Back in Your Hole
- Thread starter The Wooster
- Start date
There's links out there. Check the post where the Escapist posted that it was taken down. Someone posted a download.Halyah said:
Nevermind it was on Gamnesia. Here you go.
http://www.gamnesia.com/news/the-amazing-fan-made-remake-of-metroid-ii-has-officially-been-taken-down
https://my.mixtape.moe/owpfrf.zip
Unlike the West, Japan does not care for Samus...or Metroid in general. I won't be surprised if this is why Nintendo is slowly turning into Konami with their more-or-less dead or dying franchises.
I really don't feel for Samus here because that is Other M Samus, and I always hated that design of Samus ever since I first saw it:The Wooster said:
Now if used the Samus of Metroid Prime:
Than I would have agreed with you.
As a Star Fox fan, I feel for Metroid fans (though take I take a slight amount of umbrage at their insistence of Nintendo's neglect of the franchise when it gotten much more attention that Star Fox), I really dislike their actions in this case.
IANAL, but my understanding is that this isn't actually true. From the first two websites to show up on Google after a search of "failure to defend copyright" [Google is your friend, people]:Souplex said:
http://www.firstventurelegal.com/2014/05/27/supreme-court-says-failure-to-defend-copyright-not-completely-fatal-to-infringement-claims/
"The lesson for entrepreneurs to take away from Petrella is that just because a copyright holder hasn?t decided to defend its copyright (even for a period of decades) doesn?t mean that they won?t or can?t sue for damages, even if you have already invested time and resources in reliance on that non-action.... So if you want to use copyrighted material, always obtain the copyright holder?s permission, even if others have been infringing on the work with no sign of protest for years."
http://www.legalmetro.com/library/copyright-law-explained.html
"5) "If you don't defend your copyright you lose it." and "Somebody has that name copyrighted!"
These two myths are also false. Most often, the name you apply to trademarks can end up being weakened or lost, if they?re not defended. Let?s use an example. Delta Airlines owns the term ?Delta? but only if it?s applied to air travel. Delta Hotels owns this copyright when it refers to hotels. Using a trademark in a way that infringes on the value of the original is prohibited by copyright laws."
Technically, most fanart is infringing copyright. It's just not worth suing over. You can't get blood from a turnip, and the company would have to prove monetary damages first anyway.gact said:
That's more or less what I mean. I keep hoping the precedent will start piling up too. The law is struggling to catch up to reality for a wide array of reasons, and for an equally wide array of reasons doesn't seem to be making much actual, helpful progress. If anything, the fact that a DMCA was issued (likely by a random clerk/intern/robot as you pointed out), when by all accounts a C&D would be the more expected and appropriate response is a big part of my problem with the whole situation. Call it half a legal/moral issue, half a 'spurned-fandom' issue.VaporWare said:
I'm certainly no expert so maybe this is actually supposed to be part of it's jurisdiction, but in my experience I've never seen a DMCA issued against a pure intellectual property issue. I've only ever seen one called in when there are concerns of direct piracy IE: actual resources of a work are being distributed illegally. If AM2R had been made with actual sprites or sounds ripped from the existing games then I would better understand the filing.
But seeing as by my understanding it was entirely composed of original content in the image of Nintendo's IP, I would assume a C&D would be the more surefire bet, at the very least so there wouldn't be any gray area. A C&D puts them unquestionably in the legal right: It says Metroid, they own Metroid, knock it off. But by my reckoning the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is such a poorly understood framework whose implications are so complicated to say the least, I literally can't figure out why you wouldn't go for the sure thing.
It feels like inviting potential questions about the claim that they'd have no reason to risk, and considering the job of a good legal team is closing holes like that before they ever even open it just strikes me as a bizarre move. More than anything it strikes me as a move that could have quite easily never even reached the legal team (the clerk/intern/robot problem again), and those implications make me very uncomfortable in general. Yes it's all supposition in the end, but I really don't like how easy it is to suppose or lack of any real evidence to the contrary.
Either way the fact that the DMCA isn't perfect isn't really what bothers me, that's inevitable. You have an imperfect system until you can move on to a better imperfect system, and so on. What bothers me is I have been given zero reason to think that the people responsible for this system have any idea that there are parts of it that aren't working.
I have zero faith in their ability to recognize, for example, the ludicrous Fair Use violations that have been taking place on Youtube for years now because I'm honestly not sure how many of them care that Youtube exists. The 'guilty until proven innocent' approach in practice is clearly weighted against content creators and in favor of companies large enough to be perfectly capable of defending themselves without the extra help, and I have to assume that the only reason it's been allowed to carry on for as long as it has in the face of the problems it poses is that either no one who's calling the shots is aware of these problems, or no one cares.
And as far as this specific case is concerned, I have zero faith in Nintendo for recognizing this as an opportunity and not as an insect to be squashed. Maybe I'm just being cynical, in fact it's more then likely. But after years of questionable actions that suggest they have little idea what fans want, little idea what the shape of the modern industry is in general, and ultimately that they have little idea what would actually be beneficial to them in the long run, I just don't trust their decision making anymore. I would love nothing more then to be wrong, but it's gonna take a hell of a lot of effort on their part to turn that around.
Sorry, that went on for a bit longer then I was expecting. TL;DR: I have serious problems with the application of the DMCA, the choices Nintendo have made over the past several years haven't been great ones, and Clerk/Intern/Robot sounds like a sitcom.
the irony of the very country who's culture ignored Trademark law the most for the sake of Artistic expression ... being home to the company that's quickly become the biggest Trademark and Copyright-claiming killjoys in all of American social media. ...just because it was already the norm here. NO Nintendo...that's not how you keep growing a fanbase, not even here.
Nintendo: "NO! No brightly-colored, family-friendly shit for you, Samus! Back to the grey, grim-n-gritty place for you!"
Nintendo do often go too far with some of these things. The I just struggle to blame them for it, as they want to maintain their squeaky clean image.Souplex said:
I managed to snag a copy and it is really well done. A shame more people won't get a chance to play it, especially because it literally costs Nintendo nothing.