WoW Movies & Stealing / GameGuides

RopeDrink

First of all, as some may know, I love making movies - Not nessecarily all just WoW movies, but they have been a huge part of my spare time and no doubt a sizeable chunk (if not pretty much the majority) of my channel subscribers are only there because I'm one of the few ShadowPriests who actually stuck with PvP over the years and made some fun movies about it for them to see.

Just made another PvLoL movie showing nothing but arsing around with a friend in todays lolsome PvP having a laugh - Movies in WoW are very hard to make, thesedays, as things are so easy, so I've become somewhat proud and nostalgic of the old ones (and the old WoW itself) and so, here's a problem I've encountered recently that was pointed out by one of the viewers, of which I'm not too sure what to think about...

I've posted this on MMORPGForums (Tied with WCM, not Boards) as well as YouTube's Discussion Forum (Of which I got no response at all).

Here's the basic jist... My most popular WoW movie on WCM (Which is 20mins long, way too big for YouTube in full) was only EVER supplied on WCM. I got a message on YouTube a good few months back from a viewer who was asking for music details from that movie, of which they linked in the PM - However, that PM linked to a cut version of my movie uploaded to YouTube by someone else, not the entire WCM version.

Curious, I clicked the channel of whom had uploaded my movie and it turns out to be "WoWProGameGuides": http://www.youtube.com/user/wowprogameguides

It turns out this channel has been taking TONNES of movies from various authors on WCM, uploading them to YouTube for subscribers, and uses that channel to advertise their WoWGameGuide website / guides of which I have an AUTOMATIC ALARM BELL go off in my head in the event this has anything to do with Keyloggers or potentially harmful material - I do not trust any site, whatsoever, that tries to advertise game guides, gold selling, arena rating etc

This isn't just about my movie, but tonnes of authors on WCM fall under prey to this and I really don't know what to think of it - At first I felt somewhat chuffed but now I'm rightly pissed off as I don't know the nature of the website being advertised and this channel is getting a plathora of subscribers who seem to think this channel owns those movies - Admittedly I can't believe so many people fall for it due to the whole "PRO GAME GUIDES" and nature of the channel, but hey.

As said, I posted on WCM's own MMO Forums and on YouTube Forums but neither is getting any interest at all.

Am I over reacting or is this a pretty serious problem? Even if it didn't have the whole advertising slant to it, I'm still a bit miffed that the person took my movie, cut the last 5-8mins off of it (of which has all the credits) and thrown it in their little YouTube collection as their own.

][cEMAN**

Intellectual property. How's the work situation at the moment? Might get free legal aid on it.

Kiith

Can you ask them to remove the video's? I realise that if they are as dodgy as they sound, they'll probably ignore you, but its worth a shot. And maybe get some of the other people who have had their movies uploaded to make complaints to the site in question?

TheDoc

If you have yourself credited in the original cut, and have proof of who you are, youd be in good legal standpoint.

As long as you have the original copy with some material to prove so ( checking the file properties to show creation date etc) with yourself credited in it, then you have a good leg to stand on.

If you dont however, I dont see much you can do.

The best thing you could do is ask them to credit you for the work....it seems your video is getting a really good spread.

Anti

Tbh:

Flag > This infringes my rights

This is bang out of order imho, they should have atelast asked for permission before editing your movie. But legally i dont think you have any comeback on this for some reason. If you look at some of the content on yourtube from other Movies makers who do warcraft movies like swifty whos youtube account is johnsju is videos hav been re uploaded to hundreds of other channels

Same goes for music videos and the likes too, as i doubt every 13 year old emo out there has rights from sony bmg to upload fall out boy videos, but they seem to get away with it. We do have a legel exec in work who specializes in media, i can ask him what his views on this are when i get back into work on monday if you'd like ?

whatduck

That crowd sound well dodge, the channel name seems to be a rip of the wow-pro site which does reputable game guides but the URL certainly doesn't link there.

I hope you can get them to take it down, if not rest assured that you are not responsible for anyone who gets keylogged by clicking on that site. People should be able to exercise common sense when choosing which WoW related websites they visit (Firefox and NoScript sure don't hurt either).

ZorbaTehZ

This happens all the time on youtube tbh, people rehosting videos to try and promote something, just report it and it should be dealt with.

Overheal

its a bit like everything really deviantart has its own copyright issues with copycats stealing the art and taking it elsewhere. hell ive even found entire boards.ie threads cloned on other message boards before; webmasters trying to generate traffic, etc. just putting posts under varying usernames.

its all dodgy, all immoral and all over the place. youd never be able to tackle it all.