Another day, another case of Nintendo being Nintendo. This time, the company is cracking down on a YouTuber that uploaded covers of music from Metroid Prime to their channel.
Content creator SynaMax revealed that nine of his videos have had to be taken down, after Nintendo sent in the big guns and flexed their legal muscles his way.
“On 31st May, a lawyer representing Nintendo called me and asked me to take down nine videos off the channel,” SynaMax explained in a new video (spotted by VGC). “I’m really disappointed in Nintendo that they would force me to take down these videos because they want compulsory licenses.”
The YouTuber went on to say, “I think it’s important to point out that this only applies to music that’s copyrighted by Nintendo; my research videos about the music from Metroid Prime as well as music done in the style of Kenji Yamamoto, those things are all okay because that’s not copyrighted Nintendo music. However, a recreation cover, or just a cover in general or any sort of remix, that unfortunately cannot be done without compulsory licenses.”
SynaMax revealed he wouldn’t have a problem with Nintendo simply issuing a copyright claim on the videos and taking over monetisation for them rather than having the videos completely removed from his channel.
“What happens [then] is all that ad revenue goes to record labels instead of me, which is fine, because they own the original song, and I get to keep my remix up on YouTube for everyone to listen to,” he explained.
“I don’t make a single cent on it, but that’s fine with me because at least everyone gets to listen to my remix.”
SynaMax then continued by asking all the questions that many before him have asked, and many will likely ask again in the future: “Why can’t Nintendo go down this route? Why can’t Nintendo do this like everyone else? Why does my recreation cover have to be removed when the song it’s based off of has never seen any sort of official soundtrack release?”
If only we knew SynaMax, if only we knew…
