Hello everyone,

I never expected to start a thread like this one. First of all, I never expected to be making Let's Play videos! But now that I am, I certainly never expected to have issues with copyright claims. And yet that is exactly what has happened, and I want to let you all know about it. Hopefully awareness can be raised and someone will be able to apply pressure where it needs to be applied, but that remains to be seen. Let me tell you what happened.

Bethesda is awesome about a lot of things, and one of them is definitely their video policy. Not only do they allow us to upload videos of gameplay from their games, they encourage it. They even allow us to monetize our videos through the YouTube partner program. Clearly they understand the value of user-created content, and I am personally grateful that they are as forward-thinking as they are in this regard. I am a [relatively new] YouTube partner in good standing, and I just recently uploaded the first few videos in a new Let's Play series set in Morrowind. This is where I ran into an issue.

The very first video naturally starts at the beginning of the game. The first minute or two is spent talking about the Let's Play series and how glad I am to be able to do it. Then, as you would expect, the video goes into the dream sequence you have when Azura speaks to you. Friends, would you believe that this very section, the Azura dream sequence, is what I got a copyright claim about? How about if I told you that the claim wasn't from Bethesda? Is your head spinning yet? Well, hang on...

As it turns out, an artist calling himself "Smoke Sign" made a song called "The Nerevarine" in which he sampled the music, voices and sound effects from the Azura dream sequence. His record company, INgrooves (on behalf of Zenon Records), has apparently copyrighted his song. Now, when someone uploads a video that has that dream sequence in it, and they monetize the video in complete compliance with Bethesda's video policy, they will get a copyright claim from INgrooves claiming that they have used their artist's song without their permission. Of course, I did no such thing. The only entity, besides myself, with rights to the assets in my video is Bethesda, and as an owner of a legal copy of the game I have permission to use those assets per their video policy. If anyone is violating that policy, it's INgrooves and the artist they represent. By attempting to collect ad revenues from videos they did not create, claiming ownership over assets that are not theirs, they are at the very least exploiting YouTube's copyright protection system.

INgrooves has a button on their website just for YouTube copyright claims. If I had to guess, this is there to give them some kind of legal "out"; they give people a place to challenge their claims, so what's the problem, right? Well, I can think of a few problems: 1) I haven't used anything of theirs, so I shouldn't have to ask them for anything. 2) I have already disputed the claim using the same system in YouTube that they used to make the claim in the first place. And 3) I am not about to give my information to a company like INgrooves; they don't even link to their privacy policy on the form page where they ask for my info, I'm certainly not going looking for it. And even then I wouldn't want to give them anything!

This whole thing has had me feeling like I've stepped into the twilight zone, but would you believe it's actually gotten worse? I've done all I can do for myself right now, but I thought about it and two things came to mind: 1) what about other people who don't fight it, for whatever reason, and 2) what about Bethesda? Shouldn't they be made aware of this? It occurred to me that the best solution for both was to inform Bethesda in hopes that they could deal with INgrooves directly. I figured that they probably wouldn't be too pleased about a company like INgrooves trying to make ad revenues by claiming assets that belong to Beth and Beth alone. So I tried to get in touch.

First I sent them an email. It was very detailed and gave them a couple of ways to follow up on this, and a couple of ways to reach me. I was quite thorough! Not long after sending my email I got a reply. In short it was telling me that if I play Elder Scrolls Online and need tech support, I should go to website X, and if I play any other game and need tech support I should go to website Y. And that's it. What? No, I don't need tech support! Ugh!

So I thought, "OK, I'll just call them." I have talked to more companies on the phone than I like to think about, and friends, the woman I got at Bethesda was hands down one of the rudest company representatives I have ever talked to. First she just tried to blow me off. Then she tried to belittle me when I told her I was a new YouTube content creator. After several extremely uncomfortable minutes, she finally gave me a phone number and a name and said that person was handling this sort of thing. I asked her name so I could let someone know how rude she was and she flat refused to identify herself, not even an operator number. Listen, my wife's career has been in call centers, from being an operator all the way up to managing teams of operators. I know from being with her for many years now that most of the people in that business try really hard not to be crappy to people. Most of them need their jobs too much and can't afford to jeopardize anything by being mean to people. And anyone who refuses to identify themselves knows they have done something wrong. It's just infuriating to be treated that way, and for no good reason!

Oh, and that message I left on the voice mail of the number she gave me? Yeah, nothing. It's been two days now, and nothing. I'm not holding my breath, either. It's really disappointing, but I suppose that goes without saying.

So anyway, that's been my introduction into doing Let's Play videos of my favorite Elder Scrolls game. Despite understanding what I am allowed to do, and despite following the rules to the letter, I find myself in a copyright dispute before I've even gotten started. Making matters worse, my efforts to talk to someone at Beth about it have not only been futile, but they've made me feel like an idiot for even trying. The only thing left to do is to share this lousy experience with as many people as I can, hoping that maybe if enough people know maybe something will change. And if nothing changes, at the very least maybe I can help some people know what they're likely to run into.

