Monthly Update - March 2016

Hey guys,

So here's what's happening in the blog for March:

For reviews, I plan on reviewing Kung Fu Panda 3 (as that comes to UK shores in March), Zootropolis (the UK title for Zootopia), Goosebumps (that's now already in UK shores, so it will be debatable on whether I review it or not), Batman VS Superman: Dawn of Justice (well obviously) and that's all the films. As far as video games are concerned, there's not much for me to look at in March (and that's just my personal opinion), but I do intend to look at the Oculus Rift when that comes out later in the month (assuming Wikipedia is right about its release date) so look forward to that.

Aside from those, expect another boxes of stuff post that will no doubt have plenty of Deadpool in it. And episode reviews for season 3 of Agents of SHIELD and season 2 of Gotham will carry on every Tuesday until both shows either take a break or finish (depending on how their respective broadcasters handle things).

And that's it for March. Now I know I didn't do a theory or tackle a news story last time, so I thought to tackle something that has affected me in some way, but has not had a huge impact on me unlike many other people on YouTube:

Where's the Fair Use? (#WTFU)

So a few weeks ago, Doug Walker of Channel Awesome in his Nostalgia Critic persona, tackled a very important topic on an editorial of his which is to do with the controversy on YouTube that has happened. Basically people like Doug Walker make a living by doing reviews of films, video games and whatever else comes to mind and use footage of those things to do so. Most of the stuff they show falls under Fair Use which under certain circumstances, allows people to use footage from things that can be used for anything such as news reporting, teaching, research and what most people do on YouTube, critiquing and it would not need permission from or payment from the copyright holder. Now to people who do those for a living, its legal. Unfortunately, YouTube has drawn criticism for allowing these copyright holders to be given power to take down videos that have footage of their things, despite the fact that it falls under Fair Use. And by doing this, people that make money off doing videos on YouTube, are at risk of losing their jobs which therefore, makes what these copyright holders are doing, illegal, though there is more to it, but I think I've covered the gist of it. Now even though the NC states that Hollywood are doing this, its not only them that are involved. Video game companies are doing this and so are news corporations, TV networks and a whole bunch of other people who for the most part, don't realise how much of an impact they are making on the Internet just by making what we like watching to just go away. So how does this affect me, you may ask. Well as it turns out, I too have a YouTube channel which I only occasionally upload videos to. I'm basically one of those people who's on YouTube more to watch other people's work than anything else. Some of the videos I have uploaded, do have some copyrighted material in them. I have a family video that for a while, did have audio when uploaded to YouTube, but since then, the audio has been removed for copyright reasons even though I was following the guidelines for Fair Use. As for my other videos, I have a Nintendo one which I was allowed to upload as I was using something Nintendo were allowing players to use at the time in some games that they make, among others too. Ever since I started watching the NC and others, I've always wanted to do video reviews of things myself, but never really had the money nor the equipment as well as the time and space to do them and now with this whole Fair Use thing going on, its probably not going to happen any time soon even though I now have software and a powerful enough computer (of which I built myself) to allow me to make such videos (although I do still need space and a camera, but still). So really, I'm on the wagon of people just wanting to know "Where is the Fair Use?". These copyright holders need to know that they are destroying the Internet and the community that help made the internet what it is today because this can go beyond YouTube. Some of you may remember the whole SOPA thing a couple of years ago. Well even though this never got passed by congress, the practices can still take place and YouTube could very well be the start of these practices. So I ask again #WTFU