The average internet user, for the most part, doesn’t care much for things like copyright. That’s not to say that they necessarily derive pleasure in disregarding our well-established intellectual property laws; rather, they just want what they want, and if they can’t get it from the putative source, they’re happy to turn elsewhere, and on the internet, there’s always an elsewhere.
The most recent example of this is a pseudonymous YouTuber who was forced to remove all of their videos featuring Nintendo game soundtracks after—you guessed it—Nintendo lodged over 500 copyright complaints. It’s not a terribly surprising move; Nintendo, like many other companies, jealously guards their intellectual property rights, as is their wont. No business likes to lose money to a free competitor, after all.
But there is the rub: Nintendo doesn’t have a competing product as such. There are the games that you can of course purchase, but if you’re looking for the soundtracks on Spotify or Apple Music or even on a CD, you’re out of luck. That’s why those videos were on DeoxysPrime’s channel, and why they were able to garner the attention that they did.
That doesn’t excuse the copyright violation, but perhaps it goes some way to explaining it. It’s impossible to say that no one would pirate Nintendo soundtracks if they were more readily available, but surely it would mitigate the issue. More than anything, it seems a curious decision by Nintendo to completely ignore the market that clearly exists for these soundtracks. Perhaps the answer, lie the princess, is simply in another castle.