Freedom of speech issues in gaming critique

[MrFlibble]

The Cynical Brit, a well-known video game YouTube critic, relays the details of a recent incident in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfgoDDh4kE0

Basically a game development company used the "copyright protection" legislation to take down a video review that harshly criticized their game, and got away with it (for now at least).

[Edit] After the general public on the Internet was outraged by this event, Wild Games Studio was pressured to restore the original review:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjTa_x3rbJE

[DOSGuy]

It's legal to include snippets of copyrighted material in the context of a review. Companies that abuse the DMCA to remove legal content should themselves face penalties and sanctions. The DMCA is so badly skewed in favor of the huge companies that lobbied for its creation that it contains no recourse for those harmed by abusive DMCA takedowns, nor any penalties for the abusers.

[MrFlibble]

Yeah, there seems to be this kind of unspoken assumption that the companies are "right" by default and the users who are only potential copyright violators are automatically wrong.

[Hallfiry]

Yeah, there seems to be this kind of unspoken assumption that the companies are "right" by default and the users who are only potential copyright violators are automatically wrong.

Oh boy... as a German I know that problem too well... (abuse of copyright)
Translated from Wikipedia:

Gema Presumption:
[...]If the circumstances can't be entirely clarified, it is assumed that the piece of music is not GEMA-free, that means it belongs to the GEMA repertoire, and therefore GEMA fees are to be paid.[...]

This means that if you play a song in Germany of which you are not the author and you can't verify that it is GEMA-free (ergo either old enough to be free or by an artist who has no contract with GEMA), the GEMA company can charge you for it.

A (weird) case of copyright is done by the government of Bavaria (where I actually live). They own the copyright of Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and abuse the copyright by never giving anyone the licence to print it. Instead people can only print copies that are entirely commented, to it's not a direct copy of the original book, but instead a scientific analysis. "Luckily" the copyright runs out in two years anyway. Not that I would ever buy or read such rubbish, but that's really not the way how copyright should be used.

THat was kinda godwinesque...