Slashdot Mirror
Nintendo Patents Handheld Emulation, Cracks Down
mclove writes "Looks like Nintendo has recently been granted a patent that gives them new leverage in their fight against emulators: Patent 6,672,963 mainly appears to cover emulators like UltraHLE that are custom-tailored for particular games, but they're already using it to suppress a new Game Boy Advance emulator for the Tapwave Zodiac, Firestorm gbaZ, and there's no reason to think they won't start leveraging it against anyone else trying to emulate their systems." The reprinted lawyer's letter from Nintendo also notes: "Whether you have an authentic game or not, it is illegal to copy a Nintendo game from a cartridge or to download and play a Nintendo ROM from the Internet."
'The reprinted lawyer's letter from Nintendo also notes: "Whether you have an authentic game or not, it is illegal to copy a Nintendo game from a cartridge or to download and play a Nintendo ROM from the Internet." '
aren't consumers allowed to make backup copies of their electronic media?
There has got to be prior art for handheld emmulators. I've ran NES emmulators on my desktop for years now. You can't tell me this hasn't been done before on a handheld. What about the Super Mario Bros. game that I had on my TI-85?
[ ]
You *are* allowed to make backups and fair-use copies. Wailing lawyers don't change this fact.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Nintendo used to be the leader in video games and consoles, but now they've seriously lagged behind everyone else (Sony and MS primarily).
If I still bought Nintendo, I would stop after hearing this sort of cheapshot move.
Things like this are disturbing. It's become acceptable, in today's society, for a company to tell it's customers how they can and can't use their products. It's like a pencil manufacturer selling you a pencil, then saying you can only write on the paper they make. Doesn't make much sense to me, but what would I know.
C'mon - you know how in the back of the instruction manual they tell you it's illegal to make any kind of backup of your cartridge because it's unnecessary, and then cover their bets telling you they're not infringing on your statutory rights?
Software is software is software, and you are allowed to back up your software in case the original gets damaged. Period. Most of my old NES carts are unusable because they're so old. So is it unnecessary for me to backup the cart because Nintendo is going to buy me a new cart, or because I'm allowed to download a ROM and play it on an emulator?
(Yes, carts do deteriorate - it's called bit rot. Look into it before you flame.)
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
The PS2 contains a PS1 emulator...does that mean the PS2 is in violation of Nintendo's patent?
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
The reprinted lawyer's letter from Nintendo also notes: "Whether you have an authentic game or not, it is illegal to copy a Nintendo game from a cartridge or to download and play a Nintendo ROM from the Internet."
Basically Nintendo is saying "Now pay us again, you consumer piece of shit."
Apparantly they liked DirectTV's business model (i.e. extortion via letters from lawyers). One has to wonder if this is a first step in something greater.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
A very good point, and one that people sometimes forget. I love it when stores post signs saying "we're not responsible for blah blah". They can SAY that, but just saying it does not make it true.
So, as you said, making backups of your own ROMs only become illegal when Nintendo wins a court case against someone. What they say about the matter only tells you whether they would file suit or not in the first place.
However, I would caution you against ranting about your fair-use "rights" as though it's part of the Constitution. Fair use rights are entirely at the court's interpretation of what is "fair" or not. What you think is fair may not jive with the court's interpretation.
Two relevant links:
http://www.eff.org/IP/eff_fair_use_faq.html
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/
I'm not arguing that downloading ROMs of cartridges you own isn't fair use, only cautioning against making "fair use rights" arguments - because the default opinion of the court is going to be for the copyright holder, unless you can make an extremely good argument. In this case, I think you could, though.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Now, there's likely was that a multi-platform emulator can step around this limitation, like requiring the user to declare which emulation mode is to be used
Two words: Filename extension. On my computer, I have .nes set to launch FCE Ultra, .bin set to launch a DGen, and .gba set to launch VisualBoyAdvance.
I don't think there are any freeware Game Boy Advance games in circulation yet.
You think wrong. In fact, I myself have made some and have run them on hardware.
You can legally copy your cartriges to your computer (if you can) to make a backup copy that could later be used to restore a lost or damaged cartrige
I can also make copies and adaptations necessary to run a program on a given computer (17 USC 117).
The moral justifiation that you can download from the internet what you legally have another copy of is not a legal one.
The defense of owning a lawful copy (that is, an original Game Pak) does shift the burden of proof to the copyright owner to prove that the alleged infringer was not capable of making the copy, which raises a question of fact that can preclude summary judgment. The seventh amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides that civil suits where at least $20 is at stake will go before a jury, which brings into the picture jury nullification of copyright technicalities such as the DMCA.
Of course, nothing you read on Slashdot is legal advice; only your attorney can provide that.
Nintendo has traditionally been quite thorough in going after piracy and this crack down on emulation is nothing new. Their first breakthrough was discovering a multi-million dollar game piracy ring linked to the Taiwanese government during the NES heyday. Ever since, they have made piracy defense one of their top priorities. Through litigation, hardware design, and choice of media (cartridges vs. CDs with the N64) Nintendo reclaims all lost revenue it can.
I'm not saying this is a bad thing, it seems pretty reasonable for them to secure their market. Normally I would be aghast that Nintendo is threatening a form of emulation, something I hold dear. But they have a legal basis with this patent, so this is more than just strongarming from a big company (*cough* Sony vs. Bleem *cough*).
There were however some market tactics from Nintendo which I disapprove of such as inventory control. Back then NOA had so much clout, retailers that carried unlicensed Tengen games got a letter: "drop Tengen games or we pull our NES shipments". No license meant no royalty and no NOA quality-control to stop a crapflood of third-party games that destroyed the Atari VCS years before. At least it's good that Nintendo took Tengen to court and took care of matters legally in the end.
Freeware GBA games do exist. GBA is in fact becoming a rather popular hobbyist platform - there is a free compiler and lots of documentation out there. All you have to do is get a flash ROM, which are cheap and pretty easy to find - you simply upload your games using a USB adaptor into the GBA itself. gbadev.org has links to tutorials, places to get flash