Slashdot Mirror
Nintendo Threatens Suicidegirls Over IP Use
An anonymous reader writes "Suicidegirls (a not safe for work adult community) posted a nasty letter they received from Nintendo demanding they remove a member's page on their site because the member listed Metroid and Zelda as their favorite video games." Update: 10/28 02:49 GMT by Z : BoingBoing has an update to the story (probably where the reader saw it in the first place), saying the law firm that represents Nintendo Seattle is looking into it.
And that made sort of mis... wait, girls? BOOBIES!!!! This may be the first Slashdot article I ever follow the links on.
I wonder how many members they "lost" over the incident... :)
The friendliest digital photography forums on the net!
Just how did anyone at Nintendo discover this? A little non-work-safe surfing?
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
Honestly, companies have become so overprotective of their intellectual property. We can blame a whole host of things, downoading, overzealous lawsuits against consumers that solve nothing, disregard for the work of others, discrepancies betwixt creators and distributors. It's becoming increasingly ridiculous. I have no doubt that this threat will be met head-on and demolished for the sham that it is. Having received such letters in the past, the bark is truly worse than the bite.
It seems to me, that a trademark infringement like creating a new game with Link and Zelda or Samus Arun in it is very obviously a legal event waiting to happen. But simply stating "Hey, I love playing Zelda" ... That can't possibly be an event Nintendo would win in anything other than "We have enough money to out lawyer you into the poor house"
Right?
"Genius may shine aloof and alone, like a star, but goodness is social, and it takes two men and God to make a Brother."
Their membership is gonna increase 1000% once Slashdot geeks get a look at these girls!
(I'm a member and love the site!)
http://suicidegirls.com/members/djblair/
-DJ
Meh, as far as I'm concerned, the email they received was unsolicited and therefore SPAM. Plus, that stupid ass disclaimer on the email just makes the sender look like a moron.
This comment is guaranteed*
*not guaranteed
But it isn't a problem when playboy uses (nude) nintendo characters?
The Yasashii Syndicate ||
The difference being that people were taking SG images and content, claiming them as their own or using them in their own ways without crediting Suicidegirls and violating copyright and trademark laws.
This is just a few members saying "Hey, we like nintendo."
I enjoy a cool, crisp Coca-Cola. Think they're gonna sue me for saying so? Even on a porn site?
At Nintendo:
[Boss walks into a worker's cubicle...]
-Hi anderson, I was just.. whhaa?!? Are you browsing porn in the workplace?
-Uhh no, you see, [looks at screen, sweating all over] these pervert weirdoes are abusing our company's copyright!
-You're right! Launch every lawyer! For great justice!
Are we even talking about IP, here?
What gives Nintendo the right to censor the mere mention of something? They weren't discussing any secrets of IP or using the namesakes or images illegally... their member simply named two games as their favorite.
How is it even conceivable that they should be allowed to do this??
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
Doing a quick search does yield Nintendo as part of their client list, this may just be over zealousness on the part of the law firm or even just a lonely bored employee and not something Nintendo directed them to do. We have seen law firms in the past do this kind of stuff without the IP owner directing them to so do(or at least that's what they tell us).
Then again it could just be some jerk who spoofed an email to get everyone's dander up.
ACCESS RESTRICTED
WARNING NOTICE
You have attempted to access a site that has been deemed inappropriate for our business and blocked from ALL internal access. A record of this request has been logged and will be provided to Business Security upon request.
For further information on why this web site was blocked, please go to the SmartFilter website.
PLEASE REFRAIN FROM ANY FURTHER ATTEMPTS!
If you feel this message was generated in error or if there is a business justification for unblocking a specific URL , please contact the
AT&T Wireless Business Security Group.
Let's see if they'll send me a letter: Hey Nintendo! Zelda and Metorid love to get naked and oiled up and have sex with linux goth sluts all day long!! Black fishnets, fuck yeah!!!
