Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Mario 64 Remake Receives a DMCA Complaint From Nintendo

Posted by Soulskill on from the no-fun-allowed dept.

jones_supa writes: Well, we saw this one coming. Just a couple of days after computer science student Erik Roystan Ross released a free recreation of the first level of Nintendo's 1996 Super Mario 64, Nintendo filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaint. It was sent to the content distribution network CloudFlare and the complaint asked to immediately disable public access to the page hosting the remade game. CloudFlare forwarded the complaint to the person hosting Ross' game, after which the hosting provider (a friend of Ross) had to take the game down. Nintendo also sent Ross takedown notices for his downloadable desktop versions of the Bob-Omb Battlefield. Nintendo is famously protective of its copyright, taking issue even with "Let's Play" videos posted on YouTube and threatening to shut down live-streamed Super Smash Bros tournaments."

4 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. Copyright by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Nintendo doesn't make money anymore with that specific game. Why do copyright laws allow IP owners to excercise rights over abandoned products? I mean, which loss does nintento have to expect?

    1. Re:Copyright by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This one's easy: Nintendo still sells games. They're afraid that if people start playing conversions of their old games (or even just start watching videos of other people playing old games), they'll have no incentive to go out and by their newer games/consoles.

      The reality probably includes that, but also includes the fact that since IP goes so deep, any Nintendo games are likely to include IP licensed from others, with specific contract details outlining how the IP can be used. If some third party starts duplicating/redistributing this IP, things get messy.

      Not the way it *should* be, but it's the way it *is*. Shortening copyright to 14 years for digital works would fix a lot of this.

  2. Re:Nintendo "Corporate Social Responsibility": by cfalcon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I mean, sure, I'm a fan of Nintendo... ...But here's the thing. Mario 64 is a game that Nintendo actively remakes, updates, and sells. It's on their shop RIGHT THIS SECOND, updated to work with all the new controllers and whatever on the Wii-U. What legal precedent do they set if they allow a guy to just flat out reimplement their game? Note that they are going with "DMCA takedown"- that's a reasonably soft pitch that doesn't land some cool coder in real legal troubles.

    Note that unlike most DMCA (ab)use, this isn't "a website where I told you how to read data on your drive" or "a hyperlink, which is magically indistinguishable from the real thing now" or "an emulator unrelated to our characters, games, or code". This is, some guy made a version of their game and put it online. A game they actively sell for their current system (they may even be making the DS version).

    I just don't see this as something that, legally, they can leave up there.

  3. Re:Nintendo "Corporate Social Responsibility": by dissy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They're terrified of their brand ever being associated with "adult" material because parents might sue them for said exposing their child to hypothetical adult material.

    That must be why Nintendo partnered with Playboy to promote the Nintendo exclusive release of Bayonetta 2.

    http://wiiudaily.com/2014/10/nintendo-partners-with-playboy-to-promote-bayonetta-2/
    http://bayonetta2.nintendo.com/
    http://www.playboy.com/galleries/pamela-horton-nintendo-bayonetta/slide-1