Last month we reported on a proposed law in the United States Senate that if passed and signed by the President would make the streaming of illegal videos over the Internet a felony. The law, called the Commercial Felony Streaming Act, was designed mostly to close a loophole in current laws that make it illegal to download pirated videos. However there is now concern that the law is so broad that it might make uploading videos of console and PC games created by fans a crime.
Game Informer brings up the concerns in an article on its web site. In addition to uploading game videos the bill is currently worded that even the act of embedding such game videos on a web site could be in violation of the proposed law. The concerns have apparently reached Markus "Notch" Persson, the creator of the highly popular indie PC game Minecraft. The sandbox game is highly popular with gamers who want to show off their in-game creations via videos on YouTube. Indeed those videos showing off user's Minecraft worlds and creations were part of the reason behind the game's surge in popularity and sales.
In his blog post, Persson states that he is aware that Minecraft owes much to user created YouTube videos. He says, "If the bill passes, I suspect many game companies (including us) will add a special clause to the TOS specifically to allow posting videos of their games." It should be interesting to see if the bill gets passed and if game companies will make an exception for user made videos made from their games.
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