Scratch

MaxtheWeirdo wrote:

fire219 wrote:

How many times do we have to say this:

ScRATCH PROJECTS ARE PROTECTED BY FAIR USE.

Actually, only Scratch itself, the platform, could be considered as being protected under Fair Use. The projects themselves are not.
Scratch is a foundation that we build upon. Regardless, Scratch still has a Terms of Use we're expected to abide by.

I spoke to an expert about this, who recommended you read Title 17, Section 107 of US Copyright Law. That spells out what is and is not Fair Use. (You can read it here: http://1.usa.gov/namcofairuse) Look at point (4). Something cannot be considered fair use if it affects the original creator's ability to market their property.
In this case, why would a customer purchase Pac-Man from Namco, if they could play a dozen clones here on Scratch? That negatively impacts Namco's market.

You might say, well, this is protected under Fair Use because Scratch is educational. It's not the same because our efforts aren't confined to a classroom. You're releasing a game for others to play for entertainment purposes. Therefore, Fair Use for Educational Purposes does not apply in this case.

By constantly uploading the same Pac-Man games, you think you're annoying Namco, but you're not. You're hurting Scratch and the people who volunteer to help us out. Namco isn't the one who has to keep taking it down; Scratch is.
You're creating more work, more frustration, and most importantly, more legal liability for Scratch by behaving this way. Causing all this frustration and opening MIT up to so much legal liability threatens the survival of Scratch.

The bottom line is this. Try to think about it from Namco's perspective - if you spent years creating the universe of Pac-Man, wouldn't you want to be able to make a living off of it? Wouldn't you be mad if someone else copied your work in a way that kept you from being able to provide for your families?

"Expert" as in who?

And it wasn't similar to the actual game at all.

scratch_yoshi wrote:

SeptimusHeap wrote:

And it wasn't similar to the actual game at all.

Proof. Give me proof.

Ask anyone who saw it.

Say, does anyone have the game?

scratch_yoshi wrote:

I put this on another topic:

I wrote:

We are talking about a GAME here. And CAPCOM doesn't even seem to care(about my AA projects). So what, if Namco is overprotective. So are some parents. And do you absolutely hate them? No. So why are people hating on Namco? Seriously. Kids these days man.

There! Argument done!

PART FIVE!! BOOBY TRAP THE REPLY AND QUOTE BUTTONS!!

Now then, I guess everyone turned speechless-- wait, didn't I booby trap the quo- *blows up*

WAIT!! THE ARGUMENT'S NOT OVER YET!! I need to win before it's over!! (...Derp.)

martianshark wrote:

That sounded so Phoenix Wright-ish.

http://doulifee.com//Storage/aceatt/Gya … ix-emo.gif

...Double derp.

And BTW, don't hotlink. If you really want to show sprites of the characters, upload them to Photobucket or something.

One thing I should say:
You guys may be right, but trolling Namco doesn't give you moral high ground.

cheddargirl wrote:

MaxtheWeirdo wrote:

Actually, only Scratch itself, the platform, could be considered as being protected under Fair Use. The projects themselves are not.
Scratch is a foundation that we build upon. Regardless, Scratch still has a Terms of Use we're expected to abide by.

I spoke to an expert about this, who recommended you read Title 17, Section 107 of US Copyright Law. That spells out what is and is not Fair Use. (You can read it here: http://1.usa.gov/namcofairuse) Look at point (4). Something cannot be considered fair use if it affects the original creator's ability to market their property.
In this case, why would a customer purchase Pac-Man from Namco, if they could play a dozen clones here on Scratch? That negatively impacts Namco's market.

Konami, a pretty big video game industry, owns the rights to the Yu-Gi-Oh! online gaming platform (a program that allowed people to play card game fights online). To a certain degree, you had to pay in order to gain full access to using the platform. Someone decided to make their own platform and released it online as a free alternative. Hundreds of thousands of users started using it, and Konami took action to have the alternative platform taken down because they [Konami] felt that they lost a lot of potential customers who used the alternative platform.

Now let's compare that case to the Namco-Bandai case.

In a Fair Use case, the victim has to prove that there has been an actual loss. Konami had enough proof to show that they lost money because of the alternative gaming platform since thousands of people started downloading it and using it. On Scratch, though, very rarely will a project get hundreds of views and downloads in a short amount of time; Namco has to actually prove that the company lost money because of a single Scratch-based Pac-Man game, and I doubt they have proof of that.

