Legality of Sprite Editing

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MythTrainerInfinity

MythTrainerInfinity

Most likely I'm going to be sprite edit enemy no. 1 now.

So, basically I was talking about recolors and edits on another forum and then Googled "Fair Use" and then came up with this...

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#106a

U.S. Copyright Office said:
(A) to prevent any intentional distortion, mutilation, or other modification of that work which would be prejudicial to his or her honor or reputation, and any intentional distortion, mutilation, or modification of that work is a violation of that right,
Click to expand...

Anyways, from my understanding in short Nintendo/Game Freak has the right to blow the whistle on modified work or in this case, sprites. However, it says basically says that they could, but it does not have to be done. If someone were to edit things from a smaller group or individual it is more likely that the original author would say something and the person who edited it would have to deal with the law.

Someone has pointed out that the person who makes 8-bit Theater wrote and essay about it at http://www.nuklearpower.com/webcomics.php. This does not touch on alteration of content unless I read it wrong.

In short my understanding is altering sprites without the permission of the artist/company who owns them is illegal. The violator could be charged with something, but I haven't read anything about someone taking someone else to court over sprite editing yet, although in due time I would not be surprised if this actually happened. I suppose if you did not edit a sprite and used it it might be legal with the proper credit.

Some of the sprites in this thread are edits and that is illegal to my understanding of this law.

I'm not a law major, so my understanding of this might be wrong. This seems pretty solid, however.

Thoughts?
 
they can't prove any losses, you're not making a profit off their work, penalizing fans would lessen their reputation and discourage the purchase of their products

who cares
 
Just because they can't prove any losses does not mean that its legal to edit someone else's work. They can claim it has indirectly influenced it, but I have no cases to fall back on for this, so for now I'm just throwing this out there.
 
You're right, it is technically illegal. chaos wins though...they would be morons to pursue it because of the reasons chaos said.

You said it yourself, they CAN do it but they don't HAVE to. I think Gamefreak has better things to do than piss off their fans and sue some 15 year olds who are having fun with their product at no expense to them (and no profit to the 15 year olds).
 
All fanfiction (excluding that which can be labeled as parody) is technically illegal, but I don't think that Fanfiction.net has ever been sued for having more than 3.5 million copyright violations.
 
Everything not edited can be technically parody.

I mean hey, I pour hours into something I draw, but then it takes five minutes to throw together a Journey comic with minimal effort. I am really not happy about that and frown upon the lack of effort.
 
I don't really think Nintendo would give a care if individuals altered their sprites for fun - making pirated copies of games, or using them for profit, claiming them as your own - that'd be a different story.

If I was Nintendo, I'd be happy people are taking our product into a whole new creative concept, rather than endlessly bashing it for satanic referencing.
 
yea, i am pretty sure most companies view it as free publicity. i mean, there are millions of people, usually the adolescents that most gaming companies market towards, that create fanfictions or sprites and millions more who see these and go check whatever game or show or book or whatever out. as pointed out before, the companies could take action against all of these people but it wouldn't serve any purpose other than lessening the people's veiws of the company in question. take metallica for instance, they pressed charges against fans who were illegally downloading music. there were no real damages done to the band in the downloading but metallica destroyed their reputations with a large part of their fanbase, many of which now refuse to pay for anything related to metallica. that wasn't really a great example but it works.
 
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