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Asmongold Built An Empire By "Paying" With Exposure - Reaction Content (1/3)

'''Original video:''' [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2aGMAuFLL0 Asmongold Built An Empire By "Paying" With Exposure - Reaction Content 1/3]

DarkViperAU:

Hey everyone. I don't do much scripted content, but I need to move my sleeping pattern and I'm very tired, so I'm gonna give it a go. Just don't look at my eyes, right?

So I watch Asmongold's content. I will even binge watch it when I need to move my sleeping pattern, like now. But I catch some stream content now and then as well. Having listened to Asmongold intermittently over the years, I have heard him make amazingly horrendous justifications, fears watching of entire videos on stream, and then re-uploading them to YouTube. He has fallen victim to that failing that we all have. Which is to passionately rationalize to ourselves things that we just want to do, and we want other people to get off our fucking backs. If I was a little less good at it, I'd be able to, you know, stop drinking soft drink. I'd be able to stop eating fast food. But it's, you know, a seriously well-documented psychological failing. Check out ‘''The Righteous Mind''’ for some really interesting examples.

So the most recent time that I know of that Asmongold gave these justifications was in a video where he was responding to a guy named Vaulty who was accusing Asmon of stealing WoW ideas. Absolute nonsense in regards to that specific claim. Asmon and Vaulty's video just coincidentally had a bit of similarity to them. Happens all the time. He's very much so innocent on that front. But the, you know, content stealing thing, the justifications, the fair used jazz that comes up after that is a, is a bit more troubling, which will now get into.

Vaulty:

And yeah, Asmongold, uh, is a streamer, but this is his official clip channel on YouTube, and he runs this channel. It's Monetized.

Asmongold:

No, I don't. I, I just, I actually don't, I don't run the channel. Uh, Katt, Danny and Daily Dose of Asmongold run the channel. I have no oversight over the channel. They upload everything, uh, on their own, completely independent of me.

Anyway, the second thing that I want to talk about, and I actually kind of need to talk about is my, uh, YouTube channel and, um, the way that I want to handle, I want to, I have to handle, uh, Asmongold highlights on YouTube from now on. (...) And so I partnered up with them and, um, we made the Asmongold TV highlights channel for YouTube. Now, that is going to be the official Asmongold, uh, Twitch highlights channel from now on. (...) Give me 48 hours after that stream is over to get all of that content uploaded onto YouTube. And the reason for that is by that 48 hour window, we will have had everything uploaded onto YouTube from that stream. (...) And that way we can kind of preserve the ability that people, uh, you know, want to have in order to make content about my stream. And it's something that I think has helped me and something that I want to continue as much as I possibly can. (...) I don't want to have to go through like fucking sending take down notices for videos and shit. Uh, it, it's obnoxious and weird to me. Makes me very uncomfortable.

DarkViperAU:

Do you own the channel? Do you hire people for it? Do you have the ability to set guidelines for the content on the channel? Control who can post there and remove whatever you please? Do you benefit monetarily or otherwise, you know, clout, brand, whatever, from the channel's existence? If the answer to even some of these questions is yes, you do run the channel. “Look man, just because I produce all the content and my face is the bloody logo of the channel, and I've specifically told people that they can put this content on a channel that has my name in it, it doesn't mean I run the channel. Sure, I could at any point terminate the channel, tell them to stop, take down all the videos, but I don't run it. I don't run shit. I just hire people with the express purpose of doing something specific for me that I outline that they can do, and then I can pull the plug at any time or change the requirements at any time.

How am I running things though? Come on. Now, if I'm not specifically outlining every single thing that my employee does, how am I running this business?”.

This is kind of aside the point of the video, but clearly a person is well within their rights to say, you run the channel given your relationship with us, right? I mean, if you wanna get down to semantics and say, “Well, actually the definition of ‘run’ I was using…”, that's just fucking dumb. He clearly had every right to say, you run the channel.

Vaulty:

And yeah, Asmongold is a streamer, but this is his official clip channel on YouTube. (...) Most half of the videos on this guy's channel can barely even be considered his own content. Most of these videos are just him reacting to a full video that another WoW YouTuber has made. (...) I'm not sure that watching a 20 minute WR video from start to finish constitutes as fair use.

Asmongold:

Well, even if it doesn't, let's assume that it doesn't constitute as fair use. ??? is okay with me watching his videos. So even if it didn't constitute his fair use, then it would be fine. Like a lot of the people who I watch their videos. They are completely fine with me watching their videos. Even Uber Danger told me, he tweeted at me, he's like, yeah, I made the video. You know, I'm waiting for you to watch the end of it.

