The New York Times has run an article which attempts to claim that Nintendo is an advocate of music piracy through the comments of Animal Crossing‘s K.K. Slider. The offending comment from K.K. Slider: “Those industry fat cats try to put a price on my music, but it wants to be free.” Further, in the game K.K. Slider gives away copies of his music.
In The New York Times article, Tom Zeller, Jr. calls out Nintendo for having its “a guitar-toting puppy” support file-sharing. “…the music industry – another purveyor of digital goods – could not have been very happy when bloggers last week began sharing screen grabs from a popular new Nintendo game, which includes, among its many characters, a guitar-toting puppy who seems to extol the virtues of file-sharing,” Zeller wrote.
What Zeller failed to realize is that some file-sharing is legal, and there are artists out there who make their music available for download free of charge. Further, many independent and amateur musicians will put their music on peer-to-peer services for free so that people might get a taste of their material.
Further, it appears that Zeller is unaware of the numerous efforts Nintendo has taken to combat piracy, as well as protect its intellectual piracy.
Nintendo of America’s Perrin Kaplan said the following about The New York Times article: “People can read a lot into a little, but musician K.K. Slider — a guitar-playing cartoon dog — is saying only that he’s a free spirit who cannot be bought and sold for any amount of money… K.K. wanted his music to be free in the sense of being freed from his guitar, free from any constraints.” Kaplan went on to say, “As a dog, it’s understandable that he [K.K. Slider] would not want to deal with any ‘fat cats.'”
