Bump, interesting thread, but speaking of sharing original files, I think staying safe is a sure bet, but honestly, as you put it, having just model files and textures and sprites shouldn't be a problem in of itself since you can't replicate the gaming experience with just those. One might argue that people can use these files and put them in monetized games, but those usually never turn out well, see Era's Adventure 3D, Mole Kart, and that Chinese knockoff of Super Mario Galaxy. But even the free stuff can be taken down, just as what happened with Super Mario 64 HD, since I believe it too closely replicated the experience of Super Mario 64. Still, that brings up a question: you could make pretty-much-perfect Super Mario Bros. SNES replicas with Super Mario Bros. X (which isn't taken down, although its project by the main developers is halted because an alleged, not proven legal notice by Nintendo) so again, it's a gray issue of replicating gaming experience.

On another hand, some cloud sites even have an issue with uploading mere game files, including MediaFire. My sister had some notice by MediaFire with problems on Kinopio.arc, but I think it's some algorithm bullcrap but why would it filter out that file, I don't know. It's copyrighted, yes, but... a lot of other files in my MediaFire, which INCLUDES .brstms, .pac/.pcs (Brawl-specific files), .psas (Brawl-specific moveset files), and others remain untouched. That's really weird.

There's a huge disadvantage of choosing to make file sharing illegal in which is makes it very inconvenient for everyone here, given that this is a ROM hacking site, which file sharing should be reasonably expected. And while there is some small legal caution, it makes me wonder why we even have Models Resource, Spriters' Resource, where Nintendo HAS acknowledged their existence in the past, which host a boatload of copyrighted content, like complete high-quality rips and even fully rigged Mario models (and some models even have animations!). Why is it okay for those sites to host huge amounts of content, but we can't? Is it because they're in .png or .dae or .obj while game files we can't share like .arc aren't extracted and decompiled? Again, I'm baffled by we can't really share stuff like .arc files but we have a lot of sites that share .brstms.

tl;dr copyright is a hot, convoluted mess

Posted by SuperMario64DS

I'm curious about this. What did they say?

@StapleButter I recall tons of Mario Kart stuff disappearing from MediaFire's servers because an email at 'NintenTo.com' requested that they'd be taken down.

I don't remember exactly, but RandomTalkingBush, a prominent member of that site, has said something like "They said, 'it's okay if you upload Pokemon Black and White sprites to this site but ONLY after the game is released'". So it seems like they're totally cool with it, and even I can get on board with that.