With Court Ruling, Fan Subtitles Officially Copyright Infringement In Sweden

from the sadface dept

Several years ago, in an unfortunate display of police bending the knee to the copyright industries, Swedish law enforcement raided the offices of Undertexter, a site chiefly dedicated to fan translations for subtitles of films. While these fan translations have been handcuffed to film piracy -- mostly through the messaging efforts of film and television content producers -- the raid registered as an extreme escalation in the battle on subtitles. Most folks have a hard time understanding why such action was taken, with most fan translations only being useful due to the content makers underserving parts of the earth that speak a variety of languages. These fan translations mostly open up those markets for makers of movies and television who have otherwise chosen not to translate their work into the relevant languages.

For its part, Undertexter vowed to fight the legal action, proclaiming its work non-infringing by virtue of serving up mere dialog translations.

Undertexter.se has had a police raid this morning (July 9) and servers and computers have been seized, and therefore, the site is down. We who work on the site don't consider an interpretation of dialog to be something illegal, especially not when sharing it for free. Henrik Pontén [the copyright industry's primary henchman in Sweden], who is behind the raid, disagrees. Sorry Hollywood, this was the totally wrong card to play. We will never surrender. [...] We must do everything in our power to stop these anti-pirates. [...]

Well, the fight is now over and, unfortunately, the man behind Undertexter has been convicted of copyright infringement.

The Attunda District Court sentenced the now 32-year-old operator to probation. In addition, he has to pay 217,000 Swedish Kroner ($27,000), which will be taken from the advertising and donation revenues he collected through the site.

While there were millions of subtitles available on Undertexter, only 74 movies were referenced by the prosecution. These were carefully selected to ensure a strong case it seems, as many of the titles weren’t commercially available in Sweden at the time.

During the trial, the defense had argued that the fan-made subtitles are not infringing since movies are made up of video and sound, with subtitles being an extra. However, the court disagreed with this line of reasoning, the verdict shows.

What ultimately happened here is that Undertexter had translations for a few films available legitimately in Sweden and the prosecution proceeded to essentially pretend like those films were the whole story. The reality is that sites like Undertexter are primarily useful because those legitimate options, including the relevant language translations, are not available. Sites like this are used by many who buy movies and television and then apply the fan-subs afterwards. Customers who would, in other words, not be able to be customers if not for the fan-subs. The piracy portion of these subtitles is incidental to the mission, in other words, but the copyright industries in Sweden claimed that piracy was really the whole point.

On the other hand, one wonders exactly how much Swedish tax money was spent to bring a guy who ran a subtitle site to the tune of probation and $27,000? Is this really the best use of everyone's time?

Filed Under: copyright, fans, subtitles, sweden
Companies: undertexter

Def Leppard Claims Music Piracy Is Bringing Younger Audiences To Its Concerts

from the rock-for-all-the-ages dept

The last time we checked in with 80's rock band Def Leppard, the band was busy "forging" its own songs as a way to release its own back catalog without having its label cash in off of it. So bad was the relationship with Universal Music, apparently, that re-recording all of that music was the better option compared with having to deal with the label. So, one might wonder how the band views illicit music downloads then, amidst its anger at its label for not paying them properly.

Well, it turns out that Def Leppard thinks music piracy is making them a killing in concert revenue.

In an interview with Ultimate Classic Rock, Def Leppard guitarist Vivian Campbell has been describing why he believes piracy has its upsides, particularly for enduring bands that are still trying to broaden their horizons.

“The way the band works is quite extraordinary. In recent years, we’ve been really fortunate that we’ve seen this new surge in our popularity. For the most part, that’s fueled by younger people coming to the shows,” Campbell said. “We’ve been seeing it for the last 10, 12 or 15 years, you’d notice younger kids in the audience, but especially in the last couple of years, it’s grown exponentially. I really do believe that this is the upside of music piracy.”