I think Nintendo's issue with this is that they have their IP mentioned on an adult website. Although, I'm pretty sure this is fair use... it's not like it says "Watch Zelda get Fsck'd by Metroid!"
I'm pretty sure that this text was picked up by a bot that the lawfirm probably convinced nintendo to run. the bot probably ran a list of URL's that contained certain keywords and checked to see if any were adult websites. Probably part of a naked-nintendo-character-website crackdown.
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
From: Stop IP Infringement
Next take a peak at the actual To addres:
To: "'spooky@suicidegirls.com'"
The From address isn't from an individual. It certainly makes me think it's a bot. The To address contains the actual recipient address in quotes. I've never seen a MUA automatically use the email address in the double-quoted area. I've seen mass mailers do this before though.
"spooky@suicidegirls.com" is also the administrative contact address for the domain "suicidegirls.com." Their site's help page contains many other contact addresses, yet the one from WHOIS was what they used. It's easy for a bot to harvest an address from WHOIS. It's next to impossible to find the right address on some random website.
In addition to that the form letter notes the ARIN contact address of suicidegirls.com ISP. Again this is easily harvested via WHOIS.
The form letter also makes no attempt to name the site administrator by name or even address the letter to common responsible roles. Instead it repeated the address it harvested from WHOIS.
I say it's a bot, plain and simple. I'd contact a lawyer for some free advice. They'll probably tell you to ignore it. I'd also make sure your ISP also realizes it's a bot and that what your site member is doing is certainly not illegal (not even remotely, even in communist China). That would be my IANAL advice.
Apparently this is not the first time that lawyers from Perkens Coie have sent meritless cease and decist letters to websites on behalf of Nintendo.
It would be interesting to find out more about thier relationship with Nintendo. It doesn't make any sense that Nintendo would actually want to sue it's fans for promoting their games. Almost seems like some lawyer who is paid on commision and got over eager, expecting that it would never garner Nintendo's or the press's attention.
Uh, you just used the word N*ntendo on the front page... N*ntendo might sue you for using their company name on Slashdot, as you're associating their good image with our wonderful trolling community!
Perhaps they're concerned that some young kid googling for web sites about Zelda and Mario will come across a link to suicidegirls.com. That wouldn't do a whole lot for their family image.
From the content of the letter
" It has come to our client's attention recently that you are using the Nintendo trademark(s)/works in the hidden text/visible text/meta tags and/or title and/or links of the above-referenced sexually explicit Web site."
it sounds like that's the case.
They certainly can't forbid people from listing one of their games as being their favorite though. I would hope that somebody at the law firm or Nintdeno would look at the real issue here and retract their little infringement letter.
Of course with me, Mattel learned their lesson, as they didn't say a word about Mattelabuse.com or BarbieSLAPP.com.
But, they didn't learn their lesson before they were ordered to pay $1.8 million to a photographer that they sued for using the Barbie image.
Fight Spammers!
What the hell are you talking about? I do not ask lightly.
Here is a story.
I photograph flowers for a living. Have a website devoted to it. Have photographed some exotic flowers over the years, and I charge to let botonists see my collection.
Someone takes those photos and pretends they made them. Makes them publically available. I take legal action, as this hurts my legitimate business.
A third party happens to mention on my site that a set of specific varieties of daisies prefer a specific fertilizer. Then I get a nasty letter from the fertilizer company for mentioning their product.
Under your reasoning I'm supposed to be like 'Fuck, my fault for aggresively pursuing those who were ruining my business"?
Unless you are anti IP across the board (which I doubt) this position makes no sense.
Additionally I'd like to defend SG a bit by saying that aggresive protection of their photos is completely reasonable. Your average hard core porn site probably does not have a personal relationship with their models, nor is their much expectation of trust. Spreading their work is a legal issue only.
But Missy knows many of her models personally. They've posed under conditions where they have creative control over how they look and who sees them. Missy has every right to aggresively protect the spread of naked pictures of her friends for god's sake. SG has nothing but a good reputation in the indie adult community, and it is for exactly this kind of "aggresive protection" that they deserve it. I would expect nothing less from Missy, from Eolake Stobblehouse (of domai.com) or Alex Firestone (firegirls.com).
