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Nintendo Promotes Music Piracy?

Posted by Zonk on Mon Dec 19, 2005 05:53 PM
from the such-a-cute-dog dept.
Businesses Nintendo Entertainment Games
f-matic writes "A New York Times article discusses an amusing character in a popular virtual world: K.K. Slider, a travelling canine musician in Nintendo's Animal Crossing: Wild World, apparently promotes music piracy." From the article: "... it's a bit disorienting to find an 'information wants to be free' message embedded in a video game - particularly one aimed at young children and teenagers. After all, video game industry representatives, along with their brethren in the music, film and computer software industries, have long complained that this is precisely the kind of thinking that is eating away at their business models - and maybe civilization itself. "
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  • Yams (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    From TFA:
    A user called Yams also added "Yams yams yams yams yams."
    ... Yeah .... (FP?)

  • Piracy? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by chrismcdirty (677039) on Monday December 19 2005, @05:57PM (#14294455) Homepage
    I didn't take this message as supporting piracy, so much as artists don't want to be screwed. I suppose DMB, Phish, Grateful Dead, Bela Fleck, and tons of other artists who allow live recordings to be redistributed for free among their fans also support piracy?
    • I suppose DMB, Phish, Grateful Dead, Bela Fleck, and tons of other artists who allow live recordings to be redistributed for free among their fans also support piracy?

      No they're just dirty communists!
    • I suppose DMB, Phish, Grateful Dead, Bela Fleck, and tons of other artists who allow live recordings to be redistributed for free among their fans also support piracy?

      If they own the right to the songs they sing and their performance, then no. If they already sold those rights off to someone else, then yes they are.

      Besides, everybody knows K.K. Slider, like most artists, has a too high opinion of himself and no record exec will touch his music with a 10 foot pole which is why he goes from town to town givi

  • Article is absolutely stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

    by A beautiful mind (821714) on Monday December 19 2005, @05:59PM (#14294482)
    '"Those industry fat cats try to put a price on my music, but it wants to be free," the canine bard says in a dialogue bubble at the bottom of the screen, after performing and giving away "copies" of a tune.'

    The article comments this as: "A Nintendo video game includes a character that seems to advocate an illegal form of music file-sharing."

    When was giving your OWN music away for free illegal?

    Also: 'That last insight and its implications for the young people in Professor Brown's vision of the future notwithstanding, it's a bit disorienting to find an "information wants to be free" message embedded in a video game - particularly one aimed at young children and teenagers.'

    Why? Good values should be taught in childhood. Sharing is good! Openness is good! Those are the values you want to teach children, not greed.

    The last straw: "After all, video game industry representatives, along with their brethren in the music, film and computer software industries, have long complained that this is precisely the kind of thinking that is eating away at their business models - and maybe civilization itself. "

    In other words, if you don't sell us your soul, you're going to hell! Where did we hear this already?

    The article mixes nonsensical stuff in the writeup, like: 'A user called Yams also added "Yams yams yams yams yams."'

    Seriously, who cares? The article is a mess mixed with propaganda. It reads the end of the world into probably an innocent thing.

    • Re:Article is absolutely stupid (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Sparr0 (451780) <sparr0NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday December 19 2005, @06:15PM (#14294618) Homepage Journal
      When was giving your OWN music away for free illegal?

      As soon as the RIAA can lobby for it!
    • When was giving your OWN music away for free illegal?

      Since you've signed over your profits to those industry fat cats. The RIAA's deals with music artists have a clause that prevents Microsoft from doing what it did to Spyglass: promise a percentage of the profit, and then give Internet Explorer away for free. Music artists have to follow their publisher's demands about, uh, publishing.

      Not that it's a good thing. It shouldn't be possible to sign away your "moral rights" to the music. But that's the current

      • Re:Article is absolutely stupid (Score:5, Interesting)

        by A beautiful mind (821714) on Monday December 19 2005, @06:35PM (#14294776)
        "Not that it's a good thing. It shouldn't be possible to sign away your "moral rights" to the music. But that's the current legal situation in the US."

        I disagree with that completely. You see, in Hungary exactly such is the situation: You cannot sign away the "rights" to your music. There is also an added measure, that you cannot not ask payment for your music, which conveniently a civilian agency called Artisjus enforces after deducting a certain percentage for their "efforts", want it or not, according to the current legislation.

        That situation results in this nonsense: Let's suppose that you want to give music away for free on your homepage. Artisjus demands from you around 50 cents for each download. They then deduce around 10% of the total you payed to be able to put your own music for free on the website and make some trickery with charts etc, and in a lucky case you get around 10 cents back from Artisjus as your "profit". That is all in the name of protecting the artist using early 20th century legislation which was supposed to prevent artists being pressured into signing their rights away over music they made.

