Nintendo hits popular homebrew YouTuber, Modern Vintage Gamer, with numerous copyright claims forcing him to stop making Switch homebrew videos – What’s happened and why this is behaviour is very dangerous.
Every now and then, the Big N decides to go after people who make the world aware that their consoles are hacked and can run homebrew as they aren’t very pleased about it. This time, they retaliated by forcing Modern Vintage Gamer, a YouTuber with over 175k subscribers, to stop making videos about Switch homebrew.
What happened?
Nintendo’s retaliation against MVG started on Tuesday when someone at Nintendo, possibly an employee, decided to manually file a copyright claim against an October 2018 video of his showing Nintendo 64 emulation on the Nintendo Switch. Their reason, which in my opinion is pretty weak, was because he showed a few seconds of emulated Super Mario 64 gameplay on the Switch. In order to avoid stirring up more trouble, he decided to take the video down as it had already run its course thinking it would be the end of it even though he owns a physical copy of Super Mario 64 and there are numerous videos on YouTube showing emulated Super Mario 64 game play (with some even showing you how to pirate it).
Unfortunately, this wasn’t the end of things as they flagged 3 more videos on Friday morning for similar reasons (Mario Kart and Zelda: Link To The Past), even mentioning Splatoon 2 as copyrighted content even though no footage of it was present in the flagged video. Now, MVG has contested the claims, naming “Fair Use” as a reason, but disputes are sent back to the claimant so it’s unlikely that Nintendo will allow him to reinstate his videos unless he gets lucky. As a direct consequence, he will stop making videos about Nintendo Switch homebrew which is a sizeable blow to freedom of speech and the modding community as a whole.
Why is this behaviour dangerous?
While having one YouTuber being forced to stop making videos about Nintendo Switch homebrew may not sound like too much of a big deal, such things from Nintendo have measurable effects on the homebrew community and freedom of speech in the following ways:
- Through more copyright claims, Nintendo might censor more videos (and potentially websites) about Switch homebrew which might make less people aware of the hard work going in the Nintendo Switch homebrew scene
- If guides on how to hack one’s Nintendo Switch are targeted, less tech-savvy users may decide not to hack their console which could result in a smaller Switch homebrew community going forward
- Nintendo could try taking legal action against people who develop homebrew for their currently-sold hacked consoles (3DS and Switch) which might make some developers afraid of developing more homebrew games/ports/emulators
- This may be sending a message to the emulator developer community that they might be targeted next especially if they port emulators to the Switch
- Without a doubt, this is a direct threat to freedom of speech, fair use and the ability to use one’s hardware as they please
Conclusion
Sadly, such things have been happening for a while and they are unlikely to stop in the future but there’s always hope that sometime in the future, laws friendly to console modding are enacted. To achieve this, you can speak to local legislators that you think might understand your point, usually younger ones, and try to raise awareness about the issue by mentioning examples, such as this one, to your tech-savvy friends and family!
MVG’s video about the whole ordeal can be seen below
this scares me..
someone should tell youtube about this.
Youtube know this and not MVG channel was affected by N madnes. Who cares about fair use, YT must take down any claimed video… commpon practise even between youtubers is flagging videos to silence some one who have different opinion – i know that this is ***… but only option is to go to court = lot of money. Also i think that N act like this because they they have ape *** after quick hack of the switch.
Youtube doesnt give a s..t
YT doesn’t care as they fully support this. These are LAWS that are written in nearly every country that is backed up by courts. That’s why MVG just complied, there’s NOTHING you can do. It’s not right, but it’s totally legal on Nintendo’s part.
no it’s not legal.
Making a false claim is against youtube’s terms of service and against fair use, therefore illegal.
If he was to take nintendo to court, he would easily win, but it would cost him a huge amount of money and time.
100% legal.
“Without a doubt, this is a direct threat to 1.) freedom of speech, 2.) fair use and the 3.) ability to use one’s hardware as they please”
1.) this is has NOTHING to do with freedom of speech. so, not even relevant.
2.a) fair use still means you must comply with the material usage rights, which the youtuber did not.
2.b) this is actually covered in Nintendo’s ToS.
