4 ms·

Nintendo has to compete in the world that English Common Law made where lawsuits are _the_ mechanism for detailing regulations, renewing ip copyrights, and esta

Nintendo has to compete in the world that English Common Law made where lawsuits are _the_ mechanism for detailing regulations, renewing ip copyrights, and establishing contract language. Furthermore *relative to other major game corps* Nintendo is a small privately-held company and can't afford to _not_ play active-defense. It sucks because our market regime sucks.

ddeck 1y ago
>Nintendo is a small privately-held company Nintendo is a TSE-listed public company with a market cap of about USD 110 billion.
- mwkaufma 1y ago
  I was wrong that they're private (genuine misunderstanding lol), but by market cap they're competing with sony, microsoft, and tencent, who are all relatively-larger. Even Roblox is in the same neighborhood at 75B -- it's not like it's a juggernaut, it's legally vulnerable.
  - user_7832 1y ago
    If a 100Bil+ company is legally "vulnerable", what would you say to the average person on that list? An iron fortress in terms of vulnerability, perhaps? "Oh this company is smaller than Microsoft and tencent, it's so vulnerable!" I genuinely don't know if you're just a corpo lover or a Nintendo PR person. At 110B, that's more than the GDP of Oman or Luxembourg or Lithuania. And you call a company that size > "it's not like it's a juggernaut, it's legally vulnerable" ???
    - FinnKuhn 1y ago
      Nintendo is literally about the same size as Dell or Foxconn, neither of which anyone would describe as small.
kmeisthax 1y ago
So, if you're wondering what he means by "English Common Law", let me answer your confusion with another question: why doesn't Japan have Fair Use? Well, the answer's simple: they can't, because judges aren't allowed to legislate from the bench over there. In civil law countries, the law is the law, full stop; judges can't add onto it in any meaningful way. And Fair Use is not a meaningful concept sans that ability. In Japan, if we want an exception to copyright for, say, training AI; we write a law that says "training AI is not an infringement of copyright". Simple, and straight to the point. In America we have tens of very expensive lawsuits just to bring the question to a judge that will probably rule the same way as the TDM exceptions in EU and Japanese law. The only difference is that a bunch of lawyers get richer and the courts get to feel important. The ultimate effect on plaintiffs is that novel uses of copyrighted material become "sue-it-or-lose-it". If those authors want to retain the right to demand licensing fees for AI training, they have to sue OpenAI now, just to get it on the books that training is derivative, not transformative. If they wait until 10 years out it's already become an established norm and no judge will disrupt it. So in Japan, Nintendo can afford to leave certain things in the grey area, unless they actually want it gone. In America, not so much. That being said, it probably has less bearing on Nintendo's actions as one might think from how I described it. Because novel uses of copyrighted material are, well, novel. They don't happen all that often.
- skissane 1y ago
  > So, if you're wondering what he means by "English Common Law", let me answer your confusion with another question: why doesn't Japan have Fair Use? “Fair Use” isn’t “English Common Law”, it is an American doctrine; most other common law jurisdictions - including England (and the rest of the UK), Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa - have the narrower fair dealing doctrine instead. According to Wikipedia [0] the main countries other than the US with fair use are Malaysia, Poland and South Korea. Singapore has recently adopted a hybrid model combining elements of both fair use and fair dealing. > Well, the answer's simple: they can't, because judges aren't allowed to legislate from the bench over there. In civil law countries, the law is the law, full stop; judges can't add onto it in any meaningful way. This is nonsensical. Most common law countries don’t have fair use, they have the narrower fair dealing doctrine instead; but some civil law jurisdictions do have fair use, such as Poland and South Korea. Common vs civil law has no real bearing on fair use vs fair dealing vs neither - it is a policy choice legislators make when enacting statutory copyright law. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_dealing#/media/File%3AFair_use_laws.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_dealing#/media/File%3AFai...

ddeck 1y ago

>Nintendo is a small privately-held company Nintendo is a TSE-listed public company with a market cap of about USD 110 billion.

mwkaufma 1y ago
I was wrong that they're private (genuine misunderstanding lol), but by market cap they're competing with sony, microsoft, and tencent, who are all relatively-larger. Even Roblox is in the same neighborhood at 75B -- it's not like it's a juggernaut, it's legally vulnerable.
- user_7832 1y ago
  If a 100Bil+ company is legally "vulnerable", what would you say to the average person on that list? An iron fortress in terms of vulnerability, perhaps? "Oh this company is smaller than Microsoft and tencent, it's so vulnerable!" I genuinely don't know if you're just a corpo lover or a Nintendo PR person. At 110B, that's more than the GDP of Oman or Luxembourg or Lithuania. And you call a company that size > "it's not like it's a juggernaut, it's legally vulnerable" ???
  - FinnKuhn 1y ago
    Nintendo is literally about the same size as Dell or Foxconn, neither of which anyone would describe as small.

kmeisthax 1y ago

So, if you're wondering what he means by "English Common Law", let me answer your confusion with another question: why doesn't Japan have Fair Use? Well, the answer's simple: they can't, because judges aren't allowed to legislate from the bench over there. In civil law countries, the law is the law, full stop; judges can't add onto it in any meaningful way. And Fair Use is not a meaningful concept sans that ability. In Japan, if we want an exception to copyright for, say, training AI; we write a law that says "training AI is not an infringement of copyright". Simple, and straight to the point. In America we have tens of very expensive lawsuits just to bring the question to a judge that will probably rule the same way as the TDM exceptions in EU and Japanese law. The only difference is that a bunch of lawyers get richer and the courts get to feel important. The ultimate effect on plaintiffs is that novel uses of copyrighted material become "sue-it-or-lose-it". If those authors want to retain the right to demand licensing fees for AI training, they have to sue OpenAI now, just to get it on the books that training is derivative, not transformative. If they wait until 10 years out it's already become an established norm and no judge will disrupt it. So in Japan, Nintendo can afford to leave certain things in the grey area, unless they actually want it gone. In America, not so much. That being said, it probably has less bearing on Nintendo's actions as one might think from how I described it. Because novel uses of copyrighted material are, well, novel. They don't happen all that often.

skissane 1y ago
> So, if you're wondering what he means by "English Common Law", let me answer your confusion with another question: why doesn't Japan have Fair Use? “Fair Use” isn’t “English Common Law”, it is an American doctrine; most other common law jurisdictions - including England (and the rest of the UK), Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa - have the narrower fair dealing doctrine instead. According to Wikipedia [0] the main countries other than the US with fair use are Malaysia, Poland and South Korea. Singapore has recently adopted a hybrid model combining elements of both fair use and fair dealing. > Well, the answer's simple: they can't, because judges aren't allowed to legislate from the bench over there. In civil law countries, the law is the law, full stop; judges can't add onto it in any meaningful way. This is nonsensical. Most common law countries don’t have fair use, they have the narrower fair dealing doctrine instead; but some civil law jurisdictions do have fair use, such as Poland and South Korea. Common vs civil law has no real bearing on fair use vs fair dealing vs neither - it is a policy choice legislators make when enacting statutory copyright law. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_dealing#/media/File%3AFair_use_laws.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_dealing#/media/File%3AFai...