Legal aspects of streaming - games, life, films of others
January 16, 2020You play games and make money?
Do you broadcast esports competitions and have an audience?
You better get ready
Without unnecessarily entering into overly legal considerations, what matters most is that if you as a streamer created a phonogram or a videogram, it is entirely up to you to make it public and the rules on which this will happen.
Importantly, when a phonogram or videogram is broadcast, rebroadcasted or played on the market, the producer has the right to receive appropriate remuneration. Of course, however, if you make your image and shares available for free, you will not be entitled to such remuneration, but you must know, and you certainly know it a long time ago, that video games do not have to be free at all!
What else do we gain?
Well, the Act introduces protection for phonograms and videograms on similar terms as the protection that a work receives within the meaning of the Copyright and Related Rights Act. According to the Act, the right to a phonogram and videogram expires at the end of fifty years if the recording has been published.
The right shall expire at the end of seventy years following the year in which the phonogram was published, if the phonogram was not published and if it was otherwise distributed within that period, the right shall expire at the end of seventy years following the year in which the phonogram was distributed, if a videogram was published or distributed, the right shall expire at the end of fifty years following the year in which the first of these events occurred.
What is streaming ?
we already know that. But wait. Aren't computer games subject to other laws? We're gonna write more about this as part of the cycle - Become a Twitch star.
It's also worth learning what streaming games might be. Although it may seem strange to some people, but playing on a computer can be considered a media activity!
It's worth knowing that this means periodical publications that don't form a closed, homogeneous whole, appearing no less than once a year, with a fixed title or name, current number and date, and in particular: newspapers and magazines, agency services, regular telex news, newsletters and magazines, gaming radio and television programmes and player chronicles.
Thus, any existing and emerging means of mass communication, including radio and tele- and factory radio broadcasting, which disseminate periodical publications by means of printing, vision, sound or other techniques.
If the stream and even the mere playing of a game with a voiceover can be considered a press, it should be described in more detail as a magazine.
Did you know that under the law you are seen as a general information periodical print or a message by means of sound and sound and image, appearing more often than once a week or not more often than once a year.
Exact dates and time dimensions are different from the country you are in and the jurisdiction of the law you must comply with. This provision applies mutatis mutandis to that part of the broadcast that is not radio or television, i.e. for players, rather online. Twitch, Mixer, Youtube as well as new platforms I enter like Google Stadia will also stream in a way.