Cops Raid Square Enix Over SNK Manga Parody
- Categories: Manga, News
- Date: Aug 7, 2014 04:48 JST
- Tags: Copyright, Crime, King of Fighters, Police, SNK Playmore, Square Enix
Police have raided the offices of Square Enix over a complaint by SNK that popular Square Enix published manga Highscore Girl infringed its copyrights by including characters from its various games without the proper blood oaths.
Officers from the Osaka police’s economic crimes department conducted searches on Square Enix’s head office as well as those of subsidiary companies after characters from such SNK properties as King of Fighters and Samurai Spirits appeared in Highscore Girl, a romantic comedy set in the nineties and featuring a protagonist obsessed with the fighting games of the era.
Ominously, they plan to use the material to “determine the culpability of creators and staff responsible,” suggesting even mangaka Rensuke Oshikiri may face charges.
The manga is unambiguous in its (named) inclusion of characters from various fighting games in the main story, though it would appear Capcom has already settled the matter, and includes a cheery acknowledgement of all copyrights used on the endpage:
Square Enix has “voluntarily” withdrawn all copies of the manga (including earlier volumes) and completely suspended its digital distribution (although it generously maintains “owners” of digital editions will still be able to read them), but insists it has done nothing wrong:
“This incident occurred during ongoing discussions with SNK Playmore. We do not acknowledge the alleged copyright infringement, but with the ongoing trouble we have issued a voluntary recall.”
The manga’s serialisation will be unaffected, as will its upcoming anime adaptation, they say.
Both the conduct of SNK and Square Enix have been subject to criticism
– SNK’s involvement of police and spurning of free publicity in an apparently disproportionate escalation, and Square Enix’s egregious blunder in not obtaining permission and apparently keeping SNK waiting over a year as negotiations over the matter dragged out.
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I immediately thought "Pupipo" when I saw those character designs, and indeed it's the same mangaka. I hope he'll escape trouble, and Square Enix won't throw him to the wolves.
I don't see how they can hold him accountable, when they, as the publisher printed his works and included a trademark listing. If they did not get approval for usage, it should fall on him. And, their editors have to approve the panels before anything is published.
saw the characters and immediately thought it was a sequel or spin off of pupipo.
I dont know why snk decided to publicly attack SE for doing them a service by advertising their IPs... SNK is a dying company, they have no real IPs operating atm, And They're losing revenue like crazy. The neo geo is dead, metal slug is a thing of the past, KOF is a horrible fighting franchise, and the only thing left is your pachinko machines. Even if they win this lawsuit, their settlement or whatever will not keep them afloat. I expect snk to go under within 4-5 years.
Was with you until "KOF is a horrible fighting franchise"
If it weren't for KOF, this generation would be a waste for fighting games.
Real fighting games still exist? Woah.. thought they died out back in the 1990s and are now reduced to games with lots of fanservice that also include fighting somehow.
Copyright is pretty evil.
It's become one of free speech's biggest enemies.
Here we go, people just throwing around the phrase "free speech" when they don't know anything about it.
Free speech is voicing your own opinion about something without the fear of persecution from the government or others.
And this case? Using intellectual property without asking the legal owners is just theft; it's not serious theft, but it's still theft.
This has nothing to do with free speech.
I dont think the name drops of capcom characters equates to stealing those characters. If it did, then the same could be said for a ton of literature referencing other literature, music and movies. A creative work can bring up other creative works so long as it is not actually passing them off as its own or directly using content from them.
A good example is music used in video media. If the name of a song or someones opion of it is brought up in a videa without permision, I dont think this should be considered intellectual property violation. If said song is actually played without permission, then it would be.
This is not the case here, the characters are brought up as jokes. The art and story is original.
Square Enix and the artist are making money from another company's copyrighted material (regardless of what it is) without proper permission. That's grounds enough to take legal action. I'm not saying it's moral, because it's not, but that's just how the legal system works.
As for music, there's a reason The Birthday Song isn't sung will-nilly in shows and movies. If it is, then it means they got the rights to do so by the owners.
In terms of user videos? There's so many videos going up at once that there's no efficient or reliable way to enforce that rule without looking like indiscriminate Nazis.
Did you read what I was saying in my music example? I said the actual playing of the song would equate to copyright infringement. Naturally singing it counts as well. What I was trying to say is discussing said song should always be entirely legal. I consider the street fighter content in this manga to be a form of visual discussion..
