Fan projects do not threaten copyright protection, says lawyer.
33 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Simplemac3;50909434]I get what you're trying to explain, but I still think it's horse honkey that they did it. The intent out of A2MR isn't to market their own product using a brand name, it's a passion project. It being a Metroid game is the entire point of it. I'm not sure it could [I]exist[/I] as something else.
Nintendo had a pretty decent opportunity here to improve their currently abysmal relations with Metroid fans by doing something like what Capcom or Sega did, but instead they took a dump all over them.
I mean there are ways Nintendo could've handled this without putting their brand in danger other than shut it all down, no?[/QUOTE]
It really doesn't matter what the intent is, or if it's free or not. If you're releasing a new game and there's a fan game with millions of downloads, you want the people playing your game and not the fan one. The fan one is using your brand illegally. So you C&D so as to eliminate future conflict between those two products.
If someone chooses to play Pokemon Uranium instead of buying the new Pokemon title, they've moved to an opposing brand that makes Nintendo zero money. And that brand is illegally using the trademarks of Nintendo. It's a tricky situation, and yeah it's possible to work with the creator and give them their blessing, but there's not really any incentive to do that. Nintendo is a company. They want to make money. If millions of people are playing Uranium, it's detracting from the marketing they're doing for the newer game. It is by definition a competing product, even if it's free. YouTube content creators are all competing with each other for totally free products. If there's a competing product using your brand, it's completely understandable that you'd ask them to stop using your brand.
DMCA is a scummy, stupid way to get around it when legally issuing a C&D makes far more sense, and that is something you can fault Nintendo on, but otherwise it's almost always necessary for them to do what they do with fan games. It's unfortunate, but [I]you can't just use another company's brand[/I]. If people did this in any other industry, they'd get sued. You can't release a new "Metallica" fan album and say the artist is Metallica and use their logo. You can (usually) cover their songs, but loads of bands will charge a premium to perform covers of their songs in public for money. This is no different.
[QUOTE=.Isak.;50916636]It really doesn't matter what the intent is, or if it's free or not. If you're releasing a new game and there's a fan game with millions of downloads, you want the people playing your game and not the fan one. The fan one is using your brand illegally. So you C&D so as to eliminate future conflict between those two products.
If someone chooses to play Pokemon Uranium instead of buying the new Pokemon title, they've moved to an opposing brand that makes Nintendo zero money. And that brand is illegally using the trademarks of Nintendo. It's a tricky situation, and yeah it's possible to work with the creator and give them their blessing, but there's not really any incentive to do that. Nintendo is a company. They want to make money. If millions of people are playing Uranium, it's detracting from the marketing they're doing for the newer game. It is by definition a competing product, even if it's free. YouTube content creators are all competing with each other for totally free products. If there's a competing product using your brand, it's completely understandable that you'd ask them to stop using your brand.
DMCA is a scummy, stupid way to get around it when legally issuing a C&D makes far more sense, and that is something you can fault Nintendo on, but otherwise it's almost always necessary for them to do what they do with fan games. It's unfortunate, but [I]you can't just use another company's brand[/I]. If people did this in any other industry, they'd get sued. You can't release a new "Metallica" fan album and say the artist is Metallica and use their logo. You can (usually) cover their songs, but loads of bands will charge a premium to perform covers of their songs in public for money. This is no different.[/QUOTE]
All shutting down AM2R did was drive the base Federation Force [I]could've gotten[/I] further away, I was close to ordering it before I heard about the DMCA and I decided hey, fuck them.
I get what you're saying and at the same time, I kinda disagree? The kind of person who hears about something like Uranium is probably going to be a Pokemon fan already. I'd imagine there'd be significant overlap between people who play Uranium and people who pick up Sun & Moon. It's like saying covers are competing with the originals. It's just a take on it, and odds are the person who likes the cover probably also enjoys the original unless it's a completely different sort of song in which case there probably wasn't much chance of them buying the original song in the first place.
Wait hold on, I'm not getting this at all. I get the feeling that you generally understand more about copyright law than I do, but how would a C&D ever be more desirable than a DMCA in AM2R's case? The DMCA is just having the downloads taken down, a C&D would mean he has to halt all development including the later updates he's planning.
It doesn't matter. A fan project isn't going to be able to fight a huge corporation in court even if they are in the right. They don't have the money to do it.
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