Skip to main content

SEGA censors Shining Force III videos

Submitted by kmeisthax on Tue, 11/27/2012 - 23:11 in News

The title of the article pretty much says it point-blank. SEGA is using DMCA takedowns to censor videos relating to Shining Force III, a Sega Saturn JRPG which was only translated in incomplete form and is only now getting a fan translation patch due to the system's extremely obtuse hardware. I'm going to just assume it had something to do with the translation patch, but the videos being taken down are fairly scattershot - even people talking about the game into a webcam with no uncleared music or video or what have you in the video are getting DMCA'd. In some cases it's enough to get their whole YouTube channel taken down. This also extends to partners such as TotalBiscuit who had some videos taken down for being about Shining Force III.

What this really shows is how broken the DMCA request system is, more generally how broken the copyright system is. The only legitimate purpose copyright has is to protect the sale rights of an artist. It should not be extending to censorship. Sadly, between copyright's broad-ranging prohibitions on derivative works and the lack of protections on DMCA abuse, censorship is still quite common.