What's useful about Def Leppard's stance on this is that the band cuts around all of the usual pushback from copyright defenders. The band is not "just a startup with nothing to lose from piracy"; they're a household name. The band is also not "simply a bunch of has-beens trying to eek out a few more years of meager revenue"; their popularity is surging. Campbell's stance is also not simply one-sided in the belief that younger fans getting free music brings in the concert revenue. He also believes these new, young fans make the bands music better.

“There’s a whole new energy around Leppard, in fact. I think we’re playing better than we ever have. Which you’d like to think anyway. They always say that musicians, unlike athletes, you’re supposed to get better. I’m not sure that anyone other than the band really notices, but I notice it and I know that the other guys do too. When I play ‘Rock of Ages’ for the 3,000,000 time, it’s not the song that excites me, it’s the energy from the audience. That’s what really lifts our performance. When you’ve got a more youthful audience coming to your shows, it only goes in one direction,” he concludes.

This is the part of music obtained freely that never gets mentioned: the multiplier effect it has on a bands relevance and longevity. This isn't to say that such a model works for every band in every instance, but it's refreshing to see an artist step back and try to get the full picture of what's really going on here. It would be quite easy for someone like Campbell to see the young faces in his audience and never give a second thought to how those younger fans got to a Def Leppard concert. By taking an intelligent look at that question, however, Campbell has reached a place where he's found a friend where he might have seen an enemy.

The band is also very active on YouTube, even as the site has recently become a chief target of the music industry as a source of evil, evil piracy.

One only has to visit Def Leppard’s official YouTube channel to see that despite being born in the late fifties and early sixties, the band are still regularly posting new content to keep fans up to date. So, given the consumption habits of young people these days, YouTube seems a more likely driver of new fans than torrents, for example.

The band's embrace of the internet as a tool for generating interest and revenue isn't merely passive, in other words. The band that made its name decades ago is using today's tools to actively cultivate a new audience, which then shows up at the concerts, bringing in ticket revenue and revenue from merchandise. All, again, as the band is re-energized for its own on-stage performances. It's difficult to find the downside for the band in any of this, perhaps because one does not exist.

Filed Under: copyright, def leppard, fans, piracy, promotion, vivian campbell

Capcom Manually DMCAs English Translation Of Ace Attorney Game Not Available In English

from the language-as-drm dept

In gaming circles, Capcom is often seen as the company that brought you the Street Fighter and Resident Evil series of games. More recently, Capcom has become notable for its Ace Attorney series of games as well. But in intellectual property circles, Capcom will always be the game studio that pimped SOPA to the public, foisted broken DRM on its customers, and treated Resident Evil customers both to a secondary-market killing DRM that allowed only one play-through of the game and the removal of promised features and only alerted customers to it after sales had begun rolling in. I think it's fair to say, in other words, that Capcom has been known to be almost cartoonishly pernicious.

Speaking of which, Capcom also recently shut down a fan-translated play-through of an Ace Attorney game only available in Japan. Consistency!

Dai Gyakuten Saiban is an Ace Attorney spin-off starring an ancestor of Phoenix Wright in feudal Japan that has not been released in English. For O and Garbage, who run a Dai Gyakuten Saiban YouTube channel, it’s their favorite Ace Attorney game.

“Since I have an import 3DS, I bought the game just to try it out,” she said over reddit private messages. “Dai Gyakuten Saiban drew me in with it’s aesthetics, and then caught me in a death grip with Asougi [the main character’s rival].” Their shared passion for the game lead them to translate it over a period of about 8 months. Their videos consisted of footage of the game as they played it without commentary, with subtitles added using YouTube’s subtitling options. They finished just in time for the announcement of Dai Gyakuten Saiban 2. “We both loved the game a lot,” O said, “and it was a shame that not everyone would be able to experience it because it lacked a localization.”