DarkViperAU:

This is clearly not a good argument. Continuing with the premise that Asmon stated that nothing he makes is fair use. If you steal content, you don't get a pass. If after the fact, some small portion of the people you stole from are actually cool with it, you don't get a pass morally or legally. “Hey dude, I stole a bunch of stuff from a lot of people, but some of them, after the fact said it was okay. So it's totally fine, man.”.

Is Asmongold working before or after watching someone else's content to know whether they think it's okay? Is he tracking them down, knocking on doors? No. There might be rare exceptions to that, but I suspect in most cases it's his viewers going, “Hey, Asmon looked at your video on stream”, and the person's like, “Oh, sweet, that's cool”. Or a person speaking up like, “Oh, you know, Asmon’s been watching a lot of my content, but I'm totally fine with that.”. Asmon doesn't really give a shit and his actions show it. He's sitting there like, “Oh, another person says it's okay for me to do exactly what I'm doing. Fucking perfect. I'll keep doing that then.”. This rationalization is ven worse though. If you think about the grander context of what he's talking about for.

If someone didn't allow Asmon to watch their content, they could potentially face social and financial repercussions for saying no. Some people might not watch that other person's content just outta spite, or they might start disliking all the videos or talking shit about that personal spam in the comment sections. Who knows? If a person says, Asmon, you can steal my content. 'cause we're going by the premise. Remember that, that it's all stolen content. This doesn't mean they actually want it to occur. It's just possible that they don't want to face the negative repercussions of saying no.

Asmongold:

And so if you want to have the argument whether if something is fair use or not, I think that's more of a legal argument and I don't know really what side of the fence that's gonna fall off on. I don't know. But I don't think that he knows either. Uh, the fact is that like, It, it's very hard to say what really is fair use and what isn't. And I think that it's contextual and it's a legal definition, right? Neither of us are lawyers, but it's just from his perspective, he doesn't like the fact that I'm looking, uh, watching videos on my stream.

DarkViperAU:

Do you know the definition of murder? It’s the unlawful, premeditated killing of one human by another. So imagine me and Asmon are at a bar and we see someone say, “I'm gonna stab you with this knife until you are dead.” and we watch a person walk over, stab another person until they're dead. I would scream, “Holy shit, he just murdered that guy!”. But Asmon wants you to believe he would say, “Ah, but neither of us are lawyers. Murder is a legal definition.”.

In life we judge things based on the evidence available and communicate what we think is most likely true. I will immediately grant, just like with fair use, sometimes a murder is actually quite hard to judge, is that murder isn't, who knows? But as with any wrongdoing, there are some really painfully, obviously, illegal things, and the existence of ambiguous cases doesn't change that one fucking iota. There are four commonly used factors that we can use to judge whether something is likely fair use or not. As long as you're of an age where you've completed high school. Whether or not most of asthma's content fits into fair use will be pretty obvious by the end of the video.

Asmongold:

And also on top of that, I think you can use another example. Is it, what was the video? Uh, the guys channel that we, uh, we watched the other day, so now he has 20,000 subscribers. Uh, whereas like I led a lot of my viewers over to subscribe to his channel. Whenever he had 5,000 subscribers a couple of days ago,

DarkViperAU:

So obviously there are many problems here. First, you don't get to point to one individual instance of something being positive to justify all similar actions. It's like if I went around shooting people in the head and you know, one guy happened to live and I actually took out a tumor, so he lives even longer than he would have if I had never shot him. It doesn't make. Me shooting all the other people in the head justified.

If fair, you would seek both the positives and the negatives of something to weigh them both against each other. Do you wanna take a solid guess at what side of the equation ignores completely? But let's be real. Do any of you think Asmon is sitting around judging whether or not his actions in regards to stealing content is actually harming others? No. He benefits from it, thus, we can watch him in practice thinking of poor rationalizations to convince you he's doing right. You might also note that Asmon does not explicitly say to his viewers to subscribe to everyone he watches. Only if Lord Asmon is truly impressed does he pay in exposure for the content that he profits from. Also to get a bit technical. Subscribers are not a great metric for channels, as most people don't watch content through their subscription feed. They're instead fed content through their recommendations, which won't change for his viewers because he watched the video and they didn't.

Asmongold:

Is that with Taliesin and ????, whenever Taliesin didn't like, uh, the community that my, uh, stream had and like the way that it brought it into his community, he didn't like that and he asked me not to watch his videos. I've never watched a video from Taliesin since then.

