this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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Copyright law doesn't really care if its commercial/personal - just if its fair use. For reuse of characters, its an esspecially high bar. In this case, its reuse of characters as-is so that wouldn't be considered transformitive, and its obviously not criticism, so it wouldn't be allowed.
For a comparison, every Pokemon is under the same protection Mickey Mouse was a decade ago. Basically, unless you're directly criticizing the art or character its not technically fair use. Even gameplay footage is a grey area. Its just a matter of how litigious Nintendo wants to be.
Edit: minor correction, commercial/personal sort-of matters, but more in a "is it competing with or damaging to the original work" sort of way - something making money looks more official and suggests more effort and intent, for example.
Could the obvious symmetry between pals and pokemon not be leveraged as a political statement on the lore, and thus critique of the in-world enslavement of pokemon? The topic has already been covered in numerous "deep-dives" in written and visual media. So long as the creator of the mod starts being smarter than he has been so far, he could easily claim the mod is intended to be satirical, could he not?
Even in parody works, you're inherently walking on eggshells. It needs to be a pretty direct and obvious ciritique of the original material. Something like PETA's Pokemon Red, White and Blue is unchallenged because its so unsubtle they'd have a reasonable defense. It would need to be a lot more than just a line in the mod description to give him a good defence. Even if it was as direct in it's criticism as PETA's game, just because he's legally probably covered, also doesn't mean he can't be taken to court, and unlike PETA, a mod-maker won't have a fortune to burn on an expensive fair-use lawsuit, nonetheless if its a riskier or more complicated case.
How is it that the pokemon mod for minecraft never received such pushback from nintendo, but this modder gets DMCA'd on the spot? Fair use should cover using characters. There's plenty of games that re-use characters as mods (look at skyrim and all the ridiculous mods that import characters from other franchises).
All this copyright nonsense over a free mod is just a waste of resources.
This is what it boils down to, not that these mods are legal. Copyright is basically meant to block anything that could even remotely compete with the work, and give a monopoly over the idea. Doesn't matter if its a free passion project or a billion dollar company. Thats part of why its so absurd that copyright lasts so long. That said, most don't want to spend a fortune playing whack-a-mole with their own fans' free passion projects, unless those passion projects compete with them directly. That might even be why Pixelmon is left up - its seen as too janky to directly compete whereas this mod/game combo is pretty much what fans have been asking GameFreak to make for a decade and as a paid, commercial product at that.
Because rightsholders have discretion about who they take action against. In this case, Nintendo doesn't want violence and Pokémon together, so it gets taken down. Minecraft is nonviolent (at least no more than Pokémon itself) so it gets a pass.
They would also take something down for being for-profit or competes with their own products (e.g AM2R being taken down right before Samus Returns came out).
Nobody tell Nintendo about the Gardevoir mod for Kobold Kare. If they don't want them associated with violence, they probably really don't want them associated with being an egg shitting cum balloon
Good explanation, thank you. It looks like fair use is a lot more limited than I had thought. And obviously not worth the risk for the average person to try and use as a defense.