3.)people clearly don’t read the fine print that comes with their hardware. again, the ToS covers this.
this whole things reminds me of a South Park episode making fun of people who don’t read the ToS. making fun that Apple will take over the world and own your life because you don’t read the ToS. there ARE laws that help protect people against the ToS, but they don’t help protect people against their own ignorance.
do i like what Nintendo is doing? not in one bit! not the slightest! however, it is plenty easy to think what they are doing is wrong. but the sad fact is, is that it isn’t wrong. that is, in the sense they are well within their legal rights to do this. again, 100% legal on their behalf.
this isn’t the first time Nintendo has done this, and most likely won’t be the last. from what i can tell, Nintendo is like the most vigilant company out there when doing things like this. peeps better watch out.
“this is actually covered in Nintendo’s ToS.” This doesn’t have anything to do with Nintendo’s ToS, they filed a false copyright claim on his video, in a plataform that’s not owned by Nintendo. If it were a Nintendo owned plataform they could pull the ToS card, because well, it would be their service. They should have sent a cease and desist letter and/or take legal action, in any case, this was not a copyright issue and filing a false copyright claim is indeed illegal.
They did it when the Zelda in Unreal Engine 4 was released. I guess they got scared someone was making a better Zelda game then them and they shot all the footage and actual playable tech demo down.
also, you don’t seem to understand what terms of service actually is. a companies ToS isn’t legally binding. you are thinking about copyrights, among other things too.
just because you may violate a companies ToS, doesn’t mean you can be incarcerated. again, that is copyrights, among other things too.
violate Nintendo’s ToS, and they can punish you however they see fit. which may include any one or more of the following… ban account, ban console and they even have the right to push firmware updates that will brick a modified console. there’s ZERO law that will protect against this type of behavior. you agree to this in their ToS. you can file a lawsuit, but the chances of you winning are pretty much zero.
NOW, once upon-a-time companies were able to legally bind you to their ToS. basically stating that they owned whatever machine you installed their software on. what i mean is… say you bought a PC without an OS installed and bought Windows separately. installing that OS would entitle Microsoft to ownership of your machine. and Apple was pretty bad too, their ToS basically sub-contracted a part of your life to them.
again, we now have laws to protect us against this sort of stuff. but again, those laws don’t protect people from their own ignorance.
i should state for the record that PORTIONS of a companies Terms of Service CAN be legally binding. but the ToS in of itself is not. it must explicitly stated and defined within the ToS for it to become legally binding.
The term “take them to court” and “Sue them” is also highly abused and overused. No lawyer would touch this. Just because Nintendo said something was in a video and isn’t – isn’t AGAINST THE LAW. IT’s against YT’s TOS which isn’t the law, and it’s not a substantial offense. Unless MVG lost a significant amount of revenue or suffered damage in some way over that video not a single lawyer would touch it and it would get thrown out of small claims court. Maybe try to think of both sides before making a one-sided comment like that.
It’s a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to file a fraudulent copyright claim. This has already been tested up to the Ninth Circuit in the Lenz vs Universal lawsuit. Nintendo has no grounds here, if he sues Nintendo, it’s not a question of if he will win, but when.
Tell those youtubers to post their videos on LBRY and Bit.Tube → problem solved
they even have options to import your whole YTCH at once and be paid (crypto related stuff) so go for it
Same goes for guides, or you could go to steemit or keep an eye on the decentralized web hosting solutions
and if you’re not fond of crypto, just keep an eye on ipfs related projects
Just make a new account.. Whats the fuss man.. or use vpn if unable.
Or better yet: Just move to Dailymotion.
??? And get all subscribers back? And how is the origin of the upload related to this at all, a VPN doesn’t change anything (except for regionlocked videos – which wasn’t the case here).
Your comment makes absolutely ZERO sense. Making a new account is more for viewers. How would he get his subscribers and Google Ad Sense account back? You realize he makes MONEY off of this right? And a VPN has NOTHING to do with this situation. Are you high or just dumb?
good old NOA being JAs god i am starting to hate american companies and branches based in america now.
I’ve never played nice with these massive companies. They don’t care about you and your precious childhood memories with their games, they just want to make money even through dishonest and shady means like this. Stop giving these companies your money until they realize who pays their bills.
Ironically they would make more money by embracing homebrew, thus selling more hardware, thus selling more software.
