theaters, but it would still be copyright infringement because it is transmitting the vast portion of the movie.
(Again, IANAL, so this is all to the best of my understanding.)
It's completely relevant here. U.S. Copyright Office - Fair Use:
(Emphasis Mine) It doesn't matter that it's video of someone playing instead of someone playing live. "The experience" doesn't matter; copyright is on the contents of the game, not on the enjoyment someone gets from said game.
Sounds like ya'll have a far more sane copyright system than we do here in the States. Down here, the allowed use of copyrighted works without permission is based on "fair use". Here's a quick overview of how the law looks at it, but that's like taking a scoop of water out of an ocean; "fair use" is a very complicated topic, and the variety of factors are often argued and fought tooth and nail, both in and out of courtroom.
As stated by the GP, many companies will pay studios to use their products in movies as a form of advertising, so this would be rare. I did find this article:
Emphasis mine. Of course, this is different from Let's Plays because the products in movies are usually auxiliary (often being swapped with anything similar, fake or real; though the article doesn't say one way or other, I think Paramount will remove the cans to avoid the potential of a lawsuit, regardless of standing), whereas in Let's Play they are the primary product, front and center. The only thing about the videos is the voice-over added by the video creator and any editing that went into its creation. You can't switch out in this case, because then you wouldn't have a video. Taken in more legal terms:
IANAL, but since LPs tend to cover the entire game, that means they use a substantial portion of the copyrighted work, and so would not be considered "fair use". (The other factors come into play, but this is the big one IMO.) If someone was doing a review, using footage of the game, then that might be fair use because the review would only use a dozen or so minutes, a very insubstantial portion of the game. (It may, however, break the first factor about commercial uses, where applicable, so overall it may not be fair use.)
While I'm sure that people liked the ad revenue that they got from their video being viewed (anyone have any idea how much they get?), my understanding of LPs is that they are almost always a labor of love, not of cash. So Nintendo taking away the ad revenue might discourage some that were using it as a business (though if your business relied entirely on one company's completed product, protected under copyright, you need to rethink your business plan), but the majority will probably continue doing what they do.
In fact, this might even increase LPs: while I don't imagine it was a huge group, there might be some worried about a lawsuit for using Nintendo's IPs. By Nintendo taking the ad revenue, this is explicit permission to use video of their properties, which may bring more people to the table who just wanted to share but were concerned over copyright.
On the face of this, I'm of two minds: on the one hand, the videos don't exist without the users who spent their time to edit and upload them, and they do act as free advertising (or the opposite, if the game turns out to be bad and the videos show that off). On the other, the user would have nothing to upload if not for Nintendo's product, and they do properly own the copyright on those games. Personally, I think it should be split (50/50 sounds good, though I'm sure both sides would prefer a larger slice,) but the power is all with Nintendo here (the big company, the copyright holder, etc.), so that's not going to happen.
Full disclosure: I've done one basic LP (Bioshock Infinite), posted to Livestream, got no ad revenue. (And it doesn't exist anymore since I had a free account.)
While I agree wholeheartedly about challenging tickets when you get them, I've found a far easier approach: I avoid getting a ticket in the first place.
(Granted, I live in an area not known for bullshit tickets, and my vehicle has Army plates (civilian plates marking me as a prior service member), so I may have a leg up, but even before the plates I never had a single ticket.)
My personal addition to this has always been "unless you are discussing the government, in which case assume both."
Directly? No, that would be too honest. But do you really think that all of this "secret Muslim" bullshit you hear would be repeated if he was white?