It’s not Copyright Infringement as long as it’s not a videogame

Important note: I don’t want the OP of the neogaf thread mentioned below to get into trouble because of this blog post. I’m just making a point, but I actually don’t mind people copy/pasting that specific article from my blog (although I’d prefer if it was only a snippet, but that’s a detail. Please don’t make a habit of entirely copying my articles if possible though ). So, yeah, please don’t take this too seriously <– this is my way of warning people now that my posts might be completely far fetched, sarcastic, have bad humor, etc…

A few days ago I announced the name of the video game used for VHBL, the game was “Everybody’s Tennis”. Probably because of the really bad sarcasm/jokes in that post, my blog got much more attention than it really deserves. As usual with hacking news when they cross the border of “the underground websites”, that post triggered endless discussions about copyright infringement, and in this case, video game piracy. You know, “piracy killed this or that console, and hacking could lead to piracy, piracy leads to hate, etc… Ergo hacking is really bad”.

One of the websites mentioning my article is the famous gaming website neogaf, and you can find the discussion here (update: that thread used to contain a full copy/paste of one of my blog articles. It’s been edited since, which kinda ruins my point, and I don’t think I have a screenshot).

Now, and this is where I’m making my point, I want you to pay attention to the content of that thread: we see dozens of grown up people, on a heavily moderated website, (may I add most of them relatively polite, and with good points on each side of the argument), discussing how my (our) work with VHBL could lead to copyright infringement (piracy) if other people were to dig further into hacking the Vita. And (drumrolls), not a single one of them actually mentions that the OP of that thread copy/pasted my entire article without any form of authorization from me whatsoever, which is Copyright Infringement.

Scumbag Wololo: Tries to make a point on copyright infringement, infringes on George Lucas’ copyrights

Now imagine I went to neogaf and posted a PSP iso (a pirated game), with a link to the PSN at the top, in case some people wanted to actually buy it. What kind of reactions would I get? From a legal point of view in most countries, this would be the same as what happened here.

So, again, I actually don’t mind and I’m saying it officially now that it was ok to copy that article (but it wasn’t the case when the article was copy/pasted), so please, neogaf mods, if you ever read this, don’t go and blame the OP for this. Many other websites regularly entirely copy/paste my articles (some of them don’t even put a link to my blog, so thanks for the link actually) and I am usually ok with that. But these sites have the decency to not then start a discussion on how my work could indirectly lead to copyright infringement   I’m just saying what I stated 2 days ago: when it comes to copyright infringement, gamers only see what they want to see.

From there, why would people go to my blog if they can conveniently read the article from neogaf? Sure, a few of them did click on the link, but who knows, maybe I lost lots of advertising revenue (and, honestly, my writing skills are so awesome that I deserve to be paid for that) because of all the people who read my intellectual property on another website, and didn’t click? Or was it free promotion for my site? Honestly I think the latter, but if I was a gaming company I would pretend the opposite, and that this is impacting my revenue badly

So, errr, yeah, Copyright infringement is bad, not only for games. And everybody does it one day or another, so there, joke’s on you guys.

Please note that I actually wanted to register on neogaf to discuss in that thread openly with the people there. Turns out that registering on neogaf is even harder than legally downloading a movie on my PSP, so I had to give up. If Wikipedia is right, I still have to wait between 6 and 24 months for my account to be accepted or rejected, and I wouldn’t want to necropost in that thread, that would be really rude.

I could also have contacted the OP, or the staff at neogaf to remove the post, and I’m sure they would have done it, but I hope it is clear that this wasn’t my point, I am fine with that article being pasted there. Anyways, trolling on my blog is much more fun, nobody will moderate or ban me from here. It’s my home here so get off my lawn.

I also have to apologize again for the sarcastic tone of that announce blog post which apparently was misinterpreted as arrogance, that really wasn’t the goal, so stop calling me a kid, please? Pretty please with a strawberry on top?