“In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—
the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
the nature of the copyrighted work;
the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.”
So, me, making a fan page for FunkoPop versions of the Five Nights at Freddies characters and using their images? THAT’S fair use.
Me charging money for a fan game based on the same Funko versions of those characters is NOT fair use.
“Section 107 of the Copyright Act gives examples of purposes that are favored by fair use: “criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, [and] research.””
Well, if you care about an indie gaming site being shut down for copyright violations, yeah, you might want to actually care about copyright infringement.
What they were doing here though was supporting developers profiting off someone elses IP. It would be like, I dunno, I started an independent Superman movie and was fundraising off that. It’s a little different from piracy.
In the case of the Five Nights at Freddies game, the developer is infringing on not one but TWO properties.
I mean, I don’t blame them for protecting their IP, they just picked a super shitty way to do it.
I don’t even think they would have needed an official cease and desist… just a friendly note of “Hey, none of this Funko material is licensed, please remove it.”
At first I was like “WTF does an indie games site have to do with Funko?” then I Googled it…
Looks like they hosted a BUNCH of infringing games, so Funko, instead of doing the righteous thing and sending them a takedown request, just nuked the whole domain…
At first I was like “WTF does an indie games site have to do with Funko?” then I Googled it…
Looks like they hosted a BUNCH of infringing games, so Funko, instead of doing the righteous thing and sending them a takedown request, just nuked the whole domain…
I find the same thing, but I’m really questioning the taste of others.
Never really did PC gaming, bought a SteamDeck to get into that ecosystem after seeing all the posts about “ZOMG! STEAM SALE!!!”
Are people just… not discerning? Do you just buy ANYTHING because it’s on sale?
The signal to noise ratio on Steam is just nuts to me… Yeah, some game might be $1.99, 90% off, but if it’s not worth the bandwidth to download, why are you bothering? Do you lack the ability to tell good games from bad games?