Ok, so a couple of things to note here. First, the videos in question are quite old. It seems they began the series in 2015, so we're talking a couple of years here. Second, O and Garbage say they purposefully made sure there were no ads or monetization on the videos. They were trying to share the game with others that didn't have access to it, not make coin. Third, I've found nothing to suggest that any English version of the game is even planned, nevermind set for release. Most references for the game suggest there is no planned release for the game anywhere outside of Japan. Given that it's already a few years old, the likelihood of translated versions is beginning to drop. So, we have a fan translation of a game play-through in a language for which there is no planned release, with an audience in a market for which there is no planned release. And Capcom took it down. Why?

I already know what you're thinking: "Probably a ContentID or bot-driven DMCA notice is to blame." Nooooooope.

Sunday, June 25th, O discovered that the entirety of their translated Dai Gyakuten Saiban videos had been taken down by Capcom. The copy of the takedown notice they showed me indicated that they were manually detected, and not a victim of the automated “Content ID” system that is sometimes overzealous in how it flags gameplay videos. I reached out to Capcom about this and they declined to comment.

So Capcom manually took down this fan translation, apparently believing that language is a form of DRM and gamers ought to have to learn Japanese and buy the only version of the game that exists in order to get any sort of peek at a play-through. Keep in mind we're talking about a play-through without ads or monetization on it. I'm struggling to come up with an explanation for why Capcom would do this other than...they're just mean, I guess? Mean to very real fans of its games that just wanted to show off how cool the game was to those that had no shot of getting it for themselves because Capcom didn't make it available to them.

While she’s not as frustrated as she was when she first found out, O and Garbage are both “bummed,” as Garbage puts it. But neither of them have very many regrets about starting the project in the first place.

“There wasn’t an earth shattering revelation or pull to me doing this,” Garbage said. “I just wanted to share a game that was inaccessible.”

8 months of work down the drain. And for what?

Filed Under: ace attorney, censorship, dmca, fans, translation
Companies: capcom

American Division Of Persona 5 Developer Warns That Their 'Masters' Don't Want People Streaming Spoilers

from the uh,-okay? dept

This seems like something we'll need to keep repeating: revealing entertainment spoilers is not copyright infringement. What ought to be common sense is apparently not so for all kinds of content owners in the entertainment space. As such, DMCA notices or threats for DMCA notices have been used to combat spoiler releases in all kinds of forms, from movie predictions, to television show predictions, to video game footage that reveals spoilers. Some of these instances involve actual footage of the copyrighted material while some don't, but the core of the matter is that if you're talking copyright infringement because of spoilers, you're doing copyright wrong.

The latest version of this comes from Atlus, developers of Persona 5. The American division of Atlus put out a notice on its website, in which it starts off with bubbling excitement over the release of the game, but then spills into a lecture on what gamers can stream and what they cannot.

Ok, now let’s talk Persona 5 streaming and videos. Simply put, we don’t want the experience to be spoiled for people who haven’t played the game. Our fans have waited years for the game to come out and we really want to make sure they can experience it fully as a totally new adventure. Please read our video/streaming guidelines below:

Please, PLEASE do not post any specific plot points or story spoilers, and only talk about the game in broad strokes. (Good example: “The game deals with dark themes right off the bat, with a lecherous teacher and other corrupted individuals.” Bad example: “Players immediately run into trouble with the pervy teacher *spoiler*, whose actions go so far as to cause *spoiler*.”)

You’re more than welcome to talk/show Confidants, the new combat, the Velvet Room, the dungeons, etc. Just please keep in mind that as a singular story playthrough, viewers are *highly* wary of spoilers!

In-game Content Limit: Please limit video content through the in-game date of 7/7.

"7/7" refers to a date within the game itself, which means that players of this game who want to stream their playthroughs will apparently have to check their fictitious calendars to make sure they haven't reached the streaming event horizon. That in itself ought to strike you as ridiculous on its face, but reading through the subsequent guidelines about what should be streamed and what shouldn't literally had me chuckling. For example:

No major story spoilers, and I’ll leave that up to your good judgment. If you need some guidelines, avoid showing/spoiling the ending segments of the first three palaces. While you can show initial interactions with Yusuke, avoid his awakening scene, and that whole deal about THE painting. Also, don’t post anything about a certain student investigator.

