8 ms·

I could understand these arguments, in a way, when they are about IP that hasn't been used in decades. But Nintendo still exists and is still producing Mario g

by qtzfz 3y ago

I could understand these arguments, in a way, when they are about IP that hasn't been used in decades. But Nintendo still exists and is still producing Mario games. Why should any other company be able to use the Mario theme?

DoctorOW 3y ago
It makes for more creative challenges. If someone has a good idea for a Mario game, they could do it. If Nintendo wants to create something unique, they'd have to take more risks and create something new. We're talking one new character every few decades.
- qtzfz 3y ago
  You know what makes for more creative challenges? Not being able to use someone else's character.
  - flangola7 3y ago
    Culturally, Mario doesn't belong to any one person or organization. The idea of ideas being property is strange and alien.
    - bitwize 3y ago
      There are indigenous tribes who assign ownership of stories and songs to particular people/families. Retelling them without ownership or permission warrants punishment. The idea of ideas being property is as human as anything.
      - earthling8118 3y ago
        The only thing that is human about corporations is the people that make them up. There's a several order of magnitude gap between a few people/families in tribes compared to them.
        bitwize 3y ago
        The original claim didn't mention anything about corporations. The idea of ideas being property is, itself, as old as the idea of property.
        RunSet 3y ago
        My intuition says the notion of property being property had to predate the notion of ideas being property.
  - Taywee 3y ago
    The same applies whether it's somebody else's or your own. Is it significantly more creative to continually milk a character you made 40 years ago? How about a character your company made before you even started working there?
- bitwize 3y ago
  I got into this discussion with coworkers about the loss of copyright for Steamboat Willie. They were all like "Now anybody can make Mickey Mouse cartoons!" Not so fast. The name and likeness of Mickey Mouse are also trademarked, and Disney can hold onto them forever. It's the same with Mario. Even if the copyright on Super Mario Bros. expired today, Nintendo could claim trademark protection on the names and likenesses of Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Bowser, the Koopas, etc. Even the theme music. This has already been done. The "Tetris theme" is a public domain Russian folk song called Коробейники -- but The Tetris Company LLC owns a trademark on this song in the video game market. Tetris is one of the most jealously guarded IPs in the world. Every aspect of Tetris is protected with copyrights and trademarks -- the board dimensions, the pieces, everything. Writing a game that plays like Tetris without a Tetris license is a good way to get sued and found liable. It's entirely possible for Nintendo to lock down protection of the Mario IP in virtual perpetuity in similar fashion, making copyright expiry moot for all but the most unimportant elements (say, the particular shapes of the clouds and horsetail plants in Super Mario Bros.).
  - staticman2 3y ago
    Trademark isn't intended to be a backdoor to extend copyright law. Obviously someone calling for copyright expiration is calling for a sane interpretation (or reinterpretation, if you will) of trademark law. Even under current law whether you can make a Micky Mouse cartoon probably has more to do with which judge your litigation is in front of than anything else.
  - Wowfunhappy 3y ago
    Exactly. I don't have an issue with Nintendo maintaining the exclusive ability to create new Mario games because it encourages Nintendo to ensure maintain a certain level of quality. Nintendo wants consumers to associate "Mario" with "quality", so they will only release high-quality Mario games. We can debate whether Nintendo upholds that standard—I thought some of the Mario Party games were pretty atrocious—but at least the incentive exists.
- bitwize 3y ago
  If it's a good idea for a Mario game, it's probably a good idea for a game that does not use the Mario IP. I suddenly realized, when working on my mobile platform game, that adult me was developing the Mario game 12-year-old me always wanted to make. It just didn't have Mario in it or use the mechanics like specific power-ups unique to that series. But the platforming itself and, it turns out, things like how level layouts are stored, were pretty similar to Mario. Kid me would be stoked for that bit of my future.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    Sometimes it's the character itself that makes the difference though. Especially in cases where you're dealing with satire involving a figure from our shared culture, but also in the case of works where the artist is drawing from the history of the character and fictional universe they exist in. Sometimes the artist can't just swap out the IP with a generic character and still have the effect they were going for.
autoexec 3y ago