If the Namco-Bandai case was ever brought to court, it is very unlikely that Namco-Bandai would win regarding the circumstances. There are, however, hundreds of clones out there that are very similar to Pac-Man (if not exact copies), in which Namco is more likely to hold a case.

You might say, well, this is protected under Fair Use because Scratch is educational. It's not the same because our efforts aren't confined to a classroom. You're releasing a game for others to play for entertainment purposes. Therefore, Fair Use for Educational Purposes does not apply in this case.

A while back, someone in a Photoshop class used a couple of copyrighted images to make an image, she then uploaded it to a popular art website where she was accused of art theft. She argued on the case of Fair Use, but lost because she released it for entertainment purposes, and there was no educational value from simply posting it.

Certainly, the "entertainment purposes" reason works well if it the game was uploaded just for entertainment purposes, but, whenever you release a project on Scratch, the general idea is that you upload it so others can see your code and learn from it.

The Scratch website is also used by many classroom environments - teachers look to the Scratch website as a resource as well as a means for sharing projects. The website has been well integrated into many classroom environments, you probably only need to ask around on the ScratchED website to find examples.

Now if the Scratch website locked downloads and blocked remixing, the educational value of the website is removed. But since there's no way that's ever going to happen, it's still going to be very hard to say that releasing a Pac-Man project on a website will have no "educational value" in this case.

By constantly uploading the same Pac-Man games, you think you're annoying Namco, but you're not. You're hurting Scratch and the people who volunteer to help us out. Namco isn't the one who has to keep taking it down; Scratch is.
You're creating more work, more frustration, and most importantly, more legal liability for Scratch by behaving this way. Causing all this frustration and opening MIT up to so much legal liability threatens the survival of Scratch.

True, but some admins on the Scratch Team (such as andresmh) do not agree with Namco-Bandai's actions. And we also believe that Namco-Bandai's actions hampers and discourages (if not threatens) learning to make projects simply because we may not necessarily own the characters used in them. A lot of learning comes from imitation - for example, an artist may look at a well known painting and try to imitate it to learn more about the original artists style. Similarly, a programmer may want to try and imitate a Pac-Man game to gain an idea of how a Pac-Man program works - and even, better, releasing it on Scratch allows us to better see the code, maybe even improve on it if possible.

If we're not allowed to at least attempt and gain feedback on a Scratch-based recreation of Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros, or Portal simply because we we're not the first ones to come up with Pac-man, Super Mario Bros and Portal, then what next, we can't create fan art or fan fiction because we don't own the characters used in the images and stories? People can't do a play because someone else wrote it and it's being performed somewhere else? Someone can't release a summary of a book only because others can read it and it threatens the book's writer? That I find to be a much more scary scenario from this case than the annoyance of Scratch projects being taken down.

Now that I have finished my typing, I go to bed. Hopefully sleep deprivation hasn't prevented me from saying what I needed to say. 

w00t Go Cheddagirl!

rabbit1131 wrote:

cheddargirl wrote:

MaxtheWeirdo wrote:

Actually, only Scratch itself, the platform, could be considered as being protected under Fair Use. The projects themselves are not.
Scratch is a foundation that we build upon. Regardless, Scratch still has a Terms of Use we're expected to abide by.

I spoke to an expert about this, who recommended you read Title 17, Section 107 of US Copyright Law. That spells out what is and is not Fair Use. (You can read it here: http://1.usa.gov/namcofairuse) Look at point (4). Something cannot be considered fair use if it affects the original creator's ability to market their property.
In this case, why would a customer purchase Pac-Man from Namco, if they could play a dozen clones here on Scratch? That negatively impacts Namco's market.

Konami, a pretty big video game industry, owns the rights to the Yu-Gi-Oh! online gaming platform (a program that allowed people to play card game fights online). To a certain degree, you had to pay in order to gain full access to using the platform. Someone decided to make their own platform and released it online as a free alternative. Hundreds of thousands of users started using it, and Konami took action to have the alternative platform taken down because they [Konami] felt that they lost a lot of potential customers who used the alternative platform.

Now let's compare that case to the Namco-Bandai case.