This obviously takes live streaming out of the equation. How is one to know what in the sweet hell any of this refers to unless they've already played the game? And dictating commentary topics, as opposed to footage, doesn't carry any weight having to do with copyright infringement. Streamers can discuss whatever they want. And if Atlus allows streaming of its game, it's not clear to me that the DMCA or copyright law allows them to dictate the segmentation of what's allowed for streaming and what isn't.

But the stranger part is the American Atlus division's sheepish reason for putting these restrictions out there in the first place. I can't quite tell if some of this is supposed to be taken tongue in cheek or not, but it comes off sounding rather ominous.

This being a Japanese title with a single-playthrough story means our masters in Japan are very wary about it. Sharing is currently blocked through the native PS4 UI. However, if you do plan on streaming, video guidelines above apply except length. If you decide to stream past 7/7 (I HIGHLY RECOMMEND NOT DOING THIS, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED), you do so at the risk of being issued a content ID claim or worse, a channel strike/account suspension.

Japanese masters? That just sounds creepy. Beyond that, threatening channel suspension with spoilers being the differentiating point between when that threat applies or not doesn't make any sense. I get that spoilers can be annoying for some, but that doesn't fall under the purview of copyright law. Either let people stream or don't.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, fans, let's play, persona 5, promotion, spoilers, streaming, takedowns
Companies: altus

New Study Essentially Suggests That Publishers Should Do CwF + RtB Instead Of Going Legal To Combat Piracy

from the yup dept

We have talked about the power of connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy, along with using public shaming, as tools for combating piracy in its various forms. Tools far better, in fact, than twisting in litigious winds hoping that the construct of law will be sufficient to curb natural human behavior... and finding out that it isn't. What these routes offer content producers is a way to ingratiate themselves with their fans, building a community that not only wants to buy content themselves, but also will decry any attempt to pirate that content by others. Morality is shaped by the herd, in other words, so having the herd on your side finds content producers a powerful ally.

But philosophy like that doesn't penetrate industry in and of itself. Perhaps, then, data and academic studies may. The International Journal of Business Environment recently released just such a study suggesting that content providers are far better off reaching out and connecting with fans, including those pirating their works, rather than trying to fight piracy legally.

According to Eva Hofmann of the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University, UK and Elfriede Penz of the Institute for International Marketing Management, at Vienna University of Economics and Business, in Austria, the unauthorised sharing of digital content is well-entrenched in popular culture. However, they have discerned a difference in the way those downloading pirated content and the legal downloaders decide on how to obtain the content they desire from the Internet.

The researchers note that inherent in the problem for copyright holders is that digital goods can be duplicated endlessly without loss of fidelity, making piracy easy but also suggesting that the value of such goods as being less than traditional, physical items in the realm of content, such as CDs and DVDs.

This nicely outlines why piracy exists at the levels it does: there is something natural in deciding that something that can be reproduced infinitely in a digital manner at no cost differs from a physical good that cannot. It's the reason why piracy and theft simply aren't the same thing. This doesn't make copyright infringement or piracy morally acceptable, of course, but it explains why the moral equation for those doing the piracy is inherently different. Everyone knows this intrinsically, even if some major content industry players want to pretend otherwise.

The study's abstract itself suggests that the best method for combating this is to engage with the public to change that moral equation.

Respondent groups differ in the effect of social consensus on the decision-making process. Additionally, the entire issue-contingent model is important in internet piracy research. From a practical view and based on social consensus results, it is essential for companies to establish sentiments that unauthorised downloading is an unacceptable behaviour within a specific social group that is highly relevant to downloaders.

In other words, creating a real connection with fans that are also given a real reason to buy content alters the moral equation for those that seek out that content. If enough minds are changed in that manner, it will have an exponential moral effect as those fans of the producer both promote the buying of the content and speak out or subvert attempts to pirate it. It works on both levels: convincing more people to buy the product and creating a fan-base hungry for the content provider to succeed so as to get more content.

