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Fallout From Nintendo’s ‘Zelda’ Freak-Out Continues, Including Nintendo Self-Harm
from the ready-fire-aim dept
There’s that old saying: the coverup is always worse than the crime. There appears to be something of a corollary to that: the freak-out over a leak is always worse than the leak itself. Let’s call that Geigner’s Law, because why the hell not?
You should recall that Nintendo has been in full freak-out mode over the past few weeks as a result of its Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom title leaking early. Even before the leak, Nintendo went after a bunch of YouTubers via DMCA notices, all because those YouTubers were showing other Zelda titles incorporating mods into the gameplay. After the leak, Nintendo decided the best course of action was to sic its legal teams on all kinds of tools and content that had anything even tangentially to do with Switch emulation, even if those tools could be used for non-infringing purposes.
But none of that represents Geigner’s Law, really. For that you need to witness the mayhem Nintendo has introduced by improperly DMCAing all kinds of content that ultimately redounds to sanctioned Nintendo content.
Ever since copies of Tears of the Kingdom leaked early and started spreading online due to piracy, Nintendo has been in a frenzy, removing social media channels and Discord servers promoting leaked footage and secrets from the game. At first slow to react, the company now appears to be hitting anything that remotely looks like a leak with a takedown notice.
“lol my Twitch just got suspended mid-stream because I was reacting to @SkillUpYT’s Zelda preview video,” [Alanah] Pearce tweeted on May 8. She was in the middle of streaming footage from the YouTuber SkilUp’s Nintendo-sanctioned preview of Tears of the Kingdom when her channel was taken offline due to a copyright strike by the company. “Absolute banger of a week this week tbh,” she wrote.
The original video was all aces as far as Nintendo was concerned, but a reaction video to that same content somehow was worthy of a DMCA takedown notice? Super cool stuff. Pearce is a former games journalist and writer for IGN, among other things, so exactly the right person to piss off with a DMCA notice issued in error.
But hey, copyright enforcement is hard and one-off errors happen, amirite? Surely this couldn’t be something that Nintendo would screw up multiple times… oh wait:
Nintendo YouTuber Austin John Plays shared a tweet with a screenshot from one of IGN’s previews that was also seemingly removed at the company’s request. “I received a DCMA takedown of my tweet from anti-piracy Nintendo of Japan for my tweet about IGN’s video and the word [autobuild],” he wrote on May 8. “They took mine down but haven’t [done] anything about IGN’s 1.2M video.”
Okay, fine, it happened twice. But even that is understandable, right? Austin John Plays may have tweeted an IGN preview screenshot, but something about the tweet must have set off the DMCA alarm bots and caused them to issue a takedown notice. Who the hell knows who this YouTuber even is, right? Not the folks at Nintendo! They wouldn’t issue takedowns haphazardly against entities Nintendo would know for sure are legit distributors of sanctioned Nintendo content, right? Right!?!?
Nintendo even accidentally hit itself with a takedown notice. Yesterday, a tweet by the official Zelda Twitter account in Japan temporarily had a “media not displayed” error after a screenshot from the game was removed “in response to a report from the copyright holder.” “How the hell do you copyright claim yourself,” one commenter responded.
At this point, we may need to crowdsource some kind of wellness check on Nintendo. The company appears to be so completely spun out of control over the leak of a game a week or so before its official release that it’s flailing about, causing all kinds of collateral damage, and even engaging in some unintentional self-harm.
Nintendo… buddies… just take a deep breath and relax, would you? The whole Geigner’s Law thing could end right here. I don’t actually want it to become a thing anyway, but you’re not helping.
Filed Under: copyright, copyright abuse, dmca, leaks, zelda, zelda: tears of the kingdom
Companies: nintendo
Comments on “Fallout From Nintendo’s ‘Zelda’ Freak-Out Continues, Including Nintendo Self-Harm”
Hmmm some of those sound like not at all things Nintendo has copyright on but claiming ownership in legal communications (aka a DMCA) sounds suspiciously like fraud. IIRC the DMCA has criminal provisions for some things. I think this could possibly be made to stick (with a competent lawyer and a non-bought/sincere judge). Sadly the courts have mostly defanged the sanity checks in the DMCA….
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And either some law firm working for free, or a large sum of money.
Only one reasonable response
Obviously, the only sensible thing to do is ignore Nintendo completely. Do not buy anything from them – you might enter a contract with them. Do not talk about them – they’ll DMCA you. Don’t write about them – same.
I think I’ll blackhole DNS for their names, just to be safe.
I hope Nintendo is grateful for my diligence.
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I think that there are already DNS servers that blackhole them
They are designed to block updates and telemetry from their consoles (to prevent you getting banned for using fusee gelee or a modchip, and to prevent exploits from being patched)
Broken?
Seems to be eating comments
No reason to stop at this point
I’d say slapping around your biggest fans and the people helping to fuel the hype for your next major release is a bad business move but given they still have fans after having that as their default relationship with them I guess they know better than I how masochistic and/or accepting of abuse those people are.
At some point every copyright-heavyhanded entity manages to do this to themselves. HBO, the RIAA, it’s only a matter of time. Part and parcel of using bots to do your enforcement, and really it’s not like these copyright fanatics are going to beat themselves up over it.
Does this self-harm mean that copyright isn’t the “Get Out of Jail Free” card corporations think it is? They distrust their customers so much that they think of them as thieves even before they sell those customers a product. But they’ll find out that those accused of theft still have powerful rights, and even if they were guilty, the message will still get out.
So this is what “It hurt itself in its confusion” looks like.
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I nearby...
Copyright the words “adleZ” and “oiraM”
fight me
*hearby
stupid auto-correct
[phone rings]
The screenshots were coming from inside the company!
I thought Geigner’s Law was “Anything I personally disagree with is incomprehensible garbage which no sane mind could comprehend and any attempt to do so, even for the purpose of formulating an actual counter argument (rather than performative caterwauling), is made in bad faith”?
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How’s that Bayside Advisory defense fund coming along bro?
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if I could be arsed to look up what you’re blithering about I might have a witty rejoinder here. As it stands, however I’ll just file this under “performative caterwauling” and move on. Have a nice day Tim.
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Don’t count on it, fam. You copyright fanatics are nothing if not boring and uncreative.