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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.
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
What I want to know is exactly how their argument is going to go.
Nintenlawyer: "Your honor, the defendants like our games enough to tell that fact to other people."
Da Judge: Um, ok. I hope you have a point somewhere around here.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
"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.
Suicide Girls was developed to be a celbration of attitude of young women rather than specifically providing a visual stimulation for male sexual climax.
You do realize most of us lost our "virginity" to the women's underwear section of a Sears catalog.
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?)
John Katz? Is that you?
Random is the New Order.