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Comment by robertcorey | Hacker News Reader

I think this will be a successful for the following reasons:

Previous Twitch competitor (Owned3D) was successful in gaining viewership by poaching streamers from twitch with better deals.It seems like it was pretty easy for personalities to transfer their fan bases over. Many twitch streamers already post highlights of their streams to youtube so they've already established a presence there. I would also think that youtube will be better at serving video advertisements and handling copyrighted materials on stream (currently twitch handles copyrighted music by muting archived videos that contain it, whereas youtube places an advertisement for the song at the bottom of the video).

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YouTube shuts down videos with footage Nintendo games in it automatically. They have an awful reputation for one sided copyright enforcement amongst game streamers.

YouTube does that at the request of Nintendo due to their ad revenue program[0]. You're leaving out a bit of important context that completely undermines your point.

The problems with Nintendo are not limited to the situation you describe, and they've made a few attempts to make it better and usually made it worse. The long and short of it is that Nintendo has a rather unique position in the industry that because they created the game, they are entitled to a kickback of revenue you make on your own content. If you are not enrolled, they treat it just like a Content ID claim, as if I were to upload my favorite album and attempt monetization.

Content creators and Nintendo do not get along in general. Ask Rooster Teeth, TotalBiscuit, PewDiePie, Angry Joe, and others. This has been extensively covered by everyone I named.

Back to the point, YouTube is entirely absolved of fault, and to claim otherwise betrays misunderstanding.

[0]: https://r.ncp.nintendo.net/guide/

I don't think the copyright law on who owns footage of games is entirely settled?

It really doesn't matter while the game companies as a whole have figured out that the best thing for their business is if the game is popular on Twitch equals a lot more sales. Once companies see streamer as hurting game sales that would make this an issue again.

> YouTube does that at the request of Nintendo due to their ad revenue program[0].

Agreed, but I left that out because I thought people on HN already know and expect Nintendo to be a bit over the top about 'protecting' their IP.

That doesn't mean Google have to kowtow to their demands, or that Google don't have the power to defend Youtube game streamers.

> YouTube shuts down videos with footage Nintendo games in it automatically

No it doesn't. It has an awful reputation for Nintendo games because if you enable monetization on a stream of a Nintendo game, Nintendo takes all ad revenue unless you join their "Nintendo Creators" affiliate program.

And I'm not sure what you mean below about YouTube could be defending streamers. Streaming games isn't at all established as fair use, and odds point to it not actually being transformative enough for them to be (nearly everyone's arguments revolve around streaming being a huge benefit for game sales so companies should allow streamers to make money off them to motivate them).

What YouTube does with copyrighted music depends on what the rights holder tells them to do. Most of the time in Germany the video is just unviewable. I'd rather prefer muted instead of unable to watch.

Would be interesting if YouTube allowed users to upload videos with dual audio tracks or something, or as you said, mute the video altogether (which at times they do - but I guess not when it's a region based block).

Own34 was first it actually was Justin.tv/Twitch.tv poaching streamers from Own3d. Own3d had a money problem with not enough income and more money going out due to popularity. Streamers were owed tens of thousands of dollars when they closed up shop.

Agreed, Its a brilliant move by YouTube, I am surprised they didn't bring this earlier. People were already using YouTube to show their game footage for a long long time.

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