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[redhood56]

This sucks because it was really good. The only thing that is getting me mad is all the people telling them to make an original game. People make fan projects all the time and nobody has an issue with it.

 

[Orayn]

reminds me of this:

Remember how that was because Square was doing a remake of their own?

IIRC another part of the problem is that this guy started using Chrono Trigger to promote a game engine he was developing on his own and trying to license out to people, so it's a bit worse than someone pouring their blood, sweat, and tears into a remake and getting crushed by The Man.

I suppose that sort of segues into this particular example: Mario content was being used to demonstrate a character controller for Unity. Dunno about commercial intent, but there are some parallels.

 

[GabeTheGrouch76]

And how many of those dedicated fans gave up and pirated it before Nintendo decided to release the game through Gamestop? Reggie made a pretty good point that petition signs =/= sales, and the end result only proved him right.

Given how they not only released it anyway (albeit as a Gamestop exclusive as you said) but also gave it a New 3DS port (which from what it seems is getting a widespread release) in spite of said --supposedly widespread-- piracy, I think that renders said point moot. If the point was petition sales =/= high sales, then that would make more sense and I would then be inclined to agree, but otherwise it doesn't hold much water as there will always be people who will or won't be bothered to pay for things legally, regardless of the circumstances.

 

[IchigoSharingan]

I agree that blatantly stealing IP should be given swift legal action

>>>>as I use an avatar displaying my own IP stealing

>>> as I happily swim in my cesspool of hypocrisy

>>as I cheer on a titan against the little man

> as I wonder when the fuck did I fall so low

 

[Shin Johnpv]

You're explicitly defending the Copyright Term Extension Act, which no one in their right mind has any reason to be doing unless their life revolves around Disney's success. Since you don't seem to work for or invest in Disney, that leaves insane fanboyism cognitive dissonance as the other option on the table.

Unless you know something about life extension that I don't, "people defending what they create" has nothing to do with it. Regardless of what the supreme court has decided lately, corporations aren't people and can and do exist in perpetuity with nothing to do with the creators of the IPs they own. The entire concept of public domain has been put on indefinite hold due to corporate lobbying. This is not in the best interest of anyone other than the corporations doing the lobbying, specifically Disney, which has acquired the largest IP profile in the world in order to exploit the laws that they've had created.

I'm not speaking out of fanboyism, I'm speaking as an artist and creator. Mine you one that had an asshole try to steal my work with bullshit "well you made this drawing 10 years ago it should be public domain now. I don't think my work should go into public domain just because time has passed. I don't think the people working at a company, regardless of its disney, nintendo or what ever should end up loosing their jobs because the companies money earner is now public domain either.

Specially in the case of Nintendo here. Their IPs are 25 years old, that's crazy to think they can't continue to hold the rights to their creations 25 years later.

I agree with you corporations aren't people. That said though I don't think its a simple black and white issue that "ohh its a company it only gets said IP for X amount of time." To me if they're still using the IP, its still theirs. They're still employing people and making money to pay them with that IP. If the company goes bankrupt tomorrow and that's it, then fine let it go public. For an active, in use IP I don't think time should be an issue.

I don't think it should be a simple matter of 80 years has passed now anyone can use it. I really do think that thinks like is it an active IP should be a part of it as well.

If these were IPs that were sat on for 60 years and no one's touched them, then fine let it go public. If they're still using it though I don't see why they should be forced to give it up.

I understand it with Patents, and I think there are a lot of terrible people out there sitting on patents not producing shit. Fuck those assholes, but a company still employing people to produce new content with their IP, I just can't get behind demanding their IPs be public domain. I think Patent law and copyright law should be seen as two separate issues.

I just think that actual production and use of an IP should come into play when discussing what goes public domain. I just don't think its as black and white as X number of years have passed.

 

[GravityMan]

I gotta side with Nintendo on this one.

 

[SummitAve]

Has to be done to help set precedence for future cases.

