from the gone-fishing dept
Readers of this site will know by now that Nintendo polices its intellectual property in an extremely draconian fashion. However, there are still differences in the instances in which the company does so. In many cases, Nintendo goes after people or groups in a fashion that stretches, if not breaks, any legitimate intellectual property concerns. Other times, Nintendo’s actions are well within its rights, but those actions often times appear to do far more harm to the company than whatever IP concern is doing to it. This is probably one of those latter stories.
There’s a new Zelda game coming out in a few weeks on the Switch: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. As with any rabid fanbase, fans of the series have been gobbling up literally any information they can find about the unreleased game. It was therefore unsurprising that there was a ton of interest in a leaked art book that would accompany its release. It is also not a shock that Nintendo DMCA’d the leaks and discussion of the leaks that occurred on Discord, even though that almost certainly brought even more attention to the leaks in a classic Streisand Effect.
The posts include images from the 204-page artbook that will come with the collector’s edition of the game. They quickly spread to other Discord servers, various subreddits, and beyond. While a ton of original art for the game was in the leak, it didn’t end up revealing much about the mysteries surrounding Tears of the Kingdom players have spent months speculating about. There was no real developer commentary in the leak, and barely any spoilers outside of some minor enemy reveals.
But now Nintendo is also seeking to get a subpoena to unmask the leaker, ostensibly to “protect its rights”, which will almost certainly involve going after the leaker with every legal tactic the company can muster. This despite the all of that context above about what was and was not included in the leak.
Now, I can certainly understand why Nintendo is upset about the leak. It has a book to sell and scans from that book showing up on the internet is irritating. I would argue that those scans in no way replace a 204 page physical artbook, and frankly might serve to actually generate more interest in the book and drive sales, but I can understand why the company might not see it that way.
In which case seeking to bury the links and content via the DMCA is the proper move, even if I think that only serves to generate more interest in the leaks themselves. The only real point of unmasking the leaker is to go after that individual. While Nintendo may still be within its rights to do so, that certainly feels like overkill to say the least.
Referencing the notices sent to Discord in respect of the “copyright-protected and unreleased special edition art book for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom” the company highlights a Discord channel and a specific user.
“[Nintendo of America] is requesting the attached proposed subpoena that would order Discord Inc. …to disclose the identity, including the name(s), address(es), telephone number(s), and e-mail addresses(es) of the user Julien#2743, who is responsible for posting infringing content that appeared at the following channel Discord channel Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom..[..].
As we’ve said in the past, unmasking anonymous speakers on the internet ought to come with a very high bar over which the requester should need to jump. Do some scans from an artbook temporarily appearing on the internet really warrant this unmasking? Is there real, demonstrable harm here? Especially when this appears to be something of a fishing expedition?
Information available on other platforms, Reddit in particular, suggests that the person Nintendo is hoping to identify is the operator of the Discord channel and, at least potentially, the person who leaked the original content.
A two-month-old comment on the origin of the leak suggests the source was “a long time friend.” A comment in response questioned why someone would get a friend “fired for internet brownie points?”
There are an awful lot of qualifiers in there. And if this is just Nintendo fishing for a leaker for which it has no other evidence, then the request for the subpoena should be declined by the court.
Filed Under: anonymity, artbook, copyright, dmca, leaks, subpoena, zelda
Companies: discord, nintendo
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