Copyright vs Copyleft

If you like games, you probably have heard or watched 'Let's Play'. But do you know Let's Play actually represented of copyright or either copyleft? 

Originality will lost its value due to the repetition of its work especially on internet therefore people always work so hard to strive for the copyright in other to protect their benefits.  Example like in case of Let's Play (a recorded video documenting a playthrough of a video game, always including commentary by the gamer) Nintendo claimed that they retain the copyright and have registered the content through YouTube's Content ID system such that they can generate ad revenue from user videos who making the Let's Play.

"Copyright inevitably pits the demands of authors and publishers to control and charge for uses of their works against the demands of consumers and users of these works for maximum access to the works at minimal or no cost." said Howard B. Abrams, Professor of Law in University of Detroit Mercy. 

We dicussed the definition of originality is the aspect of created works by as being new or novel, and is not received from others nor one copied from or based upon the work of others. But is it all original work should have their own rights?

There's a term called The threshold of originality is a concept in Anglo-American-based copyright law systems that is used to assess whether a particular work can be copyrighted. In this context, "originality" refers to "coming from someone as the originator/author", rather than "never having existed before". While works that do not meet these thresholds are not eligible for copyright protection, they may still be eligible for protection through other intellectual property laws, such as trademarks or design patents (particularly in the case of logos). So, here's our defination of originality for the law study.

While people are fighting for their property's rights, there's copyleft existed on internet, too. Copyleft, designated by (ɔ) (a backwards circled capital letter “C”) is a general method for making a program (or other work) free, and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free as well. Free does not necessarily mean free of cost, but free as in freely available to be modified. An early use of the word "copyleft" was in Li-Chen Wang's Palo Alto Tiny BASIC's distribution notice "@COPYLEFT ALL WRONGS RESERVED" in June 1976, but Tiny BASIC was not distributed under any form of copyleft distribution terms, so the wordplay is the only similarity. 

Copyleft is often used in relation to software in the public domain. Copyleft licenses (for software) require that information necessary for reproducing and modifying the work must be made available to recipients of the executable. In the GNU project, their aim is to give all users the freedom to redistribute and change GNU software. So instead of putting GNU software in the public domain, they “copyleft” it. Copyleft says that anyone who redistributes the software, with or without changes, must pass along the freedom to further copy and change it.The GNU Free Documentation License (FDL) is a form of copyleft intended for use on a manual, textbook or other document to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifications, either commercially or noncommercially. 

Let's Play has a characteristic of copyleft too where users video can share their playthrough to the public and more popular YouTube channels will sometimes receive free promotional copies of games from developers and publishers in advance of release to promote the title. Users video get to paid if their views gets a certain number but not exactly by the game itself but the celebrity like Pewdiepie. Public also can embed the videos to their website in other to modify them even videos in Youtube all stated as "Standard YouTube Licence". But as long people don't get revenue or taken without legally permission that's should be fine.

Originality sometimes occur in copyrights or copyleft, depends on how the authors or inventor distribute their work. Nevertheless, we always stick to the main concept of the originality-  the aspect of created works by as being new or novel, and is not received from others nor one copied from or based upon the work of others. 

Bibliography:

Gnu.org, (2015). What is Copyleft? - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation. [online] Available at: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/ [Accessed 17 Jan. 2015].

 

 Howard B. Abrams. Originality and Creativity in Copyright Law. Vol. 55: No. 2. [online] Available at: http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4136&context=lcp [Accessed 17 January 2015]

Rose, M. (2015). Pay for Play: The ethics of paying for YouTuber coverage. [online] Gamasutra.com. Available at: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/219671/Pay_for_Play_The_ethics_of_paying_for_YouTuber_coverage.php [Accessed 17 Jan. 2015].

Polygon, (2013). Nintendo claims ad revenue on user-generated YouTube videos. [online] Available at: http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/16/4336114/nintendo-claims-ad-revenue-on-user-generated-youtube-videos [Accessed 17 Jan. 2015].