Has Facebook lost the high ground? | Table of Content Season 2 Episode 21

TABLE OF CONTENT TALKING POINTS S2 E21

12/13/2020

(Host Scene)

Zazz - Welcome to Table of Content. The round table show where we discuss all the happenings around streaming, gaming and entertainment. I am joined by Eminent_Stuso 1 game back in tha co-host and frequent guest Stump. How are you? 

Zazz - Stump will you reach over and grab my bag…. of male and read the latest hatemail.  (tell about hate mail and tell them to send their own bold) [email protected]

1 - So how many people know about the new twitch channel?

Also you are a strange man but a fun one

IvyoftheWater

2 - You bahumbuggin sons of Grinch's need to send some hate mail or i wont get my one Christmas wish. More haters! Love always, Stump

3 - This is hate mail because y'all suck...or something. Esp that Symph guy, like, what is his deal? Such a nerd. - Symphonic313

Intro guests - Returning to the show and it is great to have Them both back 1Jacie1 and Symphonic313.

This episode of Toc is brought to by onlyreapers.com where you can buy Carolina reaper jelly beans without all the filler beans. Use promo code tableoc for 25% off your first order. That's onlyreapers.com. Visit onlyreapers.com and use promo code tableoc.

Streaming News

In our first story a Garbage politician has decided to attach a provision to the omnibus spending bill that would make playing a copyrighted song a felony. This bill is the spending that will keep the US government open for the next fiscal period. 

From the piece - 

 the felony streaming proposal is the work of Republican senator Thom Tillis, who has backed similar proposals previously. It is more or less exactly what it sounds like: A proposal to turn unauthorized commercial streaming of copyrighted material—progressive policy publication The American Prospect specifically points to examples like “an album on YouTube, a video clip on Twitch, or a song in an Instagram story”—into a felony offense with a possible prison sentence. 

Currently, such violations, no matter how severe, are considered misdemeanors rather than felonies, because the law regards streaming as a public performance. With Twitch currently in the crosshairs of the music industry, such a change would turn up the heat on streamers and Twitch even higher—perhaps to an untenable degree. Other platforms, like YouTube, would almost certainly suffer as well.

Alongside the felony streaming proposal, these provisions have drawn ire from civil rights groups, digital rights nonprofits, and companies including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Internet Archive, the American Library Association, and the Center for Democracy & Technology. Collectively, these groups and others penned a letter to the U.S. Senate last week.

Stump -  What do you think about turning this into a felony?

In our first story, It was almost only a matter of time until this happened. 46 States have filed lawsuits stating that facebook has engaged in anti- competitive behavior in buying up its competition.

From the NYT - 

Federal and state regulators of both parties, who have investigated the company for over 18 months, said in separate lawsuits that Facebook’s purchases, especially Instagram for $1 billion in 2012 and WhatsApp for $19 billion two years later, eliminated competition that could have one day challenged the company’s dominance.

Since those deals, Instagram and WhatsApp have skyrocketed in popularity, giving Facebook control over three of the world’s most popular social media and messaging apps. The applications have helped catapult Facebook from a company started in a college dorm room 16 years ago to an internet powerhouse valued at more than $800 billion.

The investigations already led to a lawsuit against Google, brought by the Justice Department two months ago, that accuses the search giant of illegally protecting a monopoly. Prosecutors in that case, though, stopped short of demanding that Google break off any parts of its business. At least one more suit against Google, by both Republican and Democratic officials, is expected by the end of the year. In Europe, regulators are proposing tougher laws against the industry and have issued billions of dollars in penalties for the violation of competition laws.

To read the full article check out the description below.

Jac - Do you feel like its fair to retro actively go after them for buying these companies?

Being a woman on Twitch can already be rough, and a website called Bunny Hop doesn’t seem to be making things easier. The site, which seems fairly new, exists exclusively to highlight “cute girls” — Bunny Hop’s words — who are live on Amazon’s broadcasting service. And based on a number of responses on social media, it appears that most people on it never gave Bunny Hop the OK to be on the site.

“They absolutely do NOT have my permission to do this,” one Twitch streamer wrote on Twitter.

“This is not ok, why am I even on the website,” another said.

“You should have to get notified and agree to stuff like this,” another streamer featured on the site opined.

Update: Twitch has blocked Bunny Hop from embedding livestreams, according to a Twitter post by a support account. While streams are still visible when you visit the Bunny Hop homepage, clicking through to engage with them further now results in an error.

Symph - Whats your take on the new twitch policies and their quick action on this site?

Gaming News

Speaking of DMCA, CD Projekt Red has backtracked on its claims to be safe to stream. 

From the Verge - 

CD Projekt Red’s (CDPR) highly anticipated new roleplaying game Cyberpunk 2077 is having a bit of a rough release, and now you can add potential copyright issues while streaming to its list of launch-day hiccups. The developer says until it has a fix ready, any potential Twitch streamers should turn off all in-game music to avoid any strikes on their channel.

The developer first warned potential streamers on Wednesday, before Cyberpunk 2077 officially launched in all regions, that a certain song (CDPR didn’t say which one) during the game’s “Braindance” sequences might trigger a Digital Millennium Copyright Act strike. That’s even if you’re using the specific in-game setting designed to toggle off copyrighted music for this exact reason.

CDPR says that the issue may be larger than it first realized, and it’s now advising streamers to turn off in-game music entirely due to “additional instances in the game which might put a DMCA strike on your channel.” CDPR says a fix is on the way, but it’s not an ideal situation to have to disable all music (both copyrighted and original tracks) when streaming the game just to avoid tripping the automated detection systems that protect copyrighted works.