CwF + RtB, in other words, along with a fan-based army willing to publicly shame pirates.

Filed Under: artists, community, connect with fans, copyright, fans, piracy, reason to buy

Nintendo Opens Up New Front In War On Fans: ROM Mods

from the nintendo-hates-you dept

Let it never be forgotten that Nintendo hates you, Nintendo fans. The gaming giant has a long and decorated history both of anti-consumer practices, such as attempting to poison the roster of YouTuber game reviewers, bricking consoles if gamers don't agree to its post-release EULA updates, and attacking some of its biggest and most creative fans by issuing takedowns and threats for fan-made game levels, fan-made games that have barely anything to do with its IP, and shutting down fan-made remakes of games that are decades old.

Yet Nintendo has been notably lenient in some areas in enforcing its intellectual property as well. The most prominent of these would be what's referred to as "ROM hacks", in which the original Nintendo ROMs are modded to include new and original content. These ROM hacks abound and are readily available, requiring the original game (or a pirated version) in order to be used. Now, for the first time reported, one of these ROM hacks has fallen into the sights of Nintendo's lawyers.

A fan-made Pokémon ROM hack in the works for eight years was set to launch this Sunday. But a letter sent by Nintendo's Australian law firm on Wednesday has stopped those plans in their tracks. According to Adam "Koolboyman" Vierra, developer of the fan-made Pokémon Prism project, Nintendo's Australian law firm sent him a cease-and-desist letter, which he uploaded to Google Drive with identifying information redacted. (American representatives for Nintendo were not able to confirm the letter's authenticity as of press time.) The request alleges that Koolboyman's project, which alters the source ROM of the 1999 game Pokémon Gold to create an entirely new adventure, violates multiple Australian laws.

The location of all of this requires some explanation. Vierra lives in California and Nintendo's legal team is based out of the United States, but Vierra had been planning on releasing the game via Rijon.com, which is based in Australia. It was Nintendo's Australian legal team that sent the threat letter. That team has previously taken action against downloaders of pirated Nintendo games, but not on creative fans producing these kinds of ROM hacks. As noted before, the company worldwide has generally allowed these add-on mods to exist. Not so much in this case, for reasons not currently being offered by Nintendo.

But let's all not lose sight that this is a mod on a game nearly two decades old created by a fan to incorporate brand new gameplay and story elements into the existing game and engine, and was going to be offered free of charge. It's CounterStrike, in other words, except using a Nintendo product. And there are entire sites and fan-groups built around these sorts of mods. They're a boon to gaming companies by extending the life of the demand for a game for free, as fans take on the work of adding on to it in a way that still requires the original in order to play it at all.

And this isn't even Vierra's first go at this sort of thing.

Vierra himself might have assumed Nintendo would allow a Pokémon ROM hack, because his last one, Pokémon Brown, launched in 2004 with nothing in the way of dispute from Nintendo. That hack's new "Rijon" region would have been hugely expanded upon in Pokémon Prism. It would have contained other tweaks, such as Brown's special monster types (wood, gas, wind, abnormal, and sound), a tweak to the game's "clock" system, and new music compositions. (Other Pokémon ROM hack depositories are easy to find online.)

One could say that this all reeks of a legal team in a foreign country not being on the same page as the HQ back home. Except that it can also be said that expanding IP enforcement to this new front is perfectly in line with Nintendo's general heavy-handed approach to protectionism. Because Nintendo can't help itself. Because Nintendo hates you.

Filed Under: adam vierra, australia, fans, koolboyman, mods, rom hacks
Companies: nintendo

Bethesda Bullies One Of Its Creative Fans Over Website Metatags

from the jerk-like dept

Bethesda has something of a complicated history on our pages. The company is at once often terrible on matters of enforcing its intellectual property in a protectionist manner, while also occasionally acting quite good on matters of connecting with its fans in a meaningful and downright sweet manner. Few and far between have been the stories of those two separate philosophies intersecting, but we have such an instance now as Bethesda has demanded any Bethesda trademark words be removed in metatags on the website for DoomRL, a fan-made rogue-like inspired by the classic Doom games.

