Daniel Negreanu Talks GSNās YouTube Crackdown
7 years ago10 Mar
Game Show Network have recently been at the center of an intellectual property debate, going after a number of vloggers who have used hands from their poker shows (notably the brilliant and much missed High Stakes Poker). Seventeen of Doug Polkās Youtube videos ā using footage from GSNās flagship poker programme High Stakes Poker ā have been pulled under YouTubeās copyright infringement policy.
The question of whether Polkās analysis is sufficiently transformative and constitutes one of the Fair Use criteria of education, criticism, satire, comment or news journalism, is a matter for the court of public opinion ā and the actual courts ā to decide.
But whether or not the videos should have been pulled, there is the separate question of whether or not Polk should have used someone elseās content without permission in the first place. Daniel Negreanu seems to think not. āThe responsible approach I take, which is respectful of peopleās content is to reach out to people,ā he says in his recent FCP podcast on YouTube.
The approach of asking first is not a bad idea if you arenāt a lawyer and youāre using a TV networkās footage. After all, TV networks have teams of intellectual property lawyers at their disposal. In that regard, youāre bringing a knife to a gunfight.
Negreanu wanted to use GSN property in his videos as well and asked the relevant parties for permission (apparently the relevant parties are called āMauryā), and was duly denied. He seems a bit cagey having had trouble with his own videos getting blocked in the UK because the British PokerStars office there hadnāt been notified of the permissions the US branch had issued.
What Negreanu is really stressing in his approach, is that creators should have some control over their creations, and whether legally permissible or not, it is at the very least kind to ask.
He doesnāt come out and call Polk a thief, and given Negreanuās outspokenness in the past, if he thought it, you can be pretty sure heād say it. so it seems pretty clear heās not throwing shade at anyone in his podcast.
The twist in the tale is that he may inadvertently have got a bunch of other vloggers videos shut down, since a few weeks after he requested permission to use some High Stakes Poker hands in his videos, GSN started going after the other vloggers who had used clips from the show in their videos.
Whether or not GSNās shutdown will permanently put Polkās videos off the web is yet to be seen. It sounds like Polk is digging in for a fight. Negreanu though seems to think Polk should make a snow princess, and let it go.
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