DarkViperAU:

All I am asking is that everyone personally contact me to tell me whether or not I can watch their content in full and then re-upload it to YouTube. If you say nothing or you're unaware of what I'm doing, I'll just assume full consent. I mean, they haven't said no, right Asmon?

Asmongold:

So this isn't like I'm doing it against people's will or anything like that.

Vaulty:

Why doesn't he post a reaction video of Family Guy or episodes from some other big TV show? There's no way that he wouldn't get a copyright strike.

Asmongold:

Now, well… the reason for that is because those videos have a different way of being monetized. Those videos are pay-per-view. (...) The way that this is different is because the videos on YouTube are free to begin with. So if you're watching a video on YouTube, you're providing a free alternative for something that was originally something that you had to pay for.

DarkViperAU:

Something being publicly available does in no way make reproducing its legal or even morally, okay. Many businesses these days offer things for free to get people in the door. If I have an exclusive video and I'm the only person who has it, even if I'm not monetizing it by pay-per-view or ads, I can still get benefit by bringing people into my channel for other things that potentially monetize or other things that I'm selling. Because, you know, it's the only place that people can see it. It's exclusive If Asmon watches it on his stream. Or worse puts every frame of it on his YouTube channel. The purpose and value I had for my product declines, the only reason Asmon doesn't watch Family Guy is that he's far more likely to suffer repercussions for his actions from a TV network. That network isn't gonna be interested in any potential benefits that Asmon provides, and they aren't gonna be scared by the viewers, and plus they likely have an automated system anyway, so you're more likely to get flagged. YouTubers on the other hand will for start, far less likely use automated systems. But also far tinier, they will either see the benefits of Asmongold's benevolence, or they will shut the fuck up or face the consequences. You take the carrots or you get the stick, as they say.

Vaulty:

The messed up thing is, is that some of the videos about Asmongold posts of him reacting to smaller YouTubers and fall, get more views from the original video. Like this ‘''Review of Warcraft Adventures''’ from Platinum WoW. It's really well edited and probably took a good 15 hours to make this video. Got 43k views after three days, and Asmongold literally sitting there and watching the entire thing, got 120k views all monetized to him.

Asmongold:

So Platinum WoW is actually completely fine with me doing this. And not only is he fine with me doing it, But by doing it, it actually provides a tangible benefit to his channel. As evidenced by the actual analytics.

DarkViperAU:

I want you to think about this for a moment. Who is benefiting more from Asmongold, watching other people's YouTube videos entirely on Twitch and then re-uploading them to YouTube? One of the biggest Twitch streamers on the platform getting 30 million views a month on YouTube? Or the people that he watches on his stream? “Don't you understand? Sure, I'm making millions off other people's stuff, but they get the crumbs that fall from my mouth. How am I the bad guy here?”. “We need to thank Asmongold guys, he's sacrificing so much to boost these small creators. Look at him floundering there. He's putting, putting so much burden upon himself to gain all these views. Oh my god and to explain he's praying so much, so much money. How? How… is he doing this sacrifice for small YouTubers like Platinum. Oh my god!”.

We are children apparently. We don't, we don't get agency. Come on now. People, we don't get to decide where our content goes. Doesn't matter how much we work on it. Asmon has decided what is best for us. He knows what he's doing is best for us, thus he is perfectly right to do it. You know, if afterwards you don't agree with what he's done, he can throw you a bone and won't do it again. He's just always looking out for the little guy, that Asmongold.

Asmongold:

So this is a situation where everybody wins. (...) What, what, what am I getting away with? I think the only thing that he's really mad about me getting away with is I'm getting away with more viewers than he is.

DarkViperAU:

But of course you may have missed a little bit back there. I didn't really draw attention to it, but Asmongold is a big hypocrite because, you know, he gives particular restrictions on when other people can watch or use his content.

Asmongold:

Um, so, uh, anyway, so basically if the YouTube, if I do a stream. Give me 48 hours after that stream's over to get all of that content uploaded onto YouTube. And the reason for that is by that 48 hour window, we will have had everything uploaded onto YouTube from that stream.

DarkViperAU:

So Asmonlike every YouTuber, Twitter a streamer has. Certain ideas as to how their content can be used by others, and in what capacity he has concerns about other people uploading content similar to his own and what that could potentially do for the purpose that he has for his channel and his content. Weird…!

