Fullscreenmario

Full Screen Mario is a recreation of the original Super Mario Bros. which runs in your web browser. It has all of the original levels and even allows you to create your own stages. It's an impressive feat of programming by a single person — college student Josh Goldberg — but Nintendo is trying to close it down because it infringes its copyright:

Nintendo respects the intellectual property rights of other companies, and in turn expects others to respect ours as well. Nintendo is seeking the removal of the content, as we vigorously protect against infringement of our intellectual property rights.

Although The Washington Post has run an opinion piece which takes a dim view of Nintendo's move, at the end of the day Mario remains the company's property, and it continues to make money out of the NES game thanks to its Virtual Console services. Therefore, any attempt to give away said game for free is clearly damaging to Nintendo's business — regardless of what you think about copyright law.

What are your thoughts on this move? Do you think Nintendo should allow inventive projects like this to thrive, as they are an indication of just how important the company's games are to popular culture? Or do you believe Nintendo's move to shut down Full Screen Mario is the right one, from a business and legal perspective? Share your thoughts by posting a comment.

[source washingtonpost.com]