 

[spared]

Havin' tried it, I can tell you honestly that Nintendo got into it because the work this guy did is simply awesome.

If Nintendo would have already made an HD remake of that great game then most likely the guy wouldn't have bothered. There is a demand for it, someone stepped up and started something great, Nintendo got "scared." Who knows, maybe this will lead to an actual SM64 HD remake!

 

[Mxrz]

Acting like any corporation's legal dept is your friend or 'the good guys' is pretty funny. If they could stop you from using forum avatars, they would. With the way the laws keep changing, in a few years - they just might.

In this case, it was a dead proof of concept demo. The bad press hardly seems worth it, but maybe they're entering a phase of no fucks given.

 

[IchigoSharingan]

Havin' tried it, I can tell you honestly that Nintendo got into it because the work this guy did is simply awesome.

If Nintendo would have already made an HD remake of that great game then most likely the guy wouldn't have bothered. There is a demand for it, someone stepped up and started something great, Nintendo got "scared." Who knows, maybe this will lead to an actual SM64 HD remake!

If I were Nintendo, I would have hired this guy and left the project open for download for a while to increase/gauge demand for an N64 remake and then release an update as a demo.

If demand is high >>>>let him work more on that project
if demand is not as high as expected >>>> put him on another HD project

 

[GabeTheGrouch76]

If I were Nintendo, I would have hired this guy and left the project open for download for a while to increase/gauge demand for an N64 remake and then release an update as a demo.

If demand is high >>>>let him work more on that project
if demand is not as high as expected >>>> put him on another HD project

That's not how the process of hiring people works tho :^)

But yeah, keeping an eye on him in the future or commending him for his work would be pretty cool though in my view.

 

[commish]

Acting like any corporation's legal dept is your friend or 'the good guys' is pretty funny. If they could stop you from using forum avatars, they would. With the way the laws keep changing, in a few years - they just might.

Your knowledge of how legal departments work in these, or any company, is what is pretty funny, sir. You couldn't be more wrong.

 

[Oppo]

I'm not speaking out of fanboyism...

Specially in the case of Nintendo here. Their IPs are 25 years old, that's crazy to think they can't continue to hold the rights to their creations 25 years later.

Ninty Ninty Ninty

I assume you paid them the fee for the likeness of their copyrighter character from Metroid. Or are you cool with derivative works?

I agree with you corporations aren't people. That said though I don't think its a simple black and white issue that "ohh its a company it only gets said IP for X amount of time." To me if they're still using the IP, its still theirs. They're still employing people and making money to pay them with that IP. If the company goes bankrupt tomorrow and that's it, then fine let it go public. For an active, in use IP I don't think time should be an issue.

I don't think it should be a simple matter of 80 years has passed now anyone can use it. I really do think that thinks like is it an active IP should be a part of it as well.

You really ought to read the link I replied with earlier. It details the copyright term limits. They are much longer than what you are suggesting. No one thinks Nintendo should lose 25 year old IP rights. But personally I think they ought to call off the lawyers when a fan makes a hat-tip that doesn't hurt them, but in fact helps them maintain visiblity.

As I said before, tell the guy to change the name, remove the 3 static meshes he lifted and the sound effects, and don't let it out of Unity Web Player (must be free) and that would be fine, don't you think?

 

[GabeTheGrouch76]

That's exactly how it works at a lot of studios. Hence all the accusations that Valve doesn't make games, because they tend to hire people who created things on their own already, and develop those projects into fully-formed products. Same goes for Bethesda, they've hired a lot of people who did mods for Morrowind, Oblivion, and now Skyrim. The creative director for the next Mass Effect game came to fame by re-making (and in many ways improving) Ultima 5 in the Dungeon Siege engine. Etc. etc. etc. The best resume is a completed project.

Huh, that's actually pretty new to me. Interesting.