Why should they still be able to keep old games locked up just because they're making new ones? Let them profit from their new ones, hell let them continue to repackage and sell the old ones over and over again if they want. Plenty of people will continue to pay for them on their new Nintendo devices, even after they are in the public domain. They've been widely available to play online and in emulation for years but that hasn't stopped Nintendo fans from pulling out their wallets so far. They've had more than enough time to profit on those old titles, and they certainly have. There's no reason to continue to prevent others from using those old assets, or enjoying the old games as they like. It certainly doesn't encourage the creation of new works to continue giving Nintendo copyright's special "limited" privileges for those titles, and removing them absolutely would encourage new works, as well as help to bring Nintendo's new mario titles new fans.
- kstenerud 3y ago
  Quite true. I lost my original Diablo 2 CD key ages ago, then repeatedly pirated it from time to time until Blizzard released the remastered version, which I bought.
  - scns 3y ago
    Studies have shown, that people who "pirate" music, buy more than those whondon't.
    - b1ue64 3y ago
      Source?
      - autoexec 3y ago
        This I'm guessing: https://torrentfreak.com/pirates-spend-much-more-money-on-music-study-shows-160226/ https://torrentfreak.com/pirates-spend-much-more-money-on-mu... There's certainly truth in that for some pirates. Some folks are just supper passionate about things, and it's natural that they'd be hitting up the internet for early releases, versions only released overseas, demos, etc while also grabbing as much as they can available to them through retail channels. Speaking personally, in the early days of napster I found so much amazing music I'd never been exposed to from bands I'd never heard of or had given a chance to, that I found myself spending far more money on music than I ever had before. I wasn't obsessive about it like some fans, I just had so much more I wanted than I ever did previously. I had stacks of binders full of CDs, CDs slotted into tall plastic towers, and CDs stacked on bookshelves. Since then they've all been ripped into FLAC and MP3 and given to friends or stored away somewhere, or lost in moves and the RIAA became so deplorable to me that I vowed to never buy another CD from an RIAA affiliated label ever again and that was the last they ever saw a dime from me from retail sales, although I have imported a few CDs from Australia and Japan which I'm sure had their equivalents to the RIAA. Still, my first steps into music piracy (I don't count the MOD or MIDI files) coincided with the peak of my spending on music.
ryandrake 3y ago
I think OP is specifically talking about the array of bits that make up “the Super Mario Brothers ROM image” and music, and not the trademarked characters, level designs, and so on in the game. There is no way in hell Nintendo still makes significant revenue from selling, say, the Super Mario Brothers NES cartridge, or its software image. It is effectively “locked away” in a vault until freed from the bonds of copyright. This happens to so many old works, because copyright is so ridiculously long. I would love to see a histogram of how much profit all copyright holders make from all artistic products, year by year. I would guess that, for the vast, vast number of works, 99.99 or more percent, they make all their money in less than 10 years and for the remaining 100 or whatever years the work makes $0 and just sits there, wastefully and needlessly kept from the public.
- tinus_hn 3y ago
  > There is no way in hell Nintendo still makes significant revenue from selling, say, the Super Mario Brothers NES cartridge, or its software image Why not? Nintendo has been quite successful in selling emulated versions of these games in their ds store and released the wildly popular Nintendo Classic Edition which included this rom and sold over 2 million.
  - wizzwizz4 3y ago
    Because of the convenience of playing them on the new consoles. The only people I know who have bought Super Mario Bros Virtual Console releases are the sorts of people who'll buy additional ports of Portal to Nintendo consoles. They're buying the port (the emulator), not the ROM; the availability of the ROM image is not cutting into Nintendo's sales.
    - cowsup 3y ago
      I'm not so sure that's true. I simultaneously see people say: > Nintendo needs to stop hurting ROM sites for games older than 20 years. There's little profit to be made from such old titles. As well as: > Why did Nintendo create the NES Classic? You can do the same for far cheaper with a Raspberry Pi. And why are there NES games locked away behind an online subscription? I can play them on my phone for free. There are definitely many, many reasons to be unhappy with current copyright law. But claiming that Nintendo stands to gain nothing from retaining rights to their ROMs is not a valid critique, and does not pave the way for honest discourse.
matheusmoreira 3y ago
> But Nintendo still exists and is still producing Mario games. Good for them. Let them sell this new stuff then. If they want to keep making money, they should have to make new stuff, all the time. Anything 10+ years old belongs in the public domain.