In a Fair Use case, the victim has to prove that there has been an actual loss. Konami had enough proof to show that they lost money because of the alternative gaming platform since thousands of people started downloading it and using it. On Scratch, though, very rarely will a project get hundreds of views and downloads in a short amount of time; Namco has to actually prove that the company lost money because of a single Scratch-based Pac-Man game, and I doubt they have proof of that.

If the Namco-Bandai case was ever brought to court, it is very unlikely that Namco-Bandai would win regarding the circumstances. There are, however, hundreds of clones out there that are very similar to Pac-Man (if not exact copies), in which Namco is more likely to hold a case.

You might say, well, this is protected under Fair Use because Scratch is educational. It's not the same because our efforts aren't confined to a classroom. You're releasing a game for others to play for entertainment purposes. Therefore, Fair Use for Educational Purposes does not apply in this case.

A while back, someone in a Photoshop class used a couple of copyrighted images to make an image, she then uploaded it to a popular art website where she was accused of art theft. She argued on the case of Fair Use, but lost because she released it for entertainment purposes, and there was no educational value from simply posting it.

Certainly, the "entertainment purposes" reason works well if it the game was uploaded just for entertainment purposes, but, whenever you release a project on Scratch, the general idea is that you upload it so others can see your code and learn from it.

The Scratch website is also used by many classroom environments - teachers look to the Scratch website as a resource as well as a means for sharing projects. The website has been well integrated into many classroom environments, you probably only need to ask around on the ScratchED website to find examples.

Now if the Scratch website locked downloads and blocked remixing, the educational value of the website is removed. But since there's no way that's ever going to happen, it's still going to be very hard to say that releasing a Pac-Man project on a website will have no "educational value" in this case.

By constantly uploading the same Pac-Man games, you think you're annoying Namco, but you're not. You're hurting Scratch and the people who volunteer to help us out. Namco isn't the one who has to keep taking it down; Scratch is.
You're creating more work, more frustration, and most importantly, more legal liability for Scratch by behaving this way. Causing all this frustration and opening MIT up to so much legal liability threatens the survival of Scratch.

True, but some admins on the Scratch Team (such as andresmh) do not agree with Namco-Bandai's actions. And we also believe that Namco-Bandai's actions hampers and discourages (if not threatens) learning to make projects simply because we may not necessarily own the characters used in them. A lot of learning comes from imitation - for example, an artist may look at a well known painting and try to imitate it to learn more about the original artists style. Similarly, a programmer may want to try and imitate a Pac-Man game to gain an idea of how a Pac-Man program works - and even, better, releasing it on Scratch allows us to better see the code, maybe even improve on it if possible.

If we're not allowed to at least attempt and gain feedback on a Scratch-based recreation of Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros, or Portal simply because we we're not the first ones to come up with Pac-man, Super Mario Bros and Portal, then what next, we can't create fan art or fan fiction because we don't own the characters used in the images and stories? People can't do a play because someone else wrote it and it's being performed somewhere else? Someone can't release a summary of a book only because others can read it and it threatens the book's writer? That I find to be a much more scary scenario from this case than the annoyance of Scratch projects being taken down.

Now that I have finished my typing, I go to bed. Hopefully sleep deprivation hasn't prevented me from saying what I needed to say. 

w00t Go Cheddagirl!

what rabbit said

cheddargirl wrote:

MaxtheWeirdo wrote:

Actually, only Scratch itself, the platform, could be considered as being protected under Fair Use. The projects themselves are not.
Scratch is a foundation that we build upon. Regardless, Scratch still has a Terms of Use we're expected to abide by.

I spoke to an expert about this, who recommended you read Title 17, Section 107 of US Copyright Law. That spells out what is and is not Fair Use. (You can read it here: http://1.usa.gov/namcofairuse) Look at point (4). Something cannot be considered fair use if it affects the original creator's ability to market their property.
In this case, why would a customer purchase Pac-Man from Namco, if they could play a dozen clones here on Scratch? That negatively impacts Namco's market.

Konami, a pretty big video game industry, owns the rights to the Yu-Gi-Oh! online gaming platform (a program that allowed people to play card game fights online). To a certain degree, you had to pay in order to gain full access to using the platform. Someone decided to make their own platform and released it online as a free alternative. Hundreds of thousands of users started using it, and Konami took action to have the alternative platform taken down because they [Konami] felt that they lost a lot of potential customers who used the alternative platform.

Now let's compare that case to the Namco-Bandai case.

