by Zeus Kabob » Wed Sep 23, 2020 1:21 am
On the topic of DMCA:
I think Nintendo isn't at fault here, not entirely. In all likelihood they have hired out several companies to try to find and squelch copyright infringement, and someone found this game and decided it was infringing without doing any kind of research on the matter. Considering that very few people seem to understand the tenets of fair use, and that companies rarely allow any kind of recourse against unfounded DMCA claims (by design of the law, I might add), there's no confusion about why the game got a DMCA request levied against it. Considering the way DMCA is implemented right now, and the fact that almost 100% of the people they're targeting have no money to take any of these cases to court (with a small damage to Nintendo if it ever went to court at that), it's actually a very good thing that there aren't too many DMCA claims at the moment. The slow but steady uptick in DMCA claims is almost certainly a result of the fact that there's an upside to a wide-reaching approach to sending DMCA takedown notices and limited downside.
That said, I think given Nintendo's history of wide sweeping DMCA takedown requests that go far beyond the extent of the copyright protections they're afforded under USA law, it's my belief that this DMCA is unlawful, unreasonable, and being used to protect their image as a family-friendly company. I don't believe they understand the value that fan works bring to their franchises and to their company.
I want to support you, Ivan. You've been one of our most enduring and friendly creators, and your game has had so much work put into it over the years. Renara is the one who has final say as far as how to respond to a DMCA takedown notice directed at the forums themselves, however considering the foundation of this site is on making fan games of copyrighted work I can't imagine Renara would let it go without some fight. I would hate to see you have to replace references to Nintendo characters just so that you can post on sites like Github that are too afraid to challenge overreaching DMCAs.