Ikusa Megami Zero project gets a C&D
July 27th, 2010, by
Posted in Tidbits, Translation
, Tagged: Eushully, Ikusa Megami
A fan translation project of Ikusa Megami Zero was removed from TLWiki after supposedly receiving a cease and desist notice from Eukleia, who released the title under their Eushully brand. The translation project was recently set up at the end of last month, and it had a hacker and a translator working on it. The translator has indicated that he plans to continue translating the title.
Ikusa Megami Zero is an adult RPG released by Eushully in 2008; and the events in this story begin the much older Ikusa Megami series. This tale follows the protagonist Celica as he fights as a paladin of the god of storms. The original game released in the Ikusa Megami series was released back in 1999 and has a number of prequels and sequels.
July 27th, 2010 at 6:47 pm
Eventually this kind of news becomes normal. Japanese eroge developers, stop being assholes.
July 28th, 2010 at 12:53 am
The translator is being also an asshole for refusing to accept the company’s claim on their creation. IMO, of course.
….I hope no one gives a rebuttal based on prospective self-benefit.
July 28th, 2010 at 1:07 am
Those who start a project at this time must know that a C&D is very likely.
I doubt many would still start something if they fear a C&D…
July 28th, 2010 at 6:26 am
Power to the people! I don’t think these companies should be complaining at all. The only thing this can do for them is further their sales, so they should just turn a blind eye to it.
July 28th, 2010 at 7:22 am
I didn’t even know there was Ikusa Megami Zero translation project and it got C&D already.. :-/
saxon: Of course, that’s what any sane person would think.
July 28th, 2010 at 5:46 pm
Actually I’ve been wondering something for a while. Do companies actually have and legal rights to stop things like translation projects? I don’t know all of the specifics behind the laws, but I mean people are free to get the game and then translate it into an English and let their neighbor see it. I don’t think this is really that different. It would be one thing if the patches were being sold or the groups were claiming it as their original work, but is translating a game actually a legal violation against them?
I could see Minori having a problem with NNL releasing a complete build of the game but are there legal issues regarding patches?
July 29th, 2010 at 11:22 pm
@Arteas
Translation is legal, distribution is not. This varies on country, though, as a handful require commerical distribution for it to be illegal (not the US, though).
July 30th, 2010 at 10:57 pm
RexRox(#7) is correct. Naturally, no one can stop you from translating something, but it’s possible to stop you from distributing your translations (even if it doesn’t include the game, it still includes part of it, it text!). Companies can sue you for any profit you made ($0 for most translation projects), lost sales (Would be difficult to prove this, I don’t think they would go for it), or just sort of a general damages covered under copyright law. The last option is the most likely thing a company would go for; because it’s not based on anything in particular, the monetary value of the lawsuit is pretty variable.
Well, this is all assuming these companies are up to starting an international lawsuit for no chance of gain aside from any damages they win. How much those would be and how likely they are to actually ever be paid, who can say. I would guess that these companies don’t really have the money to get involved in something like this. Even if they did, I’m pretty sure they would settle for just halting the distribution without any penalty, most companies HATE to actually get into court. That’s my opinion on the matter, but I’m not in the line of fire anyway.