Honestly, I imagine that Nintendo doesn't want to be associated with, say, child porn, drugs, etc, and runs a webcrawler that matches the use of certain terms ("Mario") with other terms ("boobs") and then emails the admin when it matches This is pretty clear from the email that at best, SG was only looked at by a human eye for about 30 seconds.
I attended a booksigning for the new hardcover coffee table book of the Suicide Girls portraits about a month ago at Powell's City of Books in Portland Oregon.
It was different than I thought it would be. The Suicide Girls concept actually is not porn-oriented. The young woman who developed the idea and took the original photos said that she wanted to capture the unique spirit of the women that she knew and hung out with in Southeast Portland. The Suicide Girls concept is about sharing the self-actualization of women in Portland's post-punk subculture. Suicide Girls was developed to be a celbration of attitude of young women rather than specifically providing a visual stimulation for male sexual climax.
The Suicide Girls website is primarily designed to provide a place for other women who share the same lifestyle throughout the world to find each other. It's not intended to be a porn site although it has the secondary effect of invoking male sexual arousal. It does that rather well and that goes a long way to pay the overhead costs, but it is not the site's main purpose.
That's what gives the Suicide Girl photos the ambience that they are mocking male sexuality as opposed to the standard porn approach of manipulating male sexuality for profit.
Many of the original models attended the event since the website started here in Portland and they live here. Talking to them afterwards they seemed just like ordinary people, not porn stars.
As for the 'ownership' of the name, the author said that it just "came from an old song".
Nintendo should just lighten up and forget this nonsense. I suspect that the name probably originated somewhere else because a Japanese Nerd video game giant corporation would not be likely to come up with a name like this. Personally, I suspect that William Burroughs thought it up, and a search of his novels from the 1950s and 1960s would find it as a casual reference.
No, I am not a 'Suicide Girl' myself.
For the love of god and all that's holy, don't do that again!!!
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
Yea we wouldn't want SuicideGirls and Nintendo getting mixed up by the search engines.
Aside from the fact that such disclaimers have ZERO legal weight. You cannot bind someone to any agreement without their consent. This is why the SG site has no fear of posting the email even though the text at the bottom says they must not disclose the contents.
I could send you an email saying you have to flap your arms and cluck like a chicken. Or that you have to pay me 25 cents for each email I send. But it means nothing, because you were never in on the negotiations. You never signed a thing. I can't obligate you without your informed consent. And so I think the OP is correct: it does make the sender look like a moron, because she is a lawyer or representative for a lawyer, and yet she doesn't seem to understand a fundamental, basic premise of the law.
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"No one likes working in a hamster wheel, and your shop smells of cedar shavings from here." - TaleSpinner
That's not the point. I know they are in no way or shape binding, however, it shows the clients (who presumably receive emails) that the professional at least looks like he cares about their privacy. It's just standard courtesy.
NOTICE: This communication may contain privileged or other confidential information. If you have received it in error, please advise the sender by reply email and immediately delete the message and any attachments without copying or disclosing the contents. Thank you.
I don't see anything in there that suggests that there is any punishment or liability to not following the instructions. That's like saying I have a "please wipe your shoes before you come in" sign on my house or a bumper sticker that asks drivers to be considerate. That fact that no contract has been made and there are no legally binding situations doesn't make me look like a moron.
Perkins Coie is one of Seattle's oldest firms, established in 1912. As I mentioned in an early post, they have been doing this sort of thing for Nintendo since at least 2001. Google searches show that several high level employees including a senior vice president, and Head Legal Counsel have had jobs at both companies. I doubt that Nintendo had direct knowledge of this suit, but Perkins Coie is definately working for them.
