Vast Aire does NOT own the soundtrack to Super Metroid, Twitch!
1If you'll indulge me and my garish thumbnail for a moment, I'm still a bit miffed about some nonsense that happened not THAT long ago... although long enough that it didn't bother me enough to put up a stream archive without being fully aware of the situation I'd just encountered.
Basically, with Nintendo no longer enforcing strict control over its intellectual property when it comes to fan works of a non-defamatory nature, we're back to the wild west of copyright claims in a lot of ways. I'm not going to pretend like the former was "better"... but at least it was technically correct and not trapped in a weird legal limbo that literally no one will care to deal with, much less resolve.
As such, a musical artist by the name of "Vast Aire" essentially decided to sample the intro theme to Metroid... specifically the version used in Super Metroid, and turn it into the back beat loop for his rap about... um... some generic "I'm better than you" boasting. Sure. Nice.
It's apparently been the status quo for YEARS now that anyone who streams Super Metroid to Twitch will get their gameplay muted because the system regards this as the original copyright holder for the song, and it's easier to just remove potentially offending material than to get into any detail about who owns what and whether or not the claim is legitimate. So, my case isn't even at all unique.
At least they seem to know someone who beat Super Metroid? That's cool. Although they recorded part of it by pointing a camera at another screen, so... that's not. (Hopefully they didn't just pull up someone's YouTube video and externally record that?)
I don't really recommend giving them any attention, however... and anyone seeking answers or redress are laughed out as whiny "nerds" for wanting their non-monetized gameplay footage to retain its audio.
Twitch is similarly useless on the matter, because their means of dealing with copyright is even more archaic than YouTube's, and they don't have nearly enough people working on it to handle the unscalable challenge of properly negotiating all the claims they get. Just chucking the audio and plugging their ears is pretty much their idea of an answer.
I fully expect the archives to expire and be automatically deleted before anything is done with my counterclaim. So this is my monument to Twitch and Vast Aire. Congratulations, guys! You're the real heroes here.
"The Internet is about the free exchange and sale of other people's ideas."
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Originally streamed at:
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Maybe just a little bitter about things:
twitter.com/yuugijoou
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