by qtzfz 3y ago

DoctorOW 3y ago

It makes for more creative challenges. If someone has a good idea for a Mario game, they could do it. If Nintendo wants to create something unique, they'd have to take more risks and create something new. We're talking one new character every few decades.

qtzfz 3y ago
You know what makes for more creative challenges? Not being able to use someone else's character.
- flangola7 3y ago
  Culturally, Mario doesn't belong to any one person or organization. The idea of ideas being property is strange and alien.
  - bitwize 3y ago
    There are indigenous tribes who assign ownership of stories and songs to particular people/families. Retelling them without ownership or permission warrants punishment. The idea of ideas being property is as human as anything.
    - earthling8118 3y ago
      The only thing that is human about corporations is the people that make them up. There's a several order of magnitude gap between a few people/families in tribes compared to them.
      - bitwize 3y ago
        The original claim didn't mention anything about corporations. The idea of ideas being property is, itself, as old as the idea of property.
        RunSet 3y ago
        My intuition says the notion of property being property had to predate the notion of ideas being property.
- Taywee 3y ago
  The same applies whether it's somebody else's or your own. Is it significantly more creative to continually milk a character you made 40 years ago? How about a character your company made before you even started working there?
bitwize 3y ago
I got into this discussion with coworkers about the loss of copyright for Steamboat Willie. They were all like "Now anybody can make Mickey Mouse cartoons!" Not so fast. The name and likeness of Mickey Mouse are also trademarked, and Disney can hold onto them forever. It's the same with Mario. Even if the copyright on Super Mario Bros. expired today, Nintendo could claim trademark protection on the names and likenesses of Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Bowser, the Koopas, etc. Even the theme music. This has already been done. The "Tetris theme" is a public domain Russian folk song called Коробейники -- but The Tetris Company LLC owns a trademark on this song in the video game market. Tetris is one of the most jealously guarded IPs in the world. Every aspect of Tetris is protected with copyrights and trademarks -- the board dimensions, the pieces, everything. Writing a game that plays like Tetris without a Tetris license is a good way to get sued and found liable. It's entirely possible for Nintendo to lock down protection of the Mario IP in virtual perpetuity in similar fashion, making copyright expiry moot for all but the most unimportant elements (say, the particular shapes of the clouds and horsetail plants in Super Mario Bros.).
- staticman2 3y ago
  Trademark isn't intended to be a backdoor to extend copyright law. Obviously someone calling for copyright expiration is calling for a sane interpretation (or reinterpretation, if you will) of trademark law. Even under current law whether you can make a Micky Mouse cartoon probably has more to do with which judge your litigation is in front of than anything else.
- Wowfunhappy 3y ago
  Exactly. I don't have an issue with Nintendo maintaining the exclusive ability to create new Mario games because it encourages Nintendo to ensure maintain a certain level of quality. Nintendo wants consumers to associate "Mario" with "quality", so they will only release high-quality Mario games. We can debate whether Nintendo upholds that standard—I thought some of the Mario Party games were pretty atrocious—but at least the incentive exists.
bitwize 3y ago
If it's a good idea for a Mario game, it's probably a good idea for a game that does not use the Mario IP. I suddenly realized, when working on my mobile platform game, that adult me was developing the Mario game 12-year-old me always wanted to make. It just didn't have Mario in it or use the mechanics like specific power-ups unique to that series. But the platforming itself and, it turns out, things like how level layouts are stored, were pretty similar to Mario. Kid me would be stoked for that bit of my future.
- autoexec 3y ago
  Sometimes it's the character itself that makes the difference though. Especially in cases where you're dealing with satire involving a figure from our shared culture, but also in the case of works where the artist is drawing from the history of the character and fictional universe they exist in. Sometimes the artist can't just swap out the IP with a generic character and still have the effect they were going for.