Jac - What should cdpr do to make up to people that bought this game the fact that its so buggy and has all these issue?

5. Google Stadia will let all users livestream games directly to YouTube tomorrow 

Lastly, Google stadia is making some moves to not only improve their service but to make it a bit easier to stream on Youtube.

From the Verge - 

From the very beginning, Google Stadia and YouTube were supposed to work together — thanks to the magic of cloud computing, you’d be able to click a YouTube ad to instantly begin playing a game, YouTubers would be able to invite their viewers to instantly join their game, and — perhaps most importantly — creators would be able to instantly, effortlessly be able to livestream their Stadia games to YouTube just by pressing a button on the controller.

The feature couldn’t come at a more important time for Stadia: the service’s most important game yet, Cyberpunk 2077, is arriving this week, at a time when next-gen consoles and the latest graphics cards to build your own powerful PC are incredibly difficult and expensive to buy. It’s the biggest test for Stadia yet, and one the company is banking on: buying Cyberpunk on the service comes with a full set of free Stadia hardware for a limited time — not unlike the set it gave free to YouTube Premium subscribers.

People streaming Cyberpunk 2077 from Stadia to YouTube could be the single biggest opportunity yet for Google to prove what its service can do.

Symph - are you interested in gaming services like stadia to run these high end games?

6. Here's every game that won big at The Game Awards 2020 

The Game Awards winners are in, and though there were loads of winning games across many categories, one game took home the top prize: The Last of Us 2, which won Game of the Year.

In a year with an almost shocking amount of great games, every category was filled with strong contenders for the win, which made The Game Awards 2020 a real nail-biter. Of course, as ever there were big surprise game reveals and household names like Keanu Reeves, Nolan North, and Troy Baker presenting the awards.

From Most Anticipated Game and Games for Impact to best Score and Music and Art Direction, here's some winners from The Game Awards 2020.

Best Performance

Best Art Direction - Ghost of Tsushima

Best Score and Music/Role play - Final Fantasy 7 Remake

Best Ongoing - No Man’s Sky 

Best Debut - Phasmophobia

Stump - Its kinda hard to believe Fall guys doesnt take best debut.

Entertainment News

In our second story, A guy who never ever has an opinion on things is speaking out about WWE’s policy with its superstars and Twitch. Just kidding its CM Punk and he is sounding off about the controversy.

From the piece - 

Punk said “This is where I will get controversial and piss a lot of people off. I don’t know Xavier Woods. I met him in Atlanta. He was doing a dark match one time. He was always a good wrestler but there wasn’t a character for him at that time. Obviously he has become a pretty big superstar. He’s big on Twitch. He’s a big video gamer. I don’t know what’s going on with his Twitch channel so I don’t want to speak out of turn on that. I just saw he was petitioning to get a job with G4. 

Why is it ok for him to do that but Zelina Vega can’t have a Twitch? That was always my thing and people labeled me a complainer or whiny because I would always be the guy that would say, wait, why is so and so able to do this because there was always outside interest, not only for me. “

You can hear his full interview on Renee Paquette's podcast Oral Sessions.

Jac - Do you think this deal had anything to do with why wwe made these moves?

8. Metal Gear Solid movie to star Oscar Isaac as Solid Snake 

Lastly, another video game favorite is making its way to the silver screen and we now know who will play its leading character. Metal Gear Solids Snake will be played by Oscar Issac of Star Wars fame. 

From the piece -

You might be familiar with Isaac as Resistance fighter Poe Dameron in the latest Star Wars film trilogy and his upcoming role as Duke Leto Atreides in Dune, and I think he could be a great fit to play Solid Snake.

Apparently Isaac did, too, as he cast himself for the role in an interview back in 2019.

The Metal Gear Solid movie, which is still in development, will be directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts. But like some other movie adaptations of video games, this one has been in development for years — Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima first revealed that a movie was in the works all the way back in 2006. A start date for production is still unknown, according to Deadline, so it doesn’t seem like we should expect the movie anytime soon. 

Symph - What do you make of this casting? Will it be a good fit?

9 .Hayden Christensen returning as Darth Vader in Obi-Wan Kenobi 

.

Hayden Christensen will reprise his role as Darth Vader in the Disney Plus series Obi-Wan Kenobi, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy announced today.

Christensen will star opposite his former Star Wars prequel colleague Ewan McGregor, who’s reprising his role as the titular character. Obi-Wan Kenobiis set 10 years after the events of Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith. Anakin Skywalker has become Darth Vader and Obi-Wan is still trying to recover from his greatest defeat.

“It was such an incredible journey playing Anakin Skywalker,” Christensen said in a press release. “Of course, Anakin and Obi-Wan weren’t on the greatest of terms when we last saw them… It will be interesting to see what an amazing director like Deborah Chow has in store for us all. I’m excited to work with Ewan again. It feels good to be back.”

The show was officially announced at D23, Disney’s biennial fan convention, last year. McGregor was onstage at D23 to make the announcement. “It feels so nice to say,” McGregor said.

Production is set to start in March 2021.

Stump -  Yay or nay on this? Many people were not happy with HC before will they like him for nostalgia's sake here?

BOLD PREDICTIONS 

I boldly predict you will all let me down with your hate mail the rest of the year!

In the months to come we will see a law suit involving the willful infection of another for corona virus.

I believe we have seen 2 cyberpunk updates since launch. I predict 2 more by the end of the year.

Plug your stuff.

No show Dec 27th

Zazzaboo plug the site, Pod etc 

Thanks and we will see you next week!

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