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.

 

[Parmandur]

I think that’s unfair. After the fact changes are normally pretty frowned on, and SlyFlourish is not new at this either.

Not really, a lot of creators knew what to do without being told.

 

[rozgarth]

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.

So? That does not mean that @SlyFlourish did anything wrong. Fair use exists for criticism and review, and the flip through of very limited sections of this book (both quantitatively in terms of pages and qualitatively by avoiding the key character creation options entirely), was fair. This was nothing like dndshorts showing the entire book page by page (which is legally dubious even if dumb for WotC to get involved in—but they likely should never have given him a copy in the first place).

But WotC is a bully, has immense leverage, and it’s not worth it to fight someone when you were only helping them in the first place, and so now the video has been blurred.

 

[TiQuinn]

Not really, a lot of creators knew what to do without being told.

Uhh, that’s not how it works. At all.

 

[Parmandur]

So? That does not mean that @SlyFlourish did anything wrong. Fair use exists for criticism and review, and the flip through of very limited sections of this book (both quantitatively in terms of pages and qualitatively by avoiding the key character creation options entirely), was fair. This was nothing like dndshorts showing the entire book page by page (which is legally dubious even if dumb for WotC to get involved in—but they likely should never have given him a copy in the first place).

But WotC is a bully, has immense leverage, and it’s not worth it to fight someone when you were only helping them in the first place, and so now the video has been blurred.

Not necessarily any evidence that WotC issued the strikes, since anyone can do that. The fact that they reached out to people directly to address issues suggests otherwise.

 

[Parmandur]

Uhh, that’s not how it works. At all.

It is, full flip throughs like that are a copyright problem that YouTube is really jittery about: hence why anyone can report a copyright strike, not just the copyright holder. They could have even run afoul of an algorithm, which I know YouTube does for copyrighted music.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I watched the beginning of DnDShorts video and I stopped because it was clear that he was going to show every page so that one could get every page from the frames of the video and I did not want to spend that kind of time and frankly I have no problem in believing that Wizard would have a problem with that.
On the other hand, stopping others, that you asked to make a video and making them take down or not show material that only display a selection of pages and not the whole thing is radicicolous, stupid and going to leave a bad taste. It does more damage to take away toys given than to make the rules clear upfront. One would think that Wizard would have learned that by now.

 

[Parmandur]

I don't think it is necessarily reasonable to expect WotC to have provided instructions like "pleasse don't violate YouTube's Terms of Service" to creators already doing business with YouTube

 

[Demetrios1453]

That really isn't unusual for RPGs. As long as we've had the Internet, we've had free sample versions of paid products.

For a very direct comparison, Paizo put out this very same Thursday 266 pages of playtest material for Starfinder 2e.


Corporations do not deserve your defense, nor do they respect creators themselves. This should be evaluated purely as the marketing campaign it is.

When anyone is being attacked simply because they take reasonable measures to protect their intellectual property against those who are thumbing their nose at them, then, yes, they deserve to be defended.

 

[Parmandur]

When anyone is being attacked simply because they take reasonable measures to protect their intellectual property against those who are thumbing their nose at them, then, yes, they deserve to be defended.

I'm inclined to believe that WotC didn't take any active measures, hence the communication directly to creators: YouTube is a moderated service, that has a Terms of Service agreement, you don't need the copyright holder to intervene to cause an issue with Alphabet.

 

[Obryn]

No mention of Pinkertons?

They're losing their edge!