        This stupid law killed my favorite amateur music compilation which was housed on some popular hungarian IT magazine's CD back in 1998.

        Trust me, you don't want the government to protect you. In the end it will be perverted and used against you.
    • Well it shows that the rest of the world does not have a clue and has been succesfully brainwashed. What next? A woman who has sex with a man for free is charged with not being a hooker?

      This really is to weird for words. I suppose next those people who stand at the sideline of marathons with free water for the participants are going to be taken to court by SPA? People who pick up hitchhiker sued by Public Transport?

      If I create something I can do with it as I please. I know this is a radical thought but no

  • From TFA : "People can read a lot into a little," Ms. Kaplan said, "but musician K.K. Slider - a guitar-playing cartoon dog - is saying only that he's a free spirit who cannot be bought and sold for any amount of money."

    Someguy on some random blog posts a screenshot of K.K. Slider saying "Those industry fat cats try to put a price on my music, but it wants to be free," and then assumes Nintendo Supports Music Piracy.

  • Wow (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Is0m0rph (819726) on Monday December 19 2005, @06:04PM (#14294525)
    Ridiculous. The dog wants to give away HIS music for free and doesn't want it to be sold by industry fat cats and that somehow is stretched into Nintendo is promoting illegal music file sharing? I have a few albums on some record labels if I want to give them away free I'll damn well do it. It's MY music.

  • Ms. Kaplan also said that K.K. wanted his music to be free in the sense of being "freed from his guitar, free from any constraints." She added, "as a dog, it's understandable that he would not want to deal with any 'fat cats.' "

    Bullsh*t... the dog specifically mentionned the industry fat cats, I don't think it can be any clearer than this that what is meant is the music industry...

    By lying, Ms. Kaplan is also chipping away at the foundations of civilization itself too, and she her car should be the tar

  • Well... (Score:4, Funny)

    by vertinox (846076) on Monday December 19 2005, @06:19PM (#14294648)
    FTFA: After all, video game industry representatives, along with their brethren in the music, film and computer software industries, have long complained that this is precisely the kind of thinking that is eating away at their business models - and maybe civilization itself.

    You know the Romans said the same thing about their business model and their civilization. Unfortunatley, they didn't think that maybe they should actually find a new model that works instead of fighting tooth and nail to make it fit to a fast changing world that made them obsolete...

    Emperor MPAA: "Huns and visigoths be damned! I won't tolerate such barbaric behavior! They think they can just steal our wares without behaving."
    Reasonable person: "But your highness! Maybe we should make it that we offer our treasures for a reasonable price to the barbarians! Then they wouldn't steal!"
    Senator RIAA: "But they'll reverse engineer our fine artisan wares and make their own!"
    Reasonable person: "But... If we don't offer our wares at a reasonable price in the online market place the barbarians will sack our cities and steal the wares !"
    Emperor MPAA: "In that case... Summon the imperial army of lawyers we will crush them under our mighty sandals of justice...
    (Two months later)
    Emperor MPAA: "What do you mean they wiped out our army of lawyers. I thought we could sue every last person on the planet. Oh wait is that Rome burning! Oh noes the barbarians have broken down the gate! So much for that idea..."
    Pope Apple the II: "If its any consolation my organization I'll be converting them to true way over 2,000 years after you guys are collecting dust in some forgotten crypt. Maybe you guys should have listed to the Reasonable person."
  • Information, not being sentient, doesn't _want_ anything. People, on the other hand, do want something--for nothing, when possible.
    • Well, information 'wants' to be free in the same way that nature 'abhors' a vacuum and temperatures 'try' to equalize; it's an expressive way of describing a phenomenon. Information is by nature easy to duplicate and difficult to destroy, especially in the digital era. Whether or not information 'should' be free is another question, really. It is true, though, that many people say the former meaning the latter.

  • No Nintendo Doesn't (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TychoCelchuuu (835690) on Monday December 19 2005, @07:27PM (#14295124) Journal
    Nintendo doesn't support piracy any more than the people who make GTA support carjacking and indiscriminate violence against innocents. It's just some character in a game, not a thinly veiled message the the top corporate echelon inserted into the game to warp impressionable children.
    • The difference is auto owners realize that GTA is a game. The ??AA and their cronies are so detatched from reality they can't see the difference.

      I don't want to know what the ??AA thinks about the idea that a person using their right of free speech to express their political/economic views, in a copyrighted, reproduced, and marketed way, is a valuable thing (in a monetary sense).

