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"A Pokémon FPS fan-made game was wiped from the web by Nintendo. Were they right in doing so?"
I think Pat may be a bit on the extreme side in calling this game "reprehensible," as I agree more with Ian in that it was little more than a dumb joke. Aside from that, however, I pretty much agree with both of them, both about the game itself and about the Kotaku article on the subject. This game, in particular, just seems like a really weird hill on which to die.
That said, I think that, once again, Pat might be confusing copyright with trademark, with his whole "they have to go after stuff like this" bit. No, Nintendo doesn't have to go after this sort of thing, no more than any other IP/copyright holders who choose not to do so have to. But the fact that Nintendo chooses to go after it is indeed still well within their rights to do, regardless of whether the rest of us agree with that or not or think it's a good or bad thing. In the case of this particular Pokemon FPS game, I agree with Nintendo and think they should have gone after it, like they did. Maybe not so much in some other cases. But, again, whether I agree with it (or Pat Contri and Ian Ferguson agree with it or Luke Plunkett of Kotaku agrees with it) or not doesn't matter, because it is what it is, either way. Nintendo's going to do what Nintendo wants, irrespective of anything else. Other IP holders may choose to do otherwise. But that doesn't change the fact that those other IP holders could go after copyright-infringing stuff if they wanted to and would be within their rights to do it, under the current copyright laws, and there's precious little anyone else can do about it if they do, other than complain about it.