I realize manga gets a bit stickier because it has a visual component but it isn’t like the artist is tracing capcom artwork. The gameplay footage here is drawn entirely by him making it different from an actual video containing gameplay footage. Additionally, the author is not making an original street fighter manga without copyright permission. He is merely referencing aspects of its gameplay within his original setting.
Cammy doesn’t show up as a character in his story but as a character within the streetfighter game his characters sometimes talk about and play.
I realize lots of companies sue over things like this and that there are legal grounds (as much as I disagree with them). Disney is a classic example. Anyone explicitly depicting Mickey is going to get in trouble even when he appears as a parody. And there are instances where depiction of copyright characters is used to sell cheap knock-offs. This is when such things should be enforced. Sometimes fan projects also go large scale and copyrights squish them out. This is their right, as unfortunate as it may be, because the projects themselves are entirely build on and around the creative worlds that are trademarked.
Here, however, the work is not built on such worlds and characters. It merely depicts them in some of its gags in the same way a book might reference another book or describe how its characters reacted to and experienced a specific movie without asking the owners for permission to do so.
If you've ever created anything worth of any value and it's paying YOUR bills, you wouldn't be saying anything.
I'm actually with Chen-04 on this.
I'm not against people being like "Hey, I made this." however.
If I could get money for something I've done 25 years ago, I wouldn't complain either.
kek kek kek
What wrong, mad no one buys your shit indie games?
Wow, you're pretty dumb
No one's saying anything about indie games spaz
"kek kek kek"?
Go dive with concrete shoes dude.
>confirmed for buttmad indie dev
kill urself fag
Originally copyright was made to protect authors but it's long since been highjacked by corporate interests and serves them.
@Char
You've got that wrong. Originally copyright was made to take rights away from authors and give it to big publishing companies so they could minimize the profits from authors while maximizing their own.
Still does a pretty good job at that even with all those new media, like music and movies.
MEANWHILE IN THE USA
http://blog.twitch.tv/2014/08/3136/
Now I just want to read this! It's like the Streisand Effect
Don't forget to watch Pupipo too.
yes! someone actually noticed or at least mentioned it.
marketing successful.
it's good
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BuTgD-mCUAEHDX9.png:large
SNK was bought by Koreans; fuck their copyright claims
Yeah, damn Kocksucker
Yes, Koreans are cocksuckers.
You mean copyright claims that ANYONE would have issued if this fell on their laps?
Get over yourself weeaboo. Asia in general breaks copyright laws like it's nothing.
that was only for 1 years?
Who does not like POSITIVE FREE PUBLICITY?!?! Korean owned SNK, that's who.
This wouldn't be a problem if SE or the artist shot a quick note to SNK asking for permission.
Don't be a weeaboo and blame Korea for this. It doesn't matter who owns what; any company and its lawyers would have reacted exactly the same way in this situation.
>gook sympathizer
Bet you even got yellow fever, you sick fuck. How are those ugly filipino whores? Loser.
Not sure if stupid or... yeah, probably stupid.
Clearly, the only one stupid around here is YOU. A manga featuring intellectual properties like Fatal Fury actually helps to revive interest in it. You dumb fuck.
...you are aware the cellphone/android games snk launched this year using those characters was top in world sales, right? It's not like they need to "revive interest" in global scale.
A manga featuring intellectual properties WITH THE PROPER PERMISSIONS like Fatal Fury actually helps to revive interest in it.
If you must, at least make a mock-version of it so it's reminiscent of the original.
@09:07
you're aware that you're a fucking faggot, right? touchscreen games don't create interest in old IPs.
Do they give you some kind of price if you get all the game references or what?
Time to sue SNK for behaving like Team Rocket! That's copyright infringment to Nintendo!
Hahahahaha, have you ever thought about doing stand-up? Hurrdurr.
hahaha~, have you ever thought about getting a life? Loser.
Please, do us all a favor and off yourself kid. No one will miss you, I promise you that.
"Kid?" Somebody's fedora's on a little too tight.
go eat a cheeseburger, you fat american pig
go drink some maple syrup you fat Canadian pig.
Anon@11:45, Interesting how you know exactly what country the other Anon is from, or are you just blindly pointing your finger.
Honestly it only make you look a tad handicapped.
@14:11
cheeseburguh,
cheeseburguh,
u mad, amerifat piggu?
what's the deal with airplane food?