So, if you hadn’t already heard, YouTube is changing their copyright laws once again starting from today. The reason it came to be is because *Fullscreen* (one of the big networks that mostly partners content creators from the gaming niche) got themselves sued.
I am personally definitely not surprised about that, since I honestly often felt like FS is one of those companies that bit off more than they can handle, but that is just me and my impression. On with the facts for now!
What is going to happen within most networks now, is that people will be grouped into 2 categories: ‘Managed Channels’ and ‘Affiliate Channels’.
While the first will have “shared copyright responsibilities” with their partner network and thus can monetize their videos “as always”, the latter will have to wait a certain amount of hours (it is said that it will USUALLY go through within 48hrs max.) until their videos are cleared for monetization and on top of that they will have a button that allows them to “spilt up” with their network at any given time.
From what I understand the Affiliates will be kinda like those little door-to-door salesmen whom you can cut loose anytime and who will have to undergo more work, but we’ll see how this actually turns out in practice.
The basic gist here is, that there will be more effort going into detecting copyrighted materials and people will either get a strike or – what will apparently happen way more frequent now – a content ID claim. This is why many fellow content creators are worried about – what sometimes is – their ONLY income.
I personally am not letting it get to me too badly, because I’d rather work on getting more views than money, hence why – as much as this is (one of) my job(s) – I feel that if I have enough views, even if only a certain amount of videos would be monetized I could still be okay.
Furthermore I thought about taking the easier (and for that matter also smarter) approach of getting some extra safety measures, simply by writing companies which contents I want to use in the near future.
I sent out a whole bunch of e-mails yesterday and got in contact with various bigger and smaller (indie) studios, to ask for their specific permission to upload and monetize their contents. The answers I have gotten so far are absolutely positive and partially overwhelming / touching.
Some of the developers I wrote were the *Payday* series people; *Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale*; *Unholy Heights*; *Smite* and I even went all the way up to *Devil May Cry* and co.
One of the mails stood out to me particularly, since it went as following:
“We have no problem with you monetizing your videos. Please feel free to share your progress in the game with your viewers. Let’s Plays and the like are our life blood, so we’re more than happy to let you monetize your videos.
Thanks for getting in touch with us! If you have a link to your videos, we’d love to check it out and promote it on our Twitter and Facebook.
I look forward to hearing back from you.”
This is absolutely awesome and definitely a great deal to achieve with ANY developer. I would thus strongly advice AND encourage you to send out a few mails, to be on the more safe side (which is something you should do either way, despite of YT changing their terms again or not).
All I entailed in the message was “I would like to request permission to upload and possibly monetize…”. Futhermore, I suggested them sort of a deal or compromise by telling them that – in case they would NOT be fine with the monetization part – I would still love to upload the gameplay anyway, so I can share it with the world and help promote the game which – as you know – is definitely one of the big things Let’s Playing is about. 
As I write this I just got some more replies and they have been utterly positive and welcoming. It is definitely great and everytime amazing to see what a bit of politeness and respect can do for you. Try it out! 
Sources
[1] – http://forum.tgn.tv/partner-forums/esports-forums/offtopic-forum/22666-how-does-the-new-youtube-licensing-changes-impact-tgn-partners?p=23369#post23369
[2] – http://broadbandtvcorp.com/youtubechanges/
[3] – http://adweek.com/videowatch/how-youtubes-new-arrangements-mcns-work-153492
[4] – http://thevideoink.com/news/is-youtube-completely-changing-networkcreator-relations/#.Uont6Jsc_4L
[5] – http://youtube.com/watch?v=ObT0R0D0t2g
Content ID matches, no kidding @__@ Months ago, I had two; both on Gradius. Now, I have about a dozen.