It's a strangely worded letter in a couple of respects. First, the letter seems to be focused on the use of words and/or phrases trademarked by Bethesda/ZeniMax within the metatags for the DoomRL website, as opposed to making any sort of copyright claim on the game itself. In other words, it's not at all clear from the threat letter whether or not the company is objecting to the fan-game in any way, or just the use of the metatags. If the latter, the threat makes very little sense. The text on the website doesn't mention Bethesda or ZeniMax at all and only mentions ID Software to credit it for being the creators of the Doom franchise. The trademarks that appear to be in question are references to Doom itself.

And these are a game, a website, and references that are years old. The game appears to have been in production for at least six years and has been publicized on the web for about as long. It's a game that doesn't resemble any actual Bethesda property and is instead a fan's new take on the franchise, offered for free. I don't read any objection into the game itself in the threat letter, so why make such a big deal over the use of the Doom name itself? Is Bethesda cool with a fan making a Doom inspired game, so long as that fan never mentions it to anyone?

As a result of the threat, however, creator Kornel Kisielewicz has decided to scrap DoomRL for a successor that doesn't include any Doom IP. This is about the time that defenders of copyright and trademark will chime in to suggest that intellectual property enforcement has led to the creation of new intellectual property, thus fulfilling its purpose... except that isn't really true. It's basically the same game, just with the added effort of pretending like it's something it wasn't originally. Yay?

And, more importantly, the stripping of references to Doom helps Bethesda how, exactly? What was once a native expansion of the franchise as an expression of love from a fan, one which could only serve to point new potential customers back to the original game series, has instead become something independent of that series. Kisielewicz has even started a Kickstarter for the sanitized game to now profit off of it, instead of acting as a free promoter for Bethesda's game. At best, Bethesda loses out on a free marketing vector for its Doom franchise, while at worst some in the gaming public will want to punish the company for this aggressive behavior. How exactly is this kind of IP bludgeoning a better option than working with the fan/creator?

Filed Under: bullying, doomrl, fans, metatags
Companies: bethesda, zenimax

Nintendo Shuts Down Fan Remake Of 25 Year Old Metroid 2 Game Because It Can't Help Itself

from the samus-on-you dept

For gamers who are fans of Nintendo, it's always helpful to remember that Nintendo hates you. The general idea behind that mantra is that Nintendo, when faced between embracing the creativity and love that comes from its fans and acting like over-protective toddlers when it comes to any sort of its intellectual property, will always choose the latter. The company has issued takedowns for fan-made Mario Bros. levels just as it released Mario Maker, it as made a habit of shutting down fan-films depicting Nintendo characters, and it has even shut down fan get-togethers centered around beloved Nintendo properties just because they aren't "official." To be clear, Nintendo certainly can ensure that all of this free advertising for its products is never seen or enjoyed by the public legally, but it doesn't have to. It could instead embrace the love of its fans and work out an arrangement that would protect its IP while still allowing its fans to be fans.

But that doesn't happen, because Nintendo just cannot help itself. And that continues to the present, with Nintendo shutting a fan remake of a 25 year old game just as it was released, citing intellectual property concerns.

AM2R is a remake of Metroid II: The Return of Samus, a sequel to the popular Metroid on NES, which Nintendo released on the Game Boy back in in 1991. The fan remake, in development since 2012, adds improved sprite graphics and new gameplay in the style of Metroid Zero Mission -- a remake released by Nintendo -- on the Game Boy Advance. Released on August 6, and just in time for Metroid’s 30th anniversary, filesharing sites hosting AM2R were notified to remove the game by Nintendo’s legal counsel according to Polygon.