I’m pretty sure he could just respond with a counterclaim. Nintendo will sit on it for 30 days or however long they have to actually do something, the time will lapse, and the videos will be reinstated.
Just a tip, start making games library on hard drives, soon you wont be Able to download them and homebrew scene would be dead in no time, acta2. 0 is here.
It’s not censorship for a host of reasons. Is it troubling? Sort of. Is it annoying? You bet! Get upset at your governments not protecting people’s rights first. Then don’t use youtube for this type of content and use something else. Done. Now use the remaining energy to get your representatives, if your country has any, to REPRESENT YOUR RIGHTS!
Thank you. Aurora gets a few things wrong in this article, but I wish the sentiment that “freedom of speech” somehow applies to a privately owned video hosting site would be recognised by more people as false (you agree that YouTube can take down any video you upload to their service for any reason when you sign up).
Sadly, true fair-use cases can not always be fought (even if you are willing to go to court); it all depends on the type of complaint (which may not be legal, even under YouTube’s ToS).
just buy a vita
“just buy a vita” he says…
They’ve been discontinued since 2016!
They’ve been discontinued since a month or so ago, overall.
Look at my Gravatar, he’s happy , becouse he buy a PS Vita X)
The more they’ll try to stop people from spreading the idea that homebrew can run on their console, the more it will happen. It’s called the Streisand Effect (seriously, look it up). It’s happening even right now, with this article.
Upload to Bitchute or D.Tube. There’s no way to fight big companies in court, but they can’t shut down all the streaming sites either.
Looks like what they made here with d e h t t – s a m a
because is it is !!!!
Ok, “While having one YouTuber being forced to stop making videos about Nintendo Switch homebrew may not sound like too much of a big deal, such things from Nintendo have measurable effects on the homebrew community and freedom of speech in the following ways:” The term “freedom of speech” is highly overused and I think most people don’t understand what it really means. This has NOTHING to do with freedom of speech, this is a copyright issue. Copyrights don’t fall under freedom of speech, that term is so abused. Second, Nintendo has every right to do this as Disney comes down pretty hard to and they’re allowed to. There are LAWS that protect companies intellectual properties.
Now, with that said this is still stupid. Nintendo doesn’t HAVE to do it, sure, but they have every legal right to do so, it’s just annoying and I’m sure MVG understands this. Also, this won’t stop people from hacking consoles, trust me. Sony tried REALLY hard to stop the PSP’s homebrew scene and it just made it bigger. It is probably the single biggest console homebrew scene to ever exist. @DSpider already explained that a bit.
Modern Vintage Gamer has some great content and at least there is some publicity to be made here about his channel!
Devs afraid and targetted next? Please have some common sense there is no way they can be targetted just because a user is selling a hacked console, it’s very unlikely that homebrew for ANY project will stop because of it, if anything nintendo will simply go after the ones selling it and that will be the end of it.
I kinda blame him. *** ***, OF COURSE he instantly steps down. Now he set a precedent
I would just like to point out that Tech James is having the same issues.
Many assumptions, many errors. For gods sake, emulation is illegal 90% of the time. We all know that most homebrewers (not all, but most) have illegal emulation happening. Nintendo has every right for this.
And when it comes to others having these videos, well, good luck on Nintendo finding them all. You think that going for a bunch of people with very few subscribers would do as much? Going after a few popular channels intimidates and tries convincing people to back off. Aggressive, but that’s what it is.
And holy ***, nothing about this is freedom of speech. Showing a video of emulation without even showing proof of owning the game has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Get it straight.
Obviously, I’m one of the few home brewing without a bunch of emulation and pirating. Rant done.
Some body @Nintendo dont like aussies MVG, Last Gamer and Skullator New Zealander all have takedowns.
If that’s how Nintendo wants to play, then so be it. MVG can just go on making switch homebrew videos without demonstrating any Nintendo-made games.
Instead of showing Mario Kart 64, he can demonstrate San Fransisco Rush 2049 instead.
His videos have typically been focused on “that” you can play homebrew, rather than delving too deeply into “how”. So, I think Nintendo won’t be able to touch him, so long as he’s careful about not showing any Nintendo-owned games in his videos.
When ur subscriber was hater and work in Nintendo.. =\
Someone should get the EFF on this asap.