Topic: The reason behind Nintendo’s overprotective-ness

So apparently Nintendo has copyright striked a bunch of stuff in Gmod and people are likely already going nuts. And I bet a lot of people are wondering why Nintendo is so overprotective of their IP’s. Well there’s actually a video made by a YouTube channel named... moon channel, that talks about the reasons behind it.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i13hrynnGNY
Apparently the reason behind their overprotective-ness of their IP is because the law stinks.

@Binder12 Mario 3D World is 10 years old. Feel old yet?

I like how I already know the exact reason for it without having to click the video.. Or I assume I do, because its always the same reason people bring up.

I've heard some people suggest it doesn't actually make sense, but I absolutely believe that some stupid judge who doesn't know things beyond what happened 50 years ago could just pull a Blurred Lines (well, arguably the opposite of a Blurred Lines) and accidentally risk ruining things for everyone with one bad decision. (correct me if I'm wrong and this isn't about the need to defend their IP ala the Elder Scrolls vs. Scrolls debacle)

But my personal theory is that copyright lawyers need to justify their continued existence so they need to do something like go after (insert copyright they own being used by someone else here) or else they'll be out of a job.

I think it's about controlling their brand / image. As big a company, Nintendo is, they primarily have one stream of revenue. Their ip! Sony have music, film, electronics, phones, gaming. Microsoft have office software, cloud infrastructure and services, operating systems, electronics, gaming. Nintendo have Mario. Of course they are going to protet him lol. But when folk cite Nintendo as being a billion dollar comapny so it's ok to pirate their games...but their success has come from those games and that heritage continues to define them. The moment a generation views Samus as a meme thanks to some Fortnite footage, the Metroid ip might take a knock. I'm not sure if it's over protective, but it's definately very protective. And meh, they have every right to do it, so it is what it is.

Yeah, it's basically a requirement of trademark law that failing to respond to infringements runs the risk of a brand becoming genericised, and that would be very bad for Nintendo's business.

That said, other companies have far better attitudes towards fan works. Paramount - the owners of Star Trek - used to have a similar attitude to Nintendo, but eventually came around to the idea that, so long as fans follow an agreed set of guidelines, they won't take action.

https://www.startrek.com/en-un/fan-films

Note that they still reserve all their legal rights, so can sue anyone who breaks the spirit of the guidelines to oblivion even if they somehow manage to stay within the terms of it.

So, it's not like there aren't alternative to just sending everyone a C&D.

I wish SEGA were more like Nintendo and would send their lawyers after people, googling Sonic fan art is scary as fudge.

@jump LOL!

@Novamii I was thinking more of the out there stuff like Sonic being pregnant with a caption saying "mistakes happen" with a hand drawn picture of 9/11 in the background.

The Sonic and Shadow stuff is disgusting with how little respect they have for Sonic, everyone knows the Sonic canon is really that he has a hu-man girlfriend he likes to make cuddles with!