Asmongold:

I, I would say the way that I react to videos, I, I don't wanna like rate reactions okay. But there's a reason why people get mad that I put on a belly or video, because if it's 18 minutes, the reaction's gonna be 45. Like I, I spend more time actually talking about the videos and getting into them than almost anybody else. Like, even with this fucking video, it's been five minutes, and I don't know how long I've been watching the, uh, I've been doing this, but it's been a long fucking time. It's been like at least 10, 15 minutes. With pauses even more, and that's fine. But what I'm saying is like I, I feel like I add a lot of insight into videos for the most part, right? I mean, obviously I have reactions that aren't really that good, of course, but for the most part, that's the goal that I try to make and to say that I get away with a lot of stuff like, what the fuck am I getting away with?

DarkViperAU:

Come here secret: I don't care if you think the sun shines out your ass, or if you think your commentary is a gift from the gods, it doesn't give you any right to take anyone's content.

It doesn't make anything you are doing justifiable. If you think you are really fucking smart and your content is so fucking amazing. Oh my god, the commentary, I'm literally fucking jizzing.

So let's take a look at the four pillars of fair use. I know Asmon is only sometimes trying to imply his stuff is fair use, or at least muddy the waters enough that no one can really say definitively either way. But let's go through the criteria anyway and why this criteria exists.

One, the transformative factor, the purpose and character of your use at issue is whether the material has been used to help create something new or merely copied verbatim into another work. Verbatim means in the exact same words as they were used originally.

For example, if you watched an entire Bellular video on stream and then put it on YouTube, I would have no reason to watch the original because I've already bloody seen it. I watched it with you as if we were sitting on the same couch, except every four minutes you stoped to grab my dick. To catch you up… it doesn't matter how much you rub, my crutch, the video doesn't transform, then I can literally recreate Bellular’s video to the frame. Using your video shows that you have not sufficiently changed the content you were copying. You are just cutting it into pieces.

So why does this criteria exist? It's to create an environment where people are more willing to invest resources in something original as they are more protected when they bring it to market. Why would I invest a million dollars and 10 years of my life to create something original when a person over there could copy it and sell it for far cheaper 'cause they haven't had to invest that time or money in producing the thing.

Two, the nature of the copywriter work, this one isn't really relevant in this case, but facts like dark fiber has a microphone, are more freely able to be copied, less freedom is given for facts that are unpublished because your early presentation of them can alter how the fact would have been presented by the author. Why does this exist? Well, for a start, you know, the entire court system would just be full of people claiming different facts, but also, I mean, you couldn't have the news without it, people would be massively less informed.

Three, the amount and substantiality of the portion taken. Basically, did you need to take the content that you took? If you are watching a Bellular video, is the entire video necessary for your opinions on the topic? No. You can quite easily do what you used to do and make YouTube videos and communicate the exact same opinions to the same effects, but that would take more time to do. So you don't wanna do it. Laziness is not a sufficient justification for taking things from other people's videos.

As a rule, the smaller the part of what you're taking from the entire work, the more likely you'll be under fair use. Asmon is literally taking everything. With criticism and commentary, often you need to include some of the video or else the criticism and commentary. Makes no sense. If you say the lighting in this movie is dark, a viewer is not gonna know how dark or what that dark actually means unless they show a scene from the movie, but they don't need to show the entire movie to establish that the movie is dark.

Four, the effect of the use upon the potential market. If your work competes with the work you are copying from, it is less likely to be fair use. Does what you have produced seek to do the same thing as what I have produced? Remember h3h3, he took pick up videos and changed them into comedy videos. Completely different audiences. Completely different purpose. Again, Asmon is taking the entirety of a video, meaning that a person is potentially less able to achieve the value they intended for it because it now has been reproduced and their video is now in competition with that reproduction.

It is potentially possible that your reproduction helps fulfill their goals or other creative works in the future, or have increased value because of your reproduction. But this doesn't impact whether the initial reproduction is actually fair use. All it impacts is whether or not the person will be pissed for what you've done.

Having now gone through the four criteria, do you really think Asmongold, sitting in a chair, watching a video and pausing every once in a while constitutes fair use? Is that the society that you want to live in? Do you think copyright will be doing what it's meant to be doing in regards to creative works? If that is the way to get fair use?

Vaulty:

I think this actually hurts YouTubers since if people have watched Asmongold's reaction to a video before the original video, then they're not going to watch that original video when it comes up and they're recommended. Since they've already seen it, they're not going to watch it again. Why would you watch Platinum WoW’s ‘''War Crafted Ventures''’ with you if you've already seen Asmongold watch it in full?