Well, that's the story. If anyone runs into a similar problem, please feel free to hit me up if you want to talk about it. And I guess it goes without saying, but if someone can get this in front of someone at Bethesda who actually cares that this is happening, please do! I'll help in any way I can to fix this.

Oh, and if anyone wants to see the video in question I have another thread that announced my Let's Play series, and my channel is also linked in my sig. I only mention that so you can find the video if you want to see what we're talking about here. I welcome discussion about my channel and the videos on it, but please head over to my other thread for that, OK? I want to keep this thread focused on INgrooves' bogus copyright claims. Thanks in advance for helping me with that!

Thanks for reading. My best wishes to you all, and here's hoping your lives are free of copyright disputes!

YouTube copyright claims regarding music are automated. An algorithm dinged your video, not a person or persons.


Complain to YouTube about it, not Bethesda.

We already have a thread on this topic: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1587386-more-problems-with-youtube/

He wasn't complaining to Bethesda about it, he was trying to inform them that someone was trying to claim copyright over something that is in THEIR game. He was trying to be a good person by letting them know about an issue that from the sounds of it absolutely concerns them. I hate to ask this, but did you read the entire post? I know it was a bit of a wall-o-text, but if you had you wouldn't have told him to "complain to Youtube, not Bethesda".

He's not complaining, but instead notifying that a game made by Bethesda is getting copyright claimed by a foreign party. Which to me sounds like something Bethesda has the reason, and ability to deal with.

Wow that's really svcky.

i've run into a similar things where I was making render to sell a model on Turbsquid and then posted it to my Photobucket and it got pretty popular and people reused it.


I don't mind avatar use and personal bloggers but lots of people are selling it as clipart or putting it as a photo for their business and professional articles and profiting. All I'm asking for is credit.




http://tinyurl.com/gtcvox5

And that is just the .png version not the jpg or any other times they renamed it


The original upload:

http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/narwhal-3d-model/318443


Now it is on a bunch of websites who are copyrighting my material without my consent or without crediting me.


Most people I approach are nice and have no problem crediting me, like these people:

http://www.robinsonlibrary.com/science/zoology/mammals/cetacea/narwhal.htm


But others are really difficult- this one blogger about evolution as really mean to me and at first did the credit but then revoked it and then when I gave him the picture with the credit on it he resided it so small that the credit was illegible- what an n'wah:

Grrrrr: https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/04/22/mysteries-of-evolution-the-narwhals-tusk-or-rather-tooth/narwhal-teeth-vestigial/


If you click on it you get the bigger version but seriously who is going to do that. >_>

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/04/22/mysteries-of-evolution-the-narwhals-tusk-or-rather-tooth/narwhalrender/



I don't know why he's being such a s'wit about it, i'm sure he would like it if people credited his things, besides I needed schooling and to but really pricy software and computer to make those!


It keeps popping up though- gee thanks I guess I'm glad you think its amazing but about 4 of your "amazing pictures" are obvious renders:

http://amazingpicturesofanimals.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/the-unicorn-of-sea-narwhal-monodon.html


Some people edit it (the Redditor images are pretty funny with bacon and fedoras and that):

http://www.most-endangered-animals.com/narwhal.html


It's pretty overwhelming.

Situations like this are what demonstrate how the ContentID system is inherently broken. This is far, far from the only case where this happens. And when the revenue is automatically funneled over to the illicit "author", I'm pretty sure that ought to be pretty damn illegal, but I'm also pretty sure anyone with a YouTube account has also signed something in the EULA which washes YouTube's hands off any responsibility in the matter.

Imagine if we had a system like this in place for images. Imagine if some news site or something used an image for an article which they had licensed from some generic stock image library, and since they were the first to use it they also have it registered with this supposed ContentID equivalent. So anyone else on the internet who licenses the same generic stock image suddenly can't use it because aforementioned news site now "owns" that image (which really belongs to the stock image company meant specifically to be used royalty-free by any of their clients). That's how completely ridiculous this system is.

That's terrible. The only person who should have authority over that music is Bethesda and Jeremy soule.


That's like puff daddy having copyrights over led Zeppelin's Kashmir, or eminem having copyright over aerosmith's dream on, or like whoever made that one Techno song having rights over Cyrus's speech from the warriors "can you dig it!!!"


These people ripped off creativity from another artist, and then try to claim they have rights over that?! That's just insane. What a loser.


I'm gonna go cover the Beatles come together, put it on youtube, then sue all of the hundreds of artists who ever covered that song (even though I hate the Beatles with a passion personally). That's how ludicrous this is.

With all due respect, why did this get moved to Community Discussion? This is an issue that is specific to Morrowind, not every Bethesda title. Can this please be moved back to the Morrowind forum? I put it there because I want Morrowind players to be able to see it. Plus, as has been noted, there is already a generic thread in Community Discussion for generic YouTube issues. This thread is not generic at all; it is very specific.

Please move this back to the Morrowind forum it was started in.

I will close this as there is not anything else to be added. The information will be looked at.