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Japanese Game Website Owner Arrested For Screenshot Scans
Thanks to 1UP for its news story reporting that the owner of popular Japanese videogame website Gameonline has been arrested for copyright violation regarding unauthorized screenshot scans, since "several hundred [screenshots available on the site] were allegedly found to have been taken from magazines and overseas game sites without the permission of the game publisher, a violation of Japanese copyright law." The story continues by explaining: "Gameonline, one of the most popular game sites in Japan until its sudden closure last month, was a for-profit site that made its money exclusively via advertising. The site's owner had received permission from several Japanese publishers to post screenshots from their games, but other companies, including SNK Playmore, Capcom, Square Enix, and Namco, allegedly found media from their games posted on the site without their permission, leading to today's arrest."
I mean, the companies didn't want their games being shown on that website, and the owner didn't comply. There has to be more to this story, because I doubt they'd have him arrested if they had not asked him to take the screens down before resorting to legal action. Then again, Japan has a much different culture and their copyright law seems more strictly enforced than the US. Any one have any experience with Japanese copyright law?
In A.D. 2004
War against pirates was beginning.
Pirate: What happen ?
Webmaster: Somebody set up us the DDOS.
Sysoperator: We get connection.
Pirate: What !
Sysoperator: Main screen turn on.
Pirate: It's you !!
DMCA: How are you gentlemen !!
DMCA: All your warez are belong to us !
DMCA: You are on the way to fdisk.
Pirate: What you say !!
DMCA: You have no chance to survive make your time.
DMCA: HA HA HA HA....
Pirate: Take off every zip.
Pirate: You know what you doing.
Pirate: mv zip greatjustice
(all right, I do know DMCA does not apply in Japan.)
-
Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
Because, damn, what kind of a game developer would want to have their game getting the attention of fans and possible customers? That would be stupid, wouldn't it.
It seems obvious to me that the person who created
a screenshot is the person who performed the gameplay
required to put the game into that configuration.
Pissing on your customers is bad business, by the way.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Gracious me he must be a tool of satan. wThe man is spending money on bandwidth to provide gamers with copyrighted screenshots. He deserves a pat on the back and a slap on the wrist. Sort of a yin yang punishment.
... how are they anyway? Of course there ain't anybody able to run a larger backdoor exploit from there, if you know what I mean ;)
why the spurt in tech related crackdown?
I think it's completely stupid that a game news site gets their panties in a twist when another game site takes a scan/picture of a game that neither of them owns, and uses it for whatever purpose.
And likewise, I think it's equally stupid that artist who make pictures for Linux get upset when Linux developers use their pictures. I mean, it gets to a point where we should just keep our stuff to ourselves if we are THAT concerned about someone using it for something that you didn't intend.
Yeah yeah, I know. Beating a dead horse, and being hopelessly idealistic. But I really do think that people need to just step back once in a while and take a good long thought if what they are doing is worth it, or if it's just plain pointless to even be thinking about it.
for their actions. His reviews must have been unfavourable and not very flattering for the companies concerned... thus puncturing their carefully calculated hype campaigns. They couldn't get him for the reviews as they were quite possible true, but they could get him for unauthorised use of their screenshots...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I would imagine that some of those images taken from magazines were exclusive. Everytime I go to a magazine stand there is some gaming magazine touting that they have exclusive images of game X. I don't think this is any different than if EGM scanned some images from a GamePro magazine and used it in print. Perhaps the magazines put some pressure on the companies to press charges.
A long time ago, Steve Jackson Games, which holds the copyright on titles based on their games, such as Autoduel, did the same. Very quickly, all their games disappeared into obscurity, and if you ask the average gamer, he won't be able to mention a single computer game based on Steve Jackson's GURPS. By the time the company turned around and declared that it would allow people to review their games and share the screenshots, it was too late. I really hope the same would happen to the companies involved in this case.
There are reasons why a game publisher might not want a website to post its screenshots with others, but I wonder if there might just be an error in the linked article.
...without the permission of the game publisher, a violation of Japanese copyright law.
In independent games, the question of quality-by-association comes up when a company approaches a developer with a request to include its game in a CD compilation. One side of the argument is that the presence of a title on a shovelware compilation can detract from its perceived quality -- your game might appear among a hundred Sokoban clones, or in an extreme case, you might see children's software next to more adult software. So, it is conceivable that publishers might have considered association with this website (archived here) a bad thing.
But I don't buy it. Entire conferences are devoted to publicity, and as they say, no publicity is bad publicity. (To wit, I'd talk up my postman about my software if I thought it'd help. He's a nice guy; we talk about other things.) The only tidbit that screams copyright violation as I understand it is this: Of this collection, several hundred were allegedly found to have been taken from magazines and overseas game sites...
However, I do not understand the end of that sentence:
To my knowledge, it is not illegal in the States to take and post a screenshot of a movie or game to the Web; my understanding Japanese intellectual property laws is limited, but given the number of Japanese film/gaming sites that do this, I don't believe that game publishers have any say over what screenshots are presented. I think 1Up may have meant this, instead:
without the permission of the website's publisher, a violation of Japanese copyright law.
_________________________
I long for the day when Google stops asking me, "Did you mean: inigo rage"
We're indie. We're working on our 14th game.
For what it's worth, I've been a follower of SJG for a long time, and I admit that SJ has some particular notions of defending his intellectual property. But overall, it hasn't hurt them over the long haul. If SJG's peculiar stance on their properties shows anything, it's how well SJ understands how bent copyright law is, not how greedy or IP-happy SJ is.
To drag this kicking and screaming back on topic, it raises a question: how far does the copyright on one of those games stretch? The source code? Source code and specific images? Because saying that the copyright applies to not only the source code but to any possible image that might emerge from playing it seems unreasonable. Specific presentation images may be covered by that, but general screenshots probably shouldn't.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
This story reminds me of the fuss George Broussard of 3DRealms used to make about web sites using screenshots without his approval. I don't know if he still has such strong opinions on the subject but if he does, future arrests for copyright infringement wouldn't surprise me, especially if the screenshots are used as part of a negative review.
Surely screenshots are no different from brief book quotes? Why aren't they fair use?
Square/ENIX in particular are incredibly anal about people taking screenshots. At the most recent E3, they were constantly patrolling their booth, descending like hawks on anyone who did so much as take out a camera, and curtly and rudely (in a most un-Japanese way) saying "no" to them.
Of course, other companies sometimes had no photography rules, but they were all for games shown behind closed doors -- every game displayed openly in booths were being openly filmed/photographed with the encouragement of the developers. Square was the only ones who prohibited photography of all their games.
Hello Square! If you don't want people taking pictures of your game, don't show it openly!
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.