Approval From Nintendo ?
mbostwick opened this issue · comments
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
The usage of this in anything that would be cool would likely be at risk if Nintendo decided to take issues with the icons
Describe the solution you'd like
A separation for things that may be someones IP.
Describe alternatives you've considered
Getting approval from Nintendo
Additional context
We had a discussion about it in #304.
We looked into some of the Nintendo's guidelines. I've to say, most of them were not very clear regarding how we are using their characters, a lot of grey areas, and so we decided back then to just let the users know with this note:
Nintendo owns the copyright of these characters. Please comply with the Nintendo guidelines and laws of the applicable jurisdiction.
I'm not really sure if getting a direct approval from Nintendo is something realistic. From what I've read back then, people just need to follow the written guidelines.
Also not sure if the website itself would be at risk or just NES.css.
But it's been almost a year now I think and nothing happened so far at least in that matter. And I personally don't think we are breaking any kind of rules, because like I said, a lot of grey areas in those guidelines.
The general rule of thumb is the copy writer holds control whats ok and whats not. I agree its unlikely we would get approval from Nintendo.
I wanted to make a fun little chrome app with this css but I didn't want to risk a cease and desist. I figured a good idea would be to route an issue.
I don't think your breaking any rules with the fonts or colors. I do think the icons are likely to get a cease and desist if anything uses them and gets enough attention to motivate Nintendo to spend money on legal action.
@leereilly I saw a couple of blog posts on open source and Nintendo, any advise here ?
Some related links:
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/support/oss/
https://github.com/Nintendo
https://github.com/topics/nintendo
I asked Nintendo about the copyright of the character contents.(Mario, Pokémon, Kirby)
But I didn't get a clear answer.
Nintendo responded, "Consult a lawyer or professional. We don't license character contents to individuals.".
In addition, it's said that Nintendo Game Content Guidelines for Online Video & Image Sharing Platforms is for video games, and not for illustrations such as NES.css.
I'll talk to the legal department in our company soon.
I consulted the legal department of our company just now.
This is not good news. 😱
They said we infringed Nintendo's copyright.
I'd like to propose the following measures.
- Remove as soon as possible Nintendo Characters from the demo page
- But Don't remove them from the source code. (because it's a breaking change.)
- Completely remove them in the next version.
👋 😢
I think there's a lot of coolness to this project. I think having the Nintendo icons is also not a terrible thing, my suggestion is having it so its possible to sub out the things that would cause trouble with using this project, so using the styles isn't legally risk, with something like scary terry (see how he got his name if your not sure what I mean) .
I think that could also help draw users to the fun nature that this kind of thing really should be used for. You could use different scss for different methods.
Any ETA on the next version?