autoexec 3y ago

Why should they still be able to keep old games locked up just because they're making new ones? Let them profit from their new ones, hell let them continue to repackage and sell the old ones over and over again if they want. Plenty of people will continue to pay for them on their new Nintendo devices, even after they are in the public domain. They've been widely available to play online and in emulation for years but that hasn't stopped Nintendo fans from pulling out their wallets so far. They've had more than enough time to profit on those old titles, and they certainly have. There's no reason to continue to prevent others from using those old assets, or enjoying the old games as they like. It certainly doesn't encourage the creation of new works to continue giving Nintendo copyright's special "limited" privileges for those titles, and removing them absolutely would encourage new works, as well as help to bring Nintendo's new mario titles new fans.

kstenerud 3y ago
Quite true. I lost my original Diablo 2 CD key ages ago, then repeatedly pirated it from time to time until Blizzard released the remastered version, which I bought.
- scns 3y ago
  Studies have shown, that people who "pirate" music, buy more than those whondon't.
  - b1ue64 3y ago
    Source?
    - autoexec 3y ago
      This I'm guessing: https://torrentfreak.com/pirates-spend-much-more-money-on-music-study-shows-160226/ https://torrentfreak.com/pirates-spend-much-more-money-on-mu... There's certainly truth in that for some pirates. Some folks are just supper passionate about things, and it's natural that they'd be hitting up the internet for early releases, versions only released overseas, demos, etc while also grabbing as much as they can available to them through retail channels. Speaking personally, in the early days of napster I found so much amazing music I'd never been exposed to from bands I'd never heard of or had given a chance to, that I found myself spending far more money on music than I ever had before. I wasn't obsessive about it like some fans, I just had so much more I wanted than I ever did previously. I had stacks of binders full of CDs, CDs slotted into tall plastic towers, and CDs stacked on bookshelves. Since then they've all been ripped into FLAC and MP3 and given to friends or stored away somewhere, or lost in moves and the RIAA became so deplorable to me that I vowed to never buy another CD from an RIAA affiliated label ever again and that was the last they ever saw a dime from me from retail sales, although I have imported a few CDs from Australia and Japan which I'm sure had their equivalents to the RIAA. Still, my first steps into music piracy (I don't count the MOD or MIDI files) coincided with the peak of my spending on music.

ryandrake 3y ago

I think OP is specifically talking about the array of bits that make up “the Super Mario Brothers ROM image” and music, and not the trademarked characters, level designs, and so on in the game. There is no way in hell Nintendo still makes significant revenue from selling, say, the Super Mario Brothers NES cartridge, or its software image. It is effectively “locked away” in a vault until freed from the bonds of copyright. This happens to so many old works, because copyright is so ridiculously long. I would love to see a histogram of how much profit all copyright holders make from all artistic products, year by year. I would guess that, for the vast, vast number of works, 99.99 or more percent, they make all their money in less than 10 years and for the remaining 100 or whatever years the work makes $0 and just sits there, wastefully and needlessly kept from the public.

tinus_hn 3y ago
> There is no way in hell Nintendo still makes significant revenue from selling, say, the Super Mario Brothers NES cartridge, or its software image Why not? Nintendo has been quite successful in selling emulated versions of these games in their ds store and released the wildly popular Nintendo Classic Edition which included this rom and sold over 2 million.
- wizzwizz4 3y ago
  Because of the convenience of playing them on the new consoles. The only people I know who have bought Super Mario Bros Virtual Console releases are the sorts of people who'll buy additional ports of Portal to Nintendo consoles. They're buying the port (the emulator), not the ROM; the availability of the ROM image is not cutting into Nintendo's sales.
  - cowsup 3y ago
    I'm not so sure that's true. I simultaneously see people say: > Nintendo needs to stop hurting ROM sites for games older than 20 years. There's little profit to be made from such old titles. As well as: > Why did Nintendo create the NES Classic? You can do the same for far cheaper with a Raspberry Pi. And why are there NES games locked away behind an online subscription? I can play them on my phone for free. There are definitely many, many reasons to be unhappy with current copyright law. But claiming that Nintendo stands to gain nothing from retaining rights to their ROMs is not a valid critique, and does not pave the way for honest discourse.

matheusmoreira 3y ago

> But Nintendo still exists and is still producing Mario games. Good for them. Let them sell this new stuff then. If they want to keep making money, they should have to make new stuff, all the time. Anything 10+ years old belongs in the public domain.