Nintendo Attack Fansites

Nintendo Attack Fansites

March 30th, 2008, 20:52 Posted By: wraggster

Nintendo using their muscle to get rid of fan sites now:

As some of you have noticed, FC has gone down several times recently. You were told that it was due to the site being backed up. This was also what the admins THOUGHT was the cause. However, it was due to something completely different. It turns out that Corey had received several emails from NOA (Nintendo of America). In short, the email asked that we close down friendcodes.com due to copyright infringement, because Nintendo owns the phrases: friendcode, friendcodes, friend code, and friend codes. Since Corey has been inactive, he obviously hasn't checked up on his emails and such until recently. Him and Robert talked about it, then Robert told the rest of us.

Basically Nintendo is "asking" us to remove the site files that are infringing the copyright (such as the logo, which contains the word "friendcodes"), and to drop the domain name for the same reason. Corey just responded to the emails tonight, and is going to talk to a NOA rep. (hopefully) Monday over the phone. But honestly, it looks bad. They've been sending the emails for almost a month now with no response, so they're very serious about it right now. We're still talking about what to do, but it looks like we will have to shut down the site temporarily, until it all gets worked out. Of course, if it works out Nintendo's way, we'll be closed down permanently. Naturally, we're going to try and keep that from happening, but like I said, it doesn't look good.

We're going to have to let the members know as well, just in case the site goes down during this whole event, they'll know what happened. Hopefully if Nintendo sees how many of their customers use this site, they'll let us off the hook. We're considering starting a "Keep FC.com Online" petition. This is probably the worst thing that's happened to FC. Including the crash.

I have nothing else to say, except that this makes me a bit sad and ••••ed. Yeah, this nullifies all the staff changes we've made recently, but this is news even to the admin team. I don't see why Nintendo has such as big issue about this. I don't see how it affects them unless they just want the domain for their own use. Anyway, we decided the staff needed to know what was going on ASAP. We'll tell the members soon, but the staff needed to know first.

Stay tuned.

B.

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