D&D (2024) D&D Player's Handbook Video Redactions & Takedowns

There's a lot of YouTube videos looking at the brand new Player's Handbook right now, and some of them include the YouTuber in question flipping through the new book on screen. A couple of those video creators have been asked by WotC to redact some of the content of their videos, with one finding that their video had been taken down entirely due to copyright claims from the company. It appears to be the folks who are flipping through the whole book on-screen who are running into this issue which, it seems, is based on piracy concerns.

Jorphdan posted on Twitter that "Despite fulfilling [WotC's] requests for the flip through video I was issues a copyright strike on my channel. Three strikes TERMINATES your channel. I don't think going over the 2024 PHB is worth losing my channel I've been working on since 2017. I'm pretty upset as none of this was said up front and when notified I did comply with their requirements. And I see other creators still have their videos up. Videos that are not unlike mine. Covering WotC is not worth losing my channel... Meanwhile please subscribe to my D&D free channel the Jocular Junction, where I'll most likely be making the majority of my TTRPG videos."

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Mike Shea, aka Sly Flourish, also posted a walkthrough of the Player's Handbook. While he didn't receive a copyright takedown action, after an email from WotC he has blurred out all the page images. "Note, I blurred out pictures of the book after Hasbro sent me an email saying they worried people would take screenshots of the book and build their own. Yes, it's complete b******t, but we must all do our part to ensure four billion dollar companies maximize shareholder value."

Popular YouTuber DnD Shorts had a video entitled 100% Walkthrough of the New Player's Handbook in D&D. That video is no longer available. However, his full spoilers review is still online.

 

[lolsworth]

I can't believe people seriously think youtubers slowly posting the contents of a unpublished book online for their thousands of followers is okay and that WOTC should do nothing about it.

Quickly flipping through pages and commenting is fine.

But I think some people slowly posting book text-quality images of the whole book sent WOTC is overreaction mode. And people like SlyFlourish got caught in the crossfire.

No, to paraphrase another comment, there were two circumstances. One where a creator signed up for receiving an earlier PDF copy at the end of May, which apparently contained all the rules about not showing x% of y, and another where a creator signed up to get a promo copy of the physical book, which only communicated to hold off on talking about it until August 1st.

I watch a lot of YouTube videos and it's so common for creators to flip through a book and show large portions of it on camera. The entire point of these videos is to promote the book. I have bought books and backed the designer's crowdfunding projects because of such videos. Maybe there was an outlier here or there but on the whole nothing unusual was being done.

So many bad takes without all the details - these quoted posts have the context yall need.

Pdf receivers signed an NDA and got the instruction of what not to show. So dnd shorts should have known what he did was not on. Other creators like pointy hat and treantmonk (both pdf receivers) largely didn't show pages from the book.

Physical book receivers just got the book, no strings attached but with a "request" to make content about the book. No other further instructions or restrictions other than the date they could publish.

SlyFlourish and Jorphdan absolutely got caught in the crossfire. If wotc was the evil mastermind some think they are, they would have waited for three dnd shorts videos on the new book to go up, then striked all three and nuked his entire channel. But he very cleverly gave us the sob story and the charity drive before his videos started going up, so any retaliation from wotc would always be painted in a negative light.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I find that astonishing. Perhaps I'm old and don't understand how this is easily done with advanced technology.
You are telling me someone went through the video second by second, screenshotting individual frames, then resized and reformatted the screen shots into pdf files, then compiled the .pdf files into a book?

I think it was Terry Pratchett who suggested that bandits were some of the hardest working people in the world.

I know that there are tools that will split out frames of a video to individual images. So, use that, pick and crop the best images, cut and paste and your off. Still tedious but not outlandishly so.

 

[MarkB]

Treantmonk managed to do the same without running into any problems, or the Dungeon Dudes, or a number of other creators in tge sane position. Because it wasn't their first YouTube rodeo.

From the PackTactics videos I’ve seen, WotC told them they were allowed to discuss the book’s contents but were warned not to show the book’s pages. Was this warning not sent out to all the YouTubers?

As I understand it, there were two sets of people who were able to release content on the PHB on or shortly after 1st August.

The first set were the ones like Treantmonk, DnDShorts and Pack Tactics, who'd been given copies months in advance, along with specific instructions as to what they could show both before and after 1st August. Most of them went along with those instructions, DnDShorts didn't and got his page-through video taken down.

The second group were those like SlyFlourish who received review copies on or shortly before 1st August. These did not come with detailed restrictions. WotC then seemingly tried to impose restrictions after the fact by asking them to take down videos showing direct page images.

While I can understand WotC not wanting entire copies of the book up on YouTube, it was really bad of them to get some YouTubers caught in the crossfire like that, especially with how fragile a platform YouTube can be to build a channel on.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

i did not see the Jordphan video but did see @SlyFlourish and I think that the latter is definitely within fair use.

 

[Corinnguard]

This is so ridiculous. Why does WotC insist on cutting off their nose to spite their face? If someone is going to buy 5.5, they will. If they aren't, they won't. If anything showing most or all of the book would encourage people to buy it if they like what they see.

Exactly. I found myself encouraged into leaning toward the idea of buying 5.5 after watching a single review of the new PHB. Will I get it? Hard to say given that I am a Level Up fan.

Huge grain of salt on that. Not saying it's true.

More like a metric ton of salt.

 

[Minigiant]

While I can understand WotC not wanting entire copies of the book up on YouTube, it was really bad of them to get some YouTubers caught in the crossfire like that, especially with how fragile a platform YouTube can be to build a channel on.

It's bad.

However this is what's going to happen when "one guy" ruins it for everyone and a corporation must react accordingly.

Someone will say "We have to handle it NOW!" and will point to people to act, and the meeting to calmly discuss what happen comes after unleashes the hounds. Corporations in panic mode are multi headed hydra and one head will bite before the other heads see.

This is why it's becoming more important for those in the industries filled with amateurish but we'll known influencers to inoculate themselves against the blowback they cause and for communities to encourage caution to the new crop of influencers who lack professional guidance, experience, or education. The world of alternative medias and entertainment are runs into this problem from time to time.

 

[SlyFlourish]

Oh wow did they block you too?

It appears so.

 

[SlyFlourish]

Rer
I saw the @SlyFlourish video. He did not show the entire book, not even close. It was an excellent, balanced review. It is exactly the type of video, WotC should be pleased with. @SlyFlourish did nothing wrong. Absolutely no way to predict WotC's bizarre reaction, especially considering 3000 physical copies entered the wild during GenCon.
The

Yet, he took it down. People who understand business and how piracy impacts it know why.

I took it down because I can’t have my independent YouTube channel threatened by a four billion dollar company with horny lawyers two days before my Kickstarter.

 

[cranberry]

With the exception of the YT channel showing the entire book, I thought that there were "fair use" laws that allowed people to show parts of copywritten material as long as full credit was given?

In any case, as soon as the book is released, someone is likely to .pdf the whole thing and make it freely available online. Those are the people WoTC should be concerned about.

 

[SlyFlourish]

From the PackTactics videos I’ve seen, WotC told them they were allowed to discuss the book’s contents but were warned not to show the book’s pages. Was this warning not sent out to all the YouTubers?

It was not until two days after we posted videos.