I am sure people know that I’m not a fan of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. While I do consider copyright, as an institution, to have a pernicious impact on the arts I’m also painfully aware artists have to eat. As a result, I don’t advocate the abolition of copyright outside of the frame of a revolutionary reworking of the arts industry.

However this specific law has the very specific impact of allowing copyright owners to silence online critique of their products via false DMCA strikes. And right now this is being exploited in a very specific way by an artist to do just that.

At issue here specifically is how indie game developer Gilson B. Pontes appears to have been using DMCA takedown notices to remove videos produced by James Stephanie Sterling from YouTube that are critical of Pontes’ skill as a game developer. Sterling does use footage of Pontes’ games within their reviews, but their use of these elements is fully within the bounds of fair use – Sterling is a critic engaging in art criticism. The idea that they should not be able to show the games is as ludicrous as the idea that I might review a book without including quotes or showing the cover.

Game criticism is all too often treated as an armature of games marketing and Sterling is one of the very few independent games industry critics who has resisted that tide. Their work on the social impact of loot boxes, in particular, is incredibly valuable, as a work of criticism, and there is almost nobody else in the field who is doing it. I’d also draw people’s attention to Sterling’s work on the material conditions of labour at AAA games studios. Needless to say, I consider Sterling to be precisely the sort of critic we need more of – fiercely independent, carefully researched, courageous in the face of pressure. We should, as critics, as artists and as audiences, be advocating for protecting important critics like Sterling.

I’ve included a link to Sterling’s Patreon; you’d be doing a solid to an important working critic to kick them a buck-fifty a month. Supporting criticism is supporting the arts.