Zoe Quinn and Copyright

Note: I talked with a fellow blogger about posting about this story. I respect his side of the story and agree with him on certain aspects. And, we are on opposite sides of many issues when it comes to this thing. However I respect his opinion.  So, I decided I wanted to focus on one thing in this highly charged issue.

I thought long and hard about writing anything about this evolving subject because things are changing about the story every minute. New players get added and other people literally delete themselves from the issue. As we know, there has been a lot of talk/screaming/attacks about the Zoe Quinn story. I don't care about the men she has slept with. I don't care about her “porn” past. Let's bench the discussion about the timeline of events or who's harassing whom. Because all of this will take away from what I really want to discuss.

The false copyright claim on one video.

This issue has been bothering me for a while. False flagging and copyright claims are something YouTube and other video people have to deal with (Remember The Room getting removed from That Guy With the Glasses?). I've noticed a growing trend of companies and individuals flagging videos on YouTube that they don't agree with. 

Things have gotten so heated over just this issue that one indie gamer has declared that he WILL claim a DMCA on Total Biscuit if he reviews his work. What? A review is a review. If I hated Total Biscuit and his review of my work, I'd come out and say so, but forbidding someone from reviewing your game is wrong.

So, where did all this start?

Mundane Matt did a video discussing the story behind Quinn and her ex-boy friend . While talking about the reveal, he went into what it means for the bigger picture of gaming journalism. Agree or disagree this is what he had to discuss.

Then, the video disappeared.  And, a repost from Matt appeared on his channel without the image.  I looked at the comments and it revealed that Matt’s channel received a copyright strike against it for the Zoe Quinn video.  Miss Quinn called for a copyright claim on the video due to picture. 

This opens up a can of worms due to the claim.  People might side with Quimm and have valid rebuttals and criticism, but striking down a video because you don’t agree with it is an underhanded thing to do.  Big companies do such things when they don’t like what you have to say, but I had hoped an indie gamer wouldn’t pull such a stunt.  It wrong when they do it and it is wrong when an individual does it.

I find this aspect of the story troubling and glossed over when the bigger story is being discussed.  The reason this is troubling is what happens when a Vlogger reviews an indie game and that dev doesn’t like what he or she has to say?  If you use a picture for your video, should they swoop in and strike it down? This destroys the discussion and debate. “Hey, I have a different opinion than this video, I will post my response to it.”

Okay, maybe the subject matter has issues.  How about discussing them and having counter-discussions with them? But to completely shut down the discussion using a copyright claim is not the way to defend yourself.  Plus, it opens you up to more scrutiny.  The move is supposed to give a chilling effect, but this type of behavior usually garners more attention.

Remember when Scientology went around shutting down everything involving that Tom Cruise thing?  It opened them up to even more exposure and a larger movement.

People will push for more extreme reactions when you do something like this.  This happens on both sides with both sides now claiming hacks and doxed incidents.  We now litterally have people screaming and deleted their Twitter profiles over the outgrowth of this incident and no one is looking good.

It bothers me that more people aren’t having the discussion of copyright/flagging claims.  This has become a huge deal within the black activist YouTube community, which is also the reason I am writing this post.  There is a group of people that don’t agree with the Vlogger and Blogger Tommy Sotomayor.  Instead of giving us a counter argument, they false-flagged his videos and take down his channels.

It has become a huge problem.

I had hoped that the indie gaming group not had followed suit.  However, I was wrong.  Let’s have the discussion about women in gaming, but we have to let there be a number of opinions and we shouldn’t strike down those other opinions. Trust me, the other side also makes false-flagging crusades too, and it helps no one. This is why I am really upset with the Zoe claim. At no point, did she think, “this is wrong”?

I am probably going to split this into another part, because this has already come out as being too long. 

By the way, Mundane Matt’s copyright strike was removed a few days ago. 

Here's the original video that had the false copyright claim.