In a bizarre turn of events, certain YouTube users who have content featuring SEGA Saturn classic Shining Force III are being targeted for copyright infringement. Their videos and in some cases their channels are being removed and the people being targeted are usually those hosting translated content from part 2 and 3 which were never released in the West.
One user MarauderEx who had his channel taken down contacted SEGA and got the following response:
“Hello, we never give explicit permission to use our intellectual property. However, in cases like this we tend not to take action unless we or our products are slandered in the derivative works. Best Regards, SEGA Customer Support.”
As MarauderEx’s material didn’t contain slander (along with users TotalBiscuit and synbios16) some are questioning the authenticity of the accusation. The claim comes from an unnamed person with a “legit” email address and is named in some SEGA games in a “special thanks” section but not in Shining Force III.
More on this as we get it.
[Source: Eurogamer]
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Tags: copyright infringement, footage, MarauderEx, sega saturn, shining force III, synbios16, TotalBiscuit, video, youtube
This started back in August with the same ‘Sega’ user filing copyright complaints against videos on the Shining Force SOS YouTube account – which is totally ridiculous as the videos were of people (Shining Force fans, specifically) saying who they are and that they love Shining Force. I’m not sure how Sega can claim to own the rights to videos of these people. They only targetted a few videos, primarily those posted by Shining ROM hackers, myself (Shining Force Central creator) and an editor from GamesTM magazine whose opinion I guess holds some weight too.
It would seem to stem from an altercation between Japanese fans of the ‘new’ Shining series from 2chan who took a dislike to ‘classic’ series fans supporting the SF:SOS campaign. This original altercation led to a misunderstanding with Sega and consequently bad feelings (being conveyed in less than polite way, which I have been warned not to post publically) from Sega Japan’s Shining producer towards myself and the SFC community.
It may well be the folks from 2chan trying to stir things up again – though how they managed to get an official Sega Japan email address on their YouTube account is unknown. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to which videos get flagged and they certainly don’t all even include gameplay footage and some include little more than a logo or the mention of the words ‘Shining Force’.
Thank you for the update Moogie! So there’s modern and classic fans in the Shining Force community eh? Sounds very similar to another SEGA community I know of!