      This is exactly how pundits make their living; they excersize their free speech, people pay to hear it, and the circle of life co

  • Music is not information (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Chemisor (97276) on Monday December 19 2005, @08:52PM (#14295624) Journal
    Saying "information wants to be free", even if they actually did so, would not promote music piracy. Music is not information, it is art, and art usually does not want to be free. Price reflects quality (in an ideal world, at least), and good artists are always going to be in demand, and consequently, in money.

  • K.K.'s Name (Score:4, Interesting)

    by 10Neon (932006) on Monday December 19 2005, @09:46PM (#14295916)
    "The initials "K.K." themselves are the equivalent of "Inc." or "Corp." in Japan, where Nintendo is based, which suggests that the company may have wryly co-opted the digital age's equivalent of the "Steal This Book" mantra, repackaged it as a puppy and inserted it into a happy video game village. The company did not confirm that this was the genesis of the name, however."
    Since "K.K" is short for "Totakeke" It seems more reasonable to assume that he was named after Kazumi Totaka, the game's composer. ...At least, that was the GCN Animal Crossing's composer (K.K. existed there too). I have not played Wild World.

  • Quick reality check (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ahaldra (534852) on Monday December 19 2005, @09:53PM (#14295948) Homepage
    Wait a sec - is Mr. Zeller actually saying, in his own words, that excercising your freedom to market your own artistic works is equal to murder, rape and robbery on the seven seas? And he really publishes in the NY friggin Times?
    *blinks*
    I wonder if this guy wrote the article with a straight face. And I smell cat pee.

  • Conflicting theory: (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rohlfinator (888775) on Monday December 19 2005, @11:42PM (#14296387)
    "It's also just good marketing, and K.K. is, after all, the offspring of a huge gaming juggernaut, developed behind layers of boardrooms and P.R. machines and demographic analyses. The initials "K.K." themselves are the equivalent of "Inc." or "Corp." in Japan, where Nintendo is based, which suggests that the company may have wryly co-opted the digital age's equivalent of the "Steal This Book" mantra, repackaged it as a puppy and inserted it into a happy video game village."
    From what I understand, the initials K.K. were derived from the Japanese name of the character, Totokeke. It has also been suggested that they were a reference to Koji Kondo, a well-known composer at Nintendo and author of the Mario and Zelda themes. In fact, one of K.K.'s "secret tracks", K.K. Song, is believed to be a song composed by Koji Kondo, which was featured only as a hidden track in a few other games. Nobody even hinted at this corporation theory a few years ago, when the original Animal Crossing was released.

    Also, even though K.K. is apparently supporting piracy, there's no in-game way for players to duplicate K.K. Slider's "airchecks" and share them with other players. Nor is there any indication that these "bootlegs" are pirated copies of published work. His songs are, for all intents and purposes, bound to their distribution media. Some people are reading way too much into this. ;P

  • I wish they would. (Score:3, Funny)

    by RyoShin (610051) <tukaro AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday December 20 2005, @01:43AM (#14296806) Homepage Journal
    Considering the backlash Nintendo's had on the ROM scene, I doubt you could call them supportors of anything illegal, even if they don't lose profit from it.

    However, I wish they would make something that inadvertently allowed music piracy. Like allowing voice clips to be sent over NiFi to other users to be saved for other times.

    Suppose they made some music game. You could play the piano using the touchpad on the DS. Someone decides to do a bit of the latest Nickelback/Britney Spears/$RIAA_GLAMOR_WHORE song (say, a minute or so,) and sends it to a friend to show off his or her skills. Said friend likes it so much that it is then sent to even more friends. Because the snippet shows the original author, the RIAA is able to track down the person who originally made the snippet.

    Not only do they sue the person who made the snippet, but they go after Nintendo for a 'piracy distribution service'. Despite Nintendo's tied-for-second-but-somewhat-third place in the console race in America (and second place in Japan,) they have a rather large pile of cash to lean back on, thanks in part to the success that is Gameboy.

    If this happened, I think it would be a turning point. Nintendo has the money and clout to defend themselves against the Princes of the Sixth Circle of Hell, and would do so, even if only to keep from having a black mark on any of their games or systems. Plus, looking at Slashdot as a whole, Nintendo is the "company to love" for video games (where the XBox is made by "M$", and Sony hates our ownership rights,) so the /. crowd, seeing their good steed battle the bad one, would rise up behind Nintendo, causing some sort of internet backwave that would eventually lead to either the downfall of the RIAA or a drastic change in their business model.

    Of course, I've been taking some pain medication, and now I may just be fantasizing.

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