Seeing a lot of people taking everything from this but what the lawyer is actually very kindly trying to get across, which is "don't publicly exchange copyright violations for money at a large scale, because that specifically is what makes you sufficiently unsympathetic as a defendant that IP holders will take action."
- she/her
41, queer trans furry trash, actual professional deer, perpetually tired // mostly 18+ but let’s say entirely 18+ to be safe
bsky
deergrace.bsky.social
You must log in to comment.
in reply to @MOOMANiBE's post:
I think he kinda has a point though? Like I do think there's a line between "fan project" and "we start taking money for it"?
Think about piracy: if I go to [REDACTED] and download the ROM for Yoshi's Island on GBA, that to me is one thing. If I then package that ROM in a bootleg cart and sell it on eBay for profit ... that feels like crossing a line.
Not just legally, but just ethically. It's at best a dick move. And it undercuts any argument that this is somehow about free culture. And even with fanworks like: if you wanna make money, make your own thing, make a parody, do something transformative.
I get cranky about a lot of paid mods in games like FF14 too for that reason: like yeah it was work, but so many of them are just repurposing existing game assets and like ... if you literally just bashed together a lot of other artists' work, and it feels like taking the piss to ask for money for that.
oh you can feel his brain rummaging through every time a fan project has been reported about by them
Just goes to show that the best way to protect a fan project is to never fucking talk about it until it's finished.
this just makes it more frustrating to have confirmation that fan projects are taken down because games outlets can't stop themselves from posting about them
It's dark how well this goes with a parable I've heard and never stopped repeating myself: "Video game journalism is the video game industry's marketing arm/hype machine."
This is the kind of softball interview/response that like, I think everything in that response is true, but is also designed to spin and rationalize the situation to shift blame on to others rather than taking like responsibility for ones own actions lol.
Like sure, maybe Kotaku covering a fan game makes it more likely it will get taken down, but ultimately the people doing the take down are responsible for it getting taken down. There are plenty of fan games reported on by people that don't get taken down by companies, and Nintendo related properties sure seem to have a much higher chance than any other to get got.
Similarly with the Funding issue, a work is not somehow less of a copyright infringement if it is offered for free rather than paid for. Perhaps the reason those get targeted more is for legal/moral reasons, but it's also probably a factor that they know targeting those will illicit implicit defenses (and free PR) from fans using the payment as the reason. We see even in cases where there is no copyright infringement happening (e.g. paid modding with custom assets), people get very weird and aggressive about that situation too.
So yeah, I mean its interesting insight but does seem very softball/spinny to me.
The question was "how do you find out about those games" not "are you the ones sending DMCAs".
If we're talking about blaming others, then people using copyrighted content should only have themself to blame when they receive a takedown notice.
I think this is where you run into the question of how much agency an employee has to go against what they are being told to do by their employer. If someone's working in corporate law (and maybe they shouldn't!) they are to an extent bound by what their boss wants them to do.
And if your this lawyer I imagine you're going to be inclined towards rationalizations/justifications for your own moral propriety (ecologically-minded engineers in oil & gas do the same thing!). When I read stuff like:
"Both at Pokémon when I was taking out unlicensed merchandise outlets, and at Bungie when I was taking down cheat vendors, I looked at it as helping fans get the most authentic possible experience"
I don't think the lawyer's spinning you. I think he's lawyer "spinning" himself.
[deleted]
I hate it when I'm forced to take an entirely voluntary action.