X-posting myself here from reddit since I think this is more of an aoczone topic
Link to start of ~15 minute discussion during Talk of the Empires 3, ZeroEmpires/Nili/Memb
Transcription:
Nili starting to discuss how event organizers selling rights to broadcast tournaments could be a legitimate strategy to raise money for prize pools
My thoughts:
To be clear, I'm not sure that ZeroEmpires is wrong here, at least under US law he seems very likely to be right, as bizarre as that is to me (it's legal to sell rights to a Scrabble game but not a Smash Bros game? wtf).
The biggest concern to me is that he's both actively following this line of reasoning and his for-profit business is the only aoe2 org actively partnered with Microsoft. I just want to air publicly that if the rights holders go after streamers / tournament organizers on copyright infringement I am sooo done with aoe2. I sincerely hope ZeroEmpires was merely expressing the facts of the situation - which again, he seems (unfortunately IMO) very likely to be correct about - and would oppose such a thing were it to actually happen =)
Link to start of ~15 minute discussion during Talk of the Empires 3, ZeroEmpires/Nili/Memb
Transcription:
Nili starting to discuss how event organizers selling rights to broadcast tournaments could be a legitimate strategy to raise money for prize pools
Nili / Zero / Memb with a good discussion about the practical challenges of selling broadcast rights and how it could be difficult for streamers and players alike.ZeroEmpires: Just to break you off there, because I understand what you're about to say, but [aoe2 broadcasting] is not the same as [sports broadcasting] at all because nobody owns a sport. Nobody owns football, nobody owns rugby, nobody owns tennis, whatever. You can do what you like with those games because they're just a set of rules owned by everybody. The problem is, if you're trying to sell something, the rights to something, you have to own that thing and obviously VooblyOfficial doesn't own aoe2. That's where there could be an issue going forward if they try to go down this route.
Later in the stream he says something about this is why Escape is working directly with Microsoft, although I don't have time to find the clip again at the momentZeroEmpires: Some people in the chat are making the parallel to FIFA, if FIFA organizes a football event, they can sell the broadcasting rights. That's true, but the point is, they don't own football, and somebody else can come along and do their own tournament and sell their own rights. But when you're doing that for aoe2, which is not owned by..., which is owned by somebody, it's very difficult to get around the - I guess - Game Content Usage Guidelines that are in place. But, anyway, what I wanted to say moving on...
My thoughts:
To be clear, I'm not sure that ZeroEmpires is wrong here, at least under US law he seems very likely to be right, as bizarre as that is to me (it's legal to sell rights to a Scrabble game but not a Smash Bros game? wtf).
The biggest concern to me is that he's both actively following this line of reasoning and his for-profit business is the only aoe2 org actively partnered with Microsoft. I just want to air publicly that if the rights holders go after streamers / tournament organizers on copyright infringement I am sooo done with aoe2. I sincerely hope ZeroEmpires was merely expressing the facts of the situation - which again, he seems (unfortunately IMO) very likely to be correct about - and would oppose such a thing were it to actually happen =)