- Joined
- Jul 19, 2020
I don't know where you got the idea that licenses are not enforceable, I think you might be a bit misled - the wider truth is that they're not considered anywhere as ironclad as an actual contract. But its already established law that you cannot take a copy of a movie you bought, set up chairs, and charge the public to watch it - Nintendo's arguments regarding tournaments of their games tends to lean on that as their comparison, that a tournament event with money involved via sponsors or ticket sales or just business interests is comparable to charging people to watch a movie. Since that particular clause has already been ruled to be enforceable in past rulings, they've had enough standing to be able to drag it out against the players that try to contest it. There's also trademark and branding considerations to be had, but that's more of the fallback argument if the main stuff doesn't pan out for them.It was ruled before that licenses are not enforceable by law and when they are, they can't go against the law. I don't know a lot about Canadian law but by they having a lot of anti-monopolistic and anti-corporativism laws, I imagine that Linus could have a good chance of winning.
As I said, its possible for a judge to make a ruling against Nintendo in such a situation - Especially in the modern era where game streaming is already arguably a public performance of a game for commercial interest. But you'd have to actually fight and argue it, it wouldn't be an easy win. There's also a serious risk of other major industry players siding with Nintendo, not Linus on this - A lot of them add additional language into their TOS to fence out live streaming, or have a separate Livestream agreement outside of the TOS, to allow them to control or shut down as they feel fit. A ruling that blanket just grants the right to public performances steps on that control they have, even if they don't currently exercise it, and there'd be vested interest in keeping that control. After all, there's a non-zero chance that in the future, games companies start to use these terms to push back and demand revenue from the licensed public performance of their software.
TL;DR Its going to be an expensive legal fight, and Nintendo does have a leg to stand on along with a huge coffer to fight it.