People are “attacking” your grasp of the situation because what you are posting is making it seem that you dont understand it
Copyright laws key word LAWS, are a group of laws and stipulation that work in conjuction to both protect intellectual properties, their owners, but also the public when it comes on how they consume it and interact with media.
you cant spea of one without the other.
It is why fanart/cover songs are not comparable to someone either moding an old game or recreating it on UE4.
Or even like what happened recently, wher Nintendo forced Sony to remove any recreation of Mario on their game Dreams.
In a fan art/cover, you are doing your own work
Mainly because someone like Nintendo slaps someone with a lawsuit (Nindy do not do C&D any more), wanting a ridiculous levels of damages paid, that person ether finds a lawyer and negotiate on a settlement or they buy into Nintendo’s demands for a out of court settlement that still has them paying a but load of cash and a Non-disclosure agreement tied to the settlement where if the NDA broke the lawsuit is back on like the settlement never happened. You need capital to fight a prolonged IP battle on court, and it can take years to do.
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I’m not sure why you guys think of game mods and song covers as such different concepts. They’re both recreations of someone else’s work.
New league trailer. “Whatever you sow, you must harvest.” 
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Covers require a license, owner permission and pay a royalty or they get bodied with strike downs. And some music can fall into public domain and none of those steps are needed. Fan art is fair use and considered transformative art.
Ripping game assets or modding don’t fall into either and Nintendo is right to put its foot down. Just because lazy companies let fans fix the shit they have no time for or get free work for their games is their prerogative. Those situations are outliers and not the norm.
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I believe that in a live setting it’s OK to play a cover song. Phish breaks out covers all the time and they are nice treats for the fans. Not sure if they have to work anything out to sell those performances as MP3s after the fact though. I always wondered how that worked.
We have those permissions and protections for other forms of media because they’ve been around MUCH longer than games. Games have yet to aquire the same foothold in terms of clearly defined legalities, and even in terms of being a commonplace form of media period.
I’m not asking about that though, I’m more wondering how the two are so different conceptually because again, a mod and a cover are both recreations of something that already existed. Both are pieces of art that have been altered by someone else.
That is not how the courts see it. Also if you broke any encryption in doing so you also violate the DMCA.
And if you are in Japan, right now Fan Mods are illegal due to Japan’s “Unfair Competition Prevention Law”
That one is illegal, you are repoducing a existing work without permision.
Wait let’s be clear. I am not advocating their vehaivor. I am explaining it. This is not the same thing. Personally I have no real opinion on their actions because I don’t think Its a moral decision, it’s a legal one. Their behavior is being guided by law, not morality.
I personally did not do this. Released covers technically require a royalty payment for licensing.
I’m not attacking you, I’m sorry if you feel that way. I think you don’t understand the subject as well as you think you do becsuse you keep making it a personal and somewhat moral issue when it’s a law issue. That’s why I have no opinion about their behaivor, it isn’t being governed by what is right, it’s being governed by what is best for them legally.
This requires you buy Skyrim. I can download all the Skyrim Mods I want but if I don’t own Skyrim they are useless to me.
Eh? What has Demon’s Souls been ported to?
Again it’s not a matter of what you think they should do. It’s a matter of what the law says they have to do. Your only example I can do anything with is the Skyrim one which requires you buy Beth’s software first. What Software do I need to buy first to run PC Mario 64? None. It’s a stolen IP ported to a different unsupported piece of hardware that the IP holder has 0 control over. Your Skyrim Example is kind of bunk.
You have to step outside your personal feelings as annoying as that is to do and look at it objectivly. Looking at it from outside it’s in their best interest to legally protect their IP from people because they don’t know what their intent is.
I’m not telling you your feelings are wrong. I am telling you why they do what they do.
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They got agreements/rights before hand with a cut of the profits going to the IP holder.
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Darksakul is corrent, Phish dotted their I’s and crossed their T’s long before they played any of those covers live. They could easily be sued if they haven’t because the venue has made money.
Looks like its the venue’s responsibility to get the rights, not the performing artist’s.
To add what Radiant said,
With Bethesda, they pretty much give an open license to modders to make mods as Beth themselves relase SDKs and Creation Kits for Modders to use.
With the Mario 64 PC game, you have to rip existing assets to complete the game.
The code is original, but the textures, sounds and sprites are not.
And even if it was the case, Nintendo shut down projects like AM2R and Square Enix shut down a recreation of Chrono Trigger someone tried to do in Unity. Because you are still using their characters, story lines and trademarks.
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Yea not 100% clear on it for venues, from what I know it generally falls on the Venue in this case because they are the hosts of said venue.
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Does not matter who, as long as someone pays the bills for it.
The original IP holder just cares about their cut, not who the one giving them the money.
Often in your case, the venue hires the band to do the cover, the venue did all the leg work.
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d3v
7898
Most of the haters aren’t even people who play the game or are part of the FGC.
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And not to say that IP Law isn’t complicated as fuck because it is. Like John Carmack legit released the source code for iDs first 3 games, at that point he surrendered IP protection but now those IPs belong to Bethada so who the fuck knows where the legality of porting Quake to shit lies.
I think with that, you can make a complete copy of for example Doom’s game engine for whatever system/ device I want. Now the WAD files, you ether need to get the shareware version (the free version) or legally own a game you got the WAD files from.
I can port Doom to a lets say a fucking Toaster, I can give out free the port minus the required WAD files. But at no point I can sell the Toaster Doom without permission. Even asking for patreon donations for reimbursing my own costs is kinda iffy.
The law itself is really cut and dry.
The uncertain part is, its up to each and every individual IP holder to decide how they want to defend their IP. In the case of Trademarks, you have to defend your trademark or you can lose it.
Not aggressively defending a trademark can cause a judge or US Trademark office to take your trademark away. With Copyright, not defending your copyright in certain situations can be used against you later in another case.
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I’m really not trying to think with my dick first on this subject. It does annoy me how agressive Nintendo is about this but I don’t want to imply that I think it’s outside their legal right. I feel like I even said quite the opposite. They’re totally within their right to take down every project, regardless of its size or scope.
Again, I just think they could pick and choose to go for the bigger, more “heinous” projects that seek monetary gain off of their properties, rather than small insignificant ones that aren’t being resold or even advertised. No matter how you slice it they’re definitely more agressive than a lot of other companies are about it. That’s really all I’m saying.
I miss when this thread was about video games.
Seems so long ago
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