What's on your mind?

[DerVVulfman]

And you're missing the point. Companies do own likenesses and content. You say they didn't make the video, but it has has nothing to do with footage of how you are playing a game. It does have to do with the visual content, the characters, graphics and the music in question.

If someone posts a video playing 'Eyes on Me' in the background, Square has full rights to pull the video as it is content from Final Fantasy VIII. If you were playing it in the background to one of your Lani Dies a Lot videos, they very well could and have full legal right to ask for payment for its use.

Why wouldn't these companies expect to be paid for what you do? Because you're doing it with their copyrighted material that they do own. They are the ones that own the copyright for the song. They own the rights to the graphics or music of a game you are playing. And it makes no difference if you are doing it for free or otherwise. The only company that I saw relishing in fan videos made with their system was Microsoft/Bungie with Red Vs Blue.

And there have been fan-games that were shut down because the companies saw them as infringements. And insofar as one fan-game I know that was cancelled.. SquareEnix wasn't so cool in that respect. Having a youtube video pulled is no different.

And for some time, many reviewers in gaming magazines give notice to the companies in question. They're paid and protected by their magazine to do so.

Broken as you say the system is, you have to accept that copyrighted material in a video makes it 100% prone to being pulled, unless you own the rights to all the content itself.