Topic: Star Fox the Animated Series

Posted under Off Topic

GameManiac

Blocked

Nintendo is already mobilizing their lawyers as we speak.

Updated by anonymous

Lance Armstrong

Janitor

But does it have Krystal.

GameManiac said:
Nintendo is already mobilizing their lawyers as we speak.

The worst Nintendo can do is go after the Patreon. If the animator does it for free there are a million ways to distribute the videos.

Updated by anonymous

Si 288

Member

I am not a fan when it comes to starfox, but the humor and style are very nice. I hope as a series this guy can continue with his work.

Updated by anonymous

Clawdragons

Member

Lance_Armstrong said:
But does it have Krystal.

The worst Nintendo can do is go after the Patreon. If the animator does it for free there are a million ways to distribute the videos.

Well if they send a cease and desist and the creator refuses, they can be brought to court and sued for a violation of copyright (and would pretty clearly lose). The videos could still be distributed, yeah, but the animator probably would not be too keen to continue if they kept being brought to court over noncompliance.

That said, Nintendo seems to generally be pretty mellow about people using its IPs for fan works, so they might just let this slide. But then, they might not. But they do have options.

Updated by anonymous

Lance Armstrong

Janitor

Clawdragons said:
Well if they send a cease and desist and the creator refuses, they can be brought to court and sued for a violation of copyright (and would pretty clearly lose). The videos could still be distributed, yeah, but the animator probably would not be too keen to continue if they kept being brought to court over noncompliance.

He should not have shown his face.

Updated by anonymous

Clawdragons

Member

Mana_Dragon_Flammie said:
Is he even making any legit money from the show?

And what about the other Star Fox parody stuff out there????

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tsfoii7gYNs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OGAs8FGzx4

Is Nintendo gunna sue ~them~ too?

Nintendo is generally pretty easygoing when it comes to these sorts of things, but they have filed cease and desists in some cases.

As a company, they seem to prefer to allow people to do as they will, but they do have to protect their copyrights to some extent. It's a balancing act, and it's not at all black and white.

Does a certain project set a bad precedent if they don't address it?
Does a project cut into the market for their own product?
How much will issuing a cease and desist annoy their customers?
Will this project actually help bring people to their product?
Might the project fall under fair use?
How much financial and legal commitment would it take to pursue this?

These aren't simple issues, but they are very important ones.

Let's apply these issues to the collegehumor video and see how they split up.

Does it set a bad precedent if they don't address it? Not really.
Does it cut into the market for their own product? Nope.
Would issuing a cease and desist on that annoy their customers? It's a pretty insignificant little video, so probably.
Might it help bring people to their product? Arguably yes. Keeps Star Fox relevant, might trigger some nostalgia, and so on.
Does it fall under fair use? It very well might. It's providing a critique of certain elements of the games, it's using original animation which also can't be mistaken for the original...
How much financial and legal effort would it take to pursue? A lot. The video is already made and posted, so trying to take down the video and all mirrors would take a huge amount of effort and wouldn't be very successful, especially considering the "could be fair use" point above.

A cease and desist is unlikely to be sent for a one-off thing to begin with, compared to a large, in progress project or a continuous source (like a prolific artist).

They could, but they really don't have much of a reason to. By contrast, A Fox in Space does not so clearly pass all those criteria, and it is a work in progress, and a large one at that. I would expect that it is at a relatively larger level of danger.

If you like, here are some nice videos on fair use and copyright, by a person with a voice of the gods:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYPSz7H3Q3I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_rQsiwQOMw

Updated by anonymous

Mana Dragon Flammie

Blocked

**sigh** This makes me think back to a fan-project 3D remake of Chrono Trigger. Square sent them a cease and desist and they had to stop and scrap everything... kinda fucking lame.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YELRuYNBRDk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNkqKC7nwls

~Had~ they decided to ~not~ scrap everything they had done, and just do some clever changes to make it so they weren't using anybody's IP, they could have finished their game and probably still made something great.

"Freedom Planet" is another similar thing, since that was originally supposed to be a Sonic fangame, but the creator figured "why just copy Sega's IP and guarantee that I'll get sued if this gets big, when I can just create my own characters and sell the game on Steam?"

Granted, I realize that it's a little more complicated with an "animated series" ~ if they had to totally change all the characters to something original and ~not~ use Star Fox and the others, it maybe might not be the same thing... but then again, Rick and Morty was originally just a fan spoof of Doc (Brown) and Marty (McFly) on that old "Channel 101" skit website. (Omfg, I love Twigger's Holliday - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bC8WGTNfJtw) and they obviously had to change the characters since Universal owns the Back to The Future characters.... BUT... even with the changes, it still seems to be doing amazingly well.

Updated by anonymous

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