Nintendo Shuts Down Fan-Made Zelda Movie

Andorin writes "An independently filmed adaptation of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, called The Hero Of Time, has been taken offline by Nintendo as of the end of December. The film's producers write: 'We came to an agreement with Nintendo earlier this month to stop distributing the film... We understand Nintendo's right to protect its characters and trademarks and understand how in order to keep their property unspoiled by fan's interpretation of the franchise, Nintendo needs to protect itself — even from fan-works with good intentions.' Filming for the feature-length, non-profit film began in August 2004 and the movie was completed in 2008. It premiered in various theaters worldwide, including in New York and Los Angeles, and then became available online in the middle of December, before it was targeted by Nintendo's legal team. As both an avid Zelda fan and an appreciator of independent works, I was extremely disappointed in Nintendo's strong-arming of a noncommercial adaptation to the Game of the Year for 1999."

Comments

Re:Actually...

[Hatta]

Bullshit. You can enforce your trademarks and still allow fan works. For instance, CBS allows use of Star Trek properties for non-profit use. Nintendo should be encouraging their most enthusiastic fans, not threatening them with legal action.

Streisand effect!

[pecosdave]

Now I'm curious and I'm going to have to hunt down a copy of that movie, that I would never have heard of had Nintendo just let it be.

Re:Why the surprise?

[Enderandrew]

Fan projects like this only help to keep the IP in people's minds, effectively generated free promotion.

Anyone recall the early days of the internet when Fox and Lucas were threatening to sue all the X-Files and Star Wars fan pages on the internet in order to protect their trademarks? At some point they decided it was too hard to fight, and that fan pages weren't a threat to their trademarks. So why are fan movies different?

Lessons Learned

[westlake]

The fan spends four years in production. The film is screened in New York and L.A.

It never occurs to him at any point along the way to ask Nintendo for their permission and support. It comes as a surprise when the rights holder pulls the plug.

There is a way to get it right:

The Hunt for Gollum
   

Re:"Unspoiled by fan's interpretation's"

[Threni]

Yeah, Nintendo have to protect them? No, they could license it for free and it would not dilute their ownership of trademarks. It's bollocks - like when companies say "unfortunately we can't fix your product for free". It's not unfortunate - it's a result of their policy, which they could change whenever they felt like it.

Re:Derivative Works

[Vainglorious Coward]

The owner of the copyright has the *exclusive* right to make derivative works...I realize the slashdot crowd doesn't agree with all that, but it is the existing law.

Apart from the first statement being simply untrue (there are a number of uses permitted without the copyright holder's permisssion), it is also completely irrelevant - this case is not about copyright, it's about trademarks. I know the fudmongers want us all to be seduced into the "information is property" paradigm, but copyrights and trademarks (and for that matter, patents and trade secrets) are not the same thing at all, and blurring the distinctions between them does nobody any good. Before you go berating us all in your role as AC law expert you might want to get a better understanding of the law yourself.