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Full Screen Mario: Making the Case For Shorter Copyrights
barlevg writes "A college student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute spent nine months meticulously remaking Super Mario Bros. based on the latest web standards. His project is open source and the code freely available through Github. The site recently gained widespread media attention, which unfortunately brought it to the attention of Nintendo, which has requested that the site be taken down. In a column on the Washington Post website, tech blogger Timothy Lee makes the case for how this is a prime example of copyrights hindering innovation and why copyright lengths should be shortened. Among his arguments: copyrights hinder innovation by game designers seeking to build upon such games, and shortening copyright would breathe new life into games who have long since passed into obsolescence."
How is making an exactly duplication of another game "innovation"?
Super Mario Brothers ran at a steady framerate on a 1.7mhz 6502. This doesn't run smoothly on my 2.6ghz Core2Duo. Is this progress?
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There's no reason that the game has to use the character designs of the original. They are using the Mario name to gain attention. Of course they are going to be sued.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
and they have the balls to quote the 70+ year copyright BS. Some old video games are stuff on old hardware / old PC hardware that is hard to find parts for and a lot of the older pc based arcade games are tied to older chip sets or may be on old HDD's that can fail taking the code with them. Also ROM based games can have bit rot and battery acid damage.
Except he did not just reproduce it, he added to it, unless the original had level editors and creators on it. Lets not forget that this is also a 30 year old game, one which while the characters are still used the game style is not.. If you think about it almost all movies/games/music builds upon previous content.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
That can even now days that may have a unknown owner makeing finding who has the rights hard.
which is why Nintendo remakes games so often (Star Fox, Mario, Zelda, all had recent remakes from the N64 and Gamecube era).
Budding game designers get a chance to remake a game and release it it's a tremendous learning opportunity. It also provides them with a solid basis to launch new work.
As an Example, take the Giana sisters. Started as a Super Mario clone in the C64 era, but I don't think anyone would say this has much of anything to do with Super Mario besides being a platformer.
Me? I could live with the long copyrights if we also had big social safety nets and Basic Income (google the phrase if you don't recognize it). A lot of great stuff comes out of Canada and Europe because their socialized health care gives people the freedom to take risks you can't do in the states...
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Finally, RPI is more famous than MIT.
Haiku for you!
He did not want to compose another Quixote —which is easy— but the Quixote itself. Needless to say, he never contemplated a mechanical transcription of the original; he did not propose to copy it. His admirable intention was to produce a few pages which would coincide—word for word and line for line—with those of Miguel de Cervantes.
"I see undead people" Warcraft III - Necromancer
Assume that there were no copyright violations. This is still a clear cut trademark violation. I'm not sure how this case is even questionable. The right thing to have done would have been to go to Nintendo and asked permission to license Mario to do a web based version. Nintendo might have been receptive, and have been willing to grant some sort of license as it is kinda cool. But heck yeah, they own Mario.
This is like me releasing a soda called "old fashioned Coke" using 1970s style soda ingredients.
Nintendo's design work is generally so much better that it's not an issue. Does Intuit worry about Microsoft Money destroying Quickbooks? Not so much.
It might impair Nintendo's ability to crank out mediocre crap (I'm looking at you Super Mario 3D Land) but overall I don't think that's Nintendo's intention. Nintendo, like Sega, are craftsman that make games. They might screw up sometimes, but it's not for lack of trying, and they mostly get it right. Much as I love Indie platformers, very few come close to Nintendo levels of quality. Frogotto and Friends is the only one in recent memory and even it's not prefect.
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Since when did copying an existing work become innovation?
Seriously, if you want to use the term innovation it should be in reference to something new.
Not that I disagree with the sentiment that copyright terms are indefensibly long, but it's important to recognize that the game is not subject to copyright. The original source code is, as is the artwork from the game. The characters of Mario and Luigi, as well as the Mario Borthers name and logo are trademarked.
The students could very well have innovated by making a rip-off game without any covered elements to it, but they wanted to make something looked exactly like the Nintendo game (trademarks and all). The thing is that in the US, trademarks are unique in that if you do not defend them, you can lose them. If Nintendo didn't react, then they could lose their trademarks. Were I Nintendo, I would approach the students about licensing the trademark (say, for $1 so long as they kept the terms of the arrangement a secret) rather than face any sort of backlash for being heavy handed - they save face and defend their trademark in a single act.
14 year terms, required registration and a possible (single) 14 year extension would go a long way to restoring sanity in copyright.
Now, this would require abrogating / modifying an international treaty, but I don't see why I should care given that the whole point of such treaties is to put these matters beyond the reach of the mere legislatures and parliaments of democratic governments. (If you doubt this, you really need to follow how such treaties are negotiated.)
Copyrights will continue to be extended indefinitely as long as that hundred year old mouse is around.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.