“Nintendo’s broad library of characters, products, and brands are enjoyed by people around the world, and we appreciate the passion of our fans,” reads a statement provided to IGN by a Nintendo representative. “But just as Nintendo respects the intellectual property rights of others, we must also protect our own characters, trademarks and other content. The unapproved use of Nintendo’s intellectual property can weaken our ability to protect and preserve it, or to possibly use it for new projects.”

As we have detailed entirely too many times in the past, that last bit about fans making fan works weakening IP protections and preventing new projects isn't remotely true. There are many avenues a company like Nintendo can pursue in reaction to this. DMCA takedowns and legal threats are but one of those avenues. Another would be to offer these projects a cheap license to make them "official" while still letting the projects go off unhindered. That Nintendo wishes to pretend like that avenue doesn't exist is disappointing, but not surprising.

Keep in mind that this game is decades old and was released for free, making it a non-commercial venture that was little other than an expression of fanship and love from dedicated gamers who are (were?) fans of Nintendo. What business sense it makes to stomp on those fans' devotion is a complete mystery to me.

Filed Under: fan remake, fans, metroid 2, video games
Companies: nintendo

Blizzard Allows Release Of Fan-Game It Initially Tried To Shut Down, Reaps Rewards It Should Have Had All Along

from the derp dept

We've dinged Blizzard quite a bit in these pages for acting overly protectionist of its intellectual property in the past. And that dinging has been well deserved, with Blizzard doing things like trying to twist copyright law as a way to combat cheat software within its multiplayer games, to use intellectual property as an excuse to shut down a World of Warcraft vanilla fan-server, and has otherwise not always acted in human or awesome ways towards its own fans.

But sometimes, with much kicking and screaming and the insistence of making many a mistake along the way, even a company like Blizzard can manage to do what game companies like DoubleFine have already done: loosen the leash on its own IP and reap the rewards. StarCraft Universe is a fan-made mod that consists of a full new game in a genre that Blizzard had never taken the StarCraft universe into.

StarCraft Universe takes place in an alternate timeline where Kerrigan got torn chitinous dreadlock-from-weird spider spine at the end of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. After that, it didn’t take long for the Hybrids to bring down the Protoss as well. It’s up to a few remaining survivors to, you know, not die.

“We wanted to combine the third person action RPG elements of World of WarCraft, the combat mechanics of Diablo, and the starship mechanics ofFTL with the StarCraft setting,” Upheaval wrote. “We wanted the game to be completely voice acted with a unique story, custom art assets, and a fresh musical score.”

You can see the trailer for the game here and you'll see that it looks pretty slick for a fan-made construction. Fully voiced characters and an original score, combined with gameplay elements familiar to fans of World of Warcraft and FTL. Using the StarCraft IP and some homebrew elements, this is a whole new world and a whole new experience for StarCraft fans, who are amongst the most passionate.

And if any of this feels familiar to you, it's because the project had originally begun in 2011 before Blizzard smacked it down.

Just a reminder: this is the mod that got announced in 2011 as World of StarCraft, ran afoul of Blizzard’s lawyers, caused hella controversy,relaunched with a new name, got Blizzard’s approval, and went on Kickstarter to ultimately rake in $84,918.

Rather than simply whipping out the intellectual property hammer and dealing a deathblow, Blizzard ended up communicating with the Upheaval team and allowing it to eventually move forward. It even allowed the group to run a Kickstarter campaign for it, along with an ongoing IndieGoGo page where gamers can donate to the developers of what is an otherwise free-to-play game.

The result? Well, loads of comments on all kinds of articles can be generally summed up as saying, "This looks cool! I have to go buy StarCraft 2!" Which is what should have been allowed to happen five years ago, if Blizzard had had the foresight to leash its lawyers instead of its fans. But better late than never, as they say, and Blizzard is fully on board with this now, with SC Universe appearing in the StarCraft Arcade store. Good will, more paying customers, and an expanded game universe, all for the cost of not being overly protectionist of intellectual property. Lesson learned, Blizzard?