In a Fair Use case, the victim has to prove that there has been an actual loss. Konami had enough proof to show that they lost money because of the alternative gaming platform since thousands of people started downloading it and using it. On Scratch, though, very rarely will a project get hundreds of views and downloads in a short amount of time; Namco has to actually prove that the company lost money because of a single Scratch-based Pac-Man game, and I doubt they have proof of that.

If the Namco-Bandai case was ever brought to court, it is very unlikely that Namco-Bandai would win regarding the circumstances. There are, however, hundreds of clones out there that are very similar to Pac-Man (if not exact copies), in which Namco is more likely to hold a case.

You might say, well, this is protected under Fair Use because Scratch is educational. It's not the same because our efforts aren't confined to a classroom. You're releasing a game for others to play for entertainment purposes. Therefore, Fair Use for Educational Purposes does not apply in this case.

A while back, someone in a Photoshop class used a couple of copyrighted images to make an image, she then uploaded it to a popular art website where she was accused of art theft. She argued on the case of Fair Use, but lost because she released it for entertainment purposes, and there was no educational value from simply posting it.

Certainly, the "entertainment purposes" reason works well if it the game was uploaded just for entertainment purposes, but, whenever you release a project on Scratch, the general idea is that you upload it so others can see your code and learn from it.

The Scratch website is also used by many classroom environments - teachers look to the Scratch website as a resource as well as a means for sharing projects. The website has been well integrated into many classroom environments, you probably only need to ask around on the ScratchED website to find examples.

Now if the Scratch website locked downloads and blocked remixing, the educational value of the website is removed. But since there's no way that's ever going to happen, it's still going to be very hard to say that releasing a Pac-Man project on a website will have no "educational value" in this case.

By constantly uploading the same Pac-Man games, you think you're annoying Namco, but you're not. You're hurting Scratch and the people who volunteer to help us out. Namco isn't the one who has to keep taking it down; Scratch is.
You're creating more work, more frustration, and most importantly, more legal liability for Scratch by behaving this way. Causing all this frustration and opening MIT up to so much legal liability threatens the survival of Scratch.

True, but some admins on the Scratch Team (such as andresmh) do not agree with Namco-Bandai's actions. And we also believe that Namco-Bandai's actions hampers and discourages (if not threatens) learning to make projects simply because we may not necessarily own the characters used in them. A lot of learning comes from imitation - for example, an artist may look at a well known painting and try to imitate it to learn more about the original artists style. Similarly, a programmer may want to try and imitate a Pac-Man game to gain an idea of how a Pac-Man program works - and even, better, releasing it on Scratch allows us to better see the code, maybe even improve on it if possible.

If we're not allowed to at least attempt and gain feedback on a Scratch-based recreation of Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros, or Portal simply because we we're not the first ones to come up with Pac-man, Super Mario Bros and Portal, then what next, we can't create fan art or fan fiction because we don't own the characters used in the images and stories? People can't do a play because someone else wrote it and it's being performed somewhere else? Someone can't release a summary of a book only because others can read it and it threatens the book's writer? That I find to be a much more scary scenario from this case than the annoyance of Scratch projects being taken down.

Now that I have finished my typing, I go to bed. Hopefully sleep deprivation hasn't prevented me from saying what I needed to say. 

fire219 wrote:

scratch_yoshi wrote:

TVflea wrote:

namco dosen't hate scratch
i don't think you email them anything. they didn't do anything to you.

+9001.

-133,790,010

let me guess, it was YOUR project?

And, since an admin or mod *cough* seems to have de1337ed my former post, please no flaming or I WILL have this closed. That would be sad. :'(

TVflea wrote:

waveOSBeta wrote:

That would be sad. :'(

no, it would be relive. Namco doesn't hate scratch. they just don't like un-professional remakes of they're games. let's say someone remixed one of your BEST projects and turned into something horrible and embarrassing. wouldn't you get a little mad?

I'd give advice on how to make it better. 

scratch_yoshi wrote:

waveOSBeta wrote:

TVflea wrote:

no, it would be relive. Namco doesn't hate scratch. they just don't like un-professional remakes of they're games. let's say someone remixed one of your BEST projects and turned into something horrible and embarrassing. wouldn't you get a little mad?

I'd give advice on how to make it better. 

But they remixed off of YOUR really good project. And killed it.

Big deal. Try if you want to.