Why It's Morally Okay To Pirate All Of Nintendo's Games (The Jimquisition)

[vivster]

Helloplite said:

vivster said:

You obviously didn't watch the video. None of it was about actual pirating. It's about Nintendo's blatant disregard of the copyright law by ignoring fair use yet refering to the same law when it's pestering content creators for their fair use.

Yes, I didn't watch it. I will and will amend my response accordingly, but I have a certain sort of distaste for Jimquisition, even at those few instances when I happen to agree with him. Fair use is not a simple legal concept, which is why many times people end in courts over the intepretation of the doctrine. In particular, article (1) is quite restrictive, and posting stuff (e.g. on YouTube) does not necessarily mean it is fair use (in other words, do not associate fair use with common use -- common use is not necessarily fair use). Article (3) also complicates things, essentially since to reproduce a videogame you need to use substantial amounts of assets/portions of the work (e.g. graphics + sound + depiction of gameplay). Finally for (4), if the product can be monetized Nintendo can still claim that it is not fair use, as long as it does not violate the First Amendment.

Fair use, for the most part, entails 'transformative' use. For most videogames, this is a very vague thing as we are not in agreement over what constitutes 'transformative' use of a video game. As someone who works in academia, I am fairly aware of fair use, as I come across it every time I have to do anything, from printing a chapter of a book for my students, to using copyright material as educational tools. Even the fact that I work in education does not make this a simple thing. This is not just simply 'copyright law' stuff.

The way you described it it sounds to me like exactly "copyright law stuff".

But we shouldn't let vague wording in laws get between us and civilized human behavior. Using a video clip to illustrate a point about a video game is naturally transformative. Take Digital Foundry videos for example. They're using game footage for the clear purpose of education. Nothing of the video is taking anything away from the content creator of the video game.

The human way to handle this for example is not copyright striking the video. Unless you are a dick of course. But we know for a fact that dicks have questionable morals, so we should be able to say so. Easily.

Also thanks for responding in a concise and neutral manner.