I'm going to go out on a limb here: nearly everyone on HN respects and admires Bill Watterson, the creator of "Calvin and Hobbes." And yet Watterson has been quite protective of his cartoon creations, basically not allowing anyone to re-use them to make merchandise or new content, even though Watterson would become filthy rich off of it, and the world would likely be a better place with more Hobbes window-suction dolls than Garfields.<p>But isn't it Watterson's right to do this? He's an artist, and he wisely saw that the crass commercialization of his beloved creations would, in the long run, reduce their nostalgic value. Hell, maybe he isn't even thinking in that way. In any case, I think it's possible that C&H holds such a special place in our consciousness because of Watterson's reluctance to license his characters, and <i>good for him</i>.<p>Now imagine a situation in which a hard-working t-shirt maker puts the images of C&H on shirts -- shirts for which he risks a tremendous amount of capital to produce -- and makes a boatload of money selling $8 t-shirts? Is Watterson harmed financially? For some people, the answer is "No", because Watterson was not making money off of C&H t-shirts in the first place. And copying static images certainly doesn't remove them from Watterson's possession.<p>Yet I would argue again that Watterson's artistic intent has been damaged...and that even though he hasn't been <i>physically</i> robbed, a well-intentioned t-shirt maker has watered down the value of Watterson's creation.<p>Is this not the same situation as the OP here? Is it different because Nintendo is a big corporation that should be doing better things with its time? Perhaps...size does matter. But the principle is arguably the same, and for anyone to say that Nintendo is going overboard and doesn't need to protect its intellectual property, that requires making a huge assumption about Nintendo's strategy on how it wishes Mario Bros. to be experienced, same as it's a huge assumption to say that Bill Watterson doesn't know what he's doing when he refuses to license the use of C&H.<p>More context. This is Watterson's opinion on turning C&H into a film:<p><a href="http://www.salon.com/2013/10/17/calvin_and_hobbes_creator_bill_watterson_gives_rare_interview/" rel="nofollow">http://www.salon.com/2013/10/17/calvin_and_hobbes_creator_bi...</a><p>> <i>Watterson also confirmed that an animated “Calvin and Hobbes” movie won’t happen:</i>
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> <i>The visual sophistication of Pixar blows me away, but I have zero interest in animating Calvin and Hobbes. If you’ve ever compared a film to a novel it’s based on, you know the novel gets bludgeoned. It’s inevitable, because different media have different strengths and needs, and when you make a movie, the movie’s needs get served. As a comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes works exactly the way I intended it to. There’s no upside for me in adapting it.</i><p>Watterson is incredibly protective of his own creation, so far as to not even give Pixar -- legendary artists in their own right -- a chance to entertain millions of people with the goodness of C&H. Yet I don't think that makes him a copyright-villain.