There's a fair overlap between the tastes of at least a certain subset of geeks and a certain subset of goths (or sort-of-goth) in terms of music, books, tv shows, and so on - they probably bump into each other at Buffy conventions and the like :) Both groups tend to have a dislike of the mainstream subculture - they may well have both suffered through high school.
And finally, goth girls seem to often be quite intelligent and worldly, and they seem to appreciate somebody they can have a decent conversation with. Most geek guys, if they can get over their shyness, can do that.
Anyway, that's my 2c...
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Trademarks explicitly do not protect from commentary or criticism (of the literary variety). The trademark holder cannot stop you from saying "this is my favorite game" or even "this game sucks donkey dick," so long as you make it clear it's your opinion.
In short, no, there's no legal basis for the email, and Nintendo should be crucified for extortion, and hit with substantial SLAPP sanctions if they file a lawsuit.
I wish I bought their crap, just so I could stop. But then, this is nothing new from Nintendo. They've been dicks for a long, long time.
Dear Nintendo,
It has come to our attention that one of our users has used the name of your company on his page. Since your company is often associated with videogames for children, it damages our site's reputation by suggesting that we are a childish adult site and don't have enough hardcore material to satisfy every visitor's darkest fetish fantasies.
Of course, one look at her picture will unearth the real reason for her going after SuicideGirls. She's Unattractive, dowdy, downright ugly even! ie: She's jealous. Ugly girls always hate the pretty ones.
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
What's this? Miyamoto checking out SuicideGirls user profiles - whats the old man up to?
I'm against what's happening here, and I doubt they have a legal leg to stand on, but consider what's happening around the web.
It's likely that Nintendo pays these lawyers to look around for their trademark being used to promote pornographic sites. Consider the case of John Zuccarini, who was using domain name typos (like 15 variations of "cartoonnetwork.com) to lure children to porn sites. He got a commission for each "click", although the clicks were cauased by pop-up hell. He brought in around $1,000,000 in his last year of business.
It doesn't take more than a couple of minutes on Google to find someone using Nintendo's trademark to get search engine hits to their porn site. I often hit such sites while searching for information on other famous trademarks. Here's a site which uses "linux" as one of the search keywords, and it has nothing to do with Linux.
Anyway, overzealous lawyers, yes, but they do have a legitimate job.
Do you have ESP?
This is analogous to our case. It's simple a fact that one of those two-bit goth whores likes certain Nintendo games. The two-bit goth whore saying it clearly is not an infringement.
You SERIOUSLY need to update your video drivers. I get 32-bit goth whores here.
How many times has Sean (the straight male who started and runs the site, while pretending that it's a queer-friendly, woman run enterprise) from Suicidegirls crudely exploited Slashdot for free advertising? This is a pattern that has been happening time and time again, and it's ridiculous that the moderators here haven't realized it.
Suicidegirls is not a DIY, woman-run project. "Missy" is their PR point-person, who gives a progressive, friendly face to an otherwise pretty sleazy operation. The site is actually owned and run by a guy named Sean Suhl (public knowledge, not saying anything new here), who is not exactly the most progressive guy on the planet. His politics are solidly right-wing (although he's a neo-conservative, who are more libertarian when it comes to sex... as long as someone can make money from it). Dozens of models have quit or been kicked off the site, many of whom were basically removed for being too "opinionated".
Ultimately, Suicidegirls is the Hot Topic of alternative porn. They took an underground, DIY concept, polished it, and presented it slick and packaged back to the community that created it. You can read more about it in the SGirls community on Livejournal:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sgirls
As a disclaimer, I'm not anti-porn. I'm a big fan of any porn that is sincere, DIY, and woman-oriented. There's a whole slew of sites, some of whom have been around longer than SG, such as FatalBeauty, ManicJane, VegPorn, along with DIY erotica zines such as State of Nature.
SG is not DIY, they don't challenge patriarchal standards of beauty, and they don't give a crap about the women who pose for the site. This attempt by Sean for cheap publicity is yet another example of the only thing SG really does well: Marketing.