Filed Under: copyright, fan games, fans, starcraft, starcraft universe
Companies: blizzard

Pure Bullshit: AMC Threatens Huge Fan Community With Copyright Claim Over 'Spoiler' Predictions

from the argh dept

What's up, Hollywood TV people? Hey, could you do everyone a favor and maybe stop being complete assholes to your biggest fans -- and especially completely abusing copyright law to harass and bully those people? Almost exactly a month ago we wrote about HBO abusing the DMCA process to go after people who were predicting what would happen in Game of Thrones, accusing them of violating copyright law in accurately predicting what would happen in the future. As we noted, that's not at all how copyright law works, but apparently AMC took a look at what HBO was doing and said "hey, let's do that too."

A large Facebook fan group (with almost 400,000 subscribers) called "The Spoiling Dead Fans" has announced that it has received a completely bogus DMCA notice from AMC:

After two years, AMC finally reached out to us! But it wasn’t a request not to post any info about the Lucille Victim or any type of friendly attempt at compromise, it was a cease and desist and a threat of a lawsuit by AMC Holdings, LLC’s attorney, Dennis Wilson. They say we can’t make any type of prediction about the Lucille Victim. Their stance is that making such a prediction would be considered copyright infringement. AMC tells us that we made some claim somewhere that says we received “copyright protected, trade secret information about the most critical plot information in the unreleased next season of The Walking Dead” and that we announced we were going to disclose this protected information. We still aren't sure where we supposedly made this claim because they did not identify where it was.

Their stance is wrong and short-sighted. It's wrong because merely predicting what's going to happen in a show is not copyright infringement. It's short-sighted because the people making these guesses tend to be the show's biggest fans. Pissing off your shows' biggest fans not only seems monumentally assholish, but also entirely counterproductive.

The folks who run the Facebook page note that they don't think there's a legitimate legal issue here, but they're also doing this for fun, and getting sued is no fun, so they're shutting up thanks to the assholes at AMC legal:

Basically what it all comes down to is if we post our Lucille Victim prediction and we're right, AMC says they will sue us. Whether there are grounds for it or not is not the issue, it still costs money to defend. That is the way our justice system works. Would we have defenses? Sure. But it also costs money to mount that defense. If someone brings us a potential Lucille spoiler and we confirm it and it turns out accurate we could get sued. That doesn’t mean they’re right and we’re wrong, but like so many other situations in this world, they have the money and power and we do not. So we lose. In the past two years, AMC has filed several wrongful DMCA notices against us with full knowledge that we could not file counter-notices, hired investigators to intimidate our members, and threatened our local members with arrest, among other questionable acts.

It would be nice to know more about the details of those previous wrongful DMCA notices (and I've reached out to the people who operate the page to see if they will provide them), but this appears to be a situation of pure copyright abuse by AMC to silence a Facebook group they don't like. While there were reports last year that this same group leaked a clip from an upcoming show, that's an entirely different issue. Leaking a clip is likely infringement (caveats apply, but...). Still, that doesn't appear to be what happened here at all.

The report also claims that AMC has ramped up aggressiveness here: "AMC has been harassing us for four days now by contacting our homes, our family members and our employers." Again, that seems insane.

But, of course, as you can readily predict from the paragraph quoted above, the folks behind the site don't want to take the risk and are no longer in the prediction business:

After consultation with our legal counsel, we have responded to AMC that the TSDF staff will not be posting our prediction on who gets Lucilled on any of our outlets. We will also not be answering any questions about who we think it is. If you hear a potential spoiler elsewhere and bring it to us for confirmation, we will not confirm or deny it. If you message us privately and ask who we think gets Lucilled, we will not respond. The info may find another outlet on its own, but an official prediction will not come from the TSDF staff.

I still can't figure out how or why anyone at AMC thinks this is a good idea. The copyright claim is ridiculous. Predicting what will happen in a TV show is not copyright infringement. Pissing off the people who love your show so much they want more of it seems even more ridiculous. What possible good could this serve?

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, fans, spoilers, the walking dead
Companies: amc