 

[Candescence]

I'm not speaking out of fanboyism, I'm speaking as an artist and creator. Mine you one that had an asshole try to steal my work with bullshit "well you made this drawing 10 years ago it should be public domain now. I don't think my work should go into public domain just because time has passed. I don't think the people working at a company, regardless of its disney, nintendo or what ever should end up loosing their jobs because the companies money earner is now public domain either.

Specially in the case of Nintendo here. Their IPs are 25 years old, that's crazy to think they can't continue to hold the rights to their creations 25 years later.

I agree with you corporations aren't people. That said though I don't think its a simple black and white issue that "ohh its a company it only gets said IP for X amount of time." To me if they're still using the IP, its still theirs. They're still employing people and making money to pay them with that IP. If the company goes bankrupt tomorrow and that's it, then fine let it go public. For an active, in use IP I don't think time should be an issue.

I don't think it should be a simple matter of 80 years has passed now anyone can use it. I really do think that thinks like is it an active IP should be a part of it as well.

If these were IPs that were sat on for 60 years and no one's touched them, then fine let it go public. If they're still using it though I don't see why they should be forced to give it up.

I understand it with Patents, and I think there are a lot of terrible people out there sitting on patents not producing shit. Fuck those assholes, but a company still employing people to produce new content with their IP, I just can't get behind demanding their IPs be public domain. I think Patent law and copyright law should be seen as two separate issues.

I just think that actual production and use of an IP should come into play when discussing what goes public domain. I just don't think its as black and white as X number of years have passed.

Arguing for creator's rights is all well and good, but here's the problem with copyright - it needs to be balanced with the interests of the public and culture as a whole. The public domain exists for a reason - without new entries into it, culture is essentially locked up. Countless works have built on what has come before, whether it be indirectly or even using existing concepts such as say, Greek mythology - torytellers have been remixing existing concepts for thousands of years, we would not have the Illiad and the Oddessy otherwise, nor the Aeneid by extension, and without the public domain, we would not have the likes of God of War, for example. And people are still remixing existing stories, even if it would be illegal. Ideas are not a limited resource, and an intellectual monopoly for more than a couple of decades, in my opinion, is unfair.

Copyright is established in the United States constitution, but it explicitly states that the purpose of copyright is "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." It is not a welfare program for creators, establishing an intellectual monopoly is simply a means to an end. The founding fathers originally established copyright terms at being 14 years, and though it was raised later on prior to the 1976 act, it was 26 years, and if you wanted to extend it to about 40, you had to manually apply for the extension. And as it happens, we have concrete data on how often that actually happened:

Notice how the music and movie industries are the only ones aside from maps (for some weird reason) to actually have copyright renewal rates above 11%. Books, dramatic works and works of art weren't nearly that high. Instead, the industries with a hard-on for longer copyright were the ones where the big companies had the most presence and control over the works they published, and they had a concerted interest in milking their copyright terms for as long as possible as long as they were still profitable. In short, the vast majority of individual creators honestly don't give a shit about letting their copyright terms expire.

And, really, ten or twenty years is enough to make a profit over something, you're not gonna be making that much money off something that old unless it's obscenely profitable. And even when you lose the copyright to your first work, there's nothing stopping you from making more out of that concept and selling it, as long as people think the end result is worth paying for. Copyright isn't just for entire IPs, it's for individual creative expressions as well, and I honestly think copyright should mainly be for the latter.

Of course, this is coming from someone who is more than happy to release his works into the public domain about 10-15-20 years after publication - to do otherwise, I feel, would be to rob fans of opportunities to build on them. I'm actually thinking of perhaps creating an alternative, Creative Commons-style license that enables fans to legally creative derivative works of their own as long as they give full and prominent credit. I think the extra exposure and goodwill is more important than strict control over who gets to make derivatives of my stuff.

 

[TheSlySoul]

Now we know why: because SM64 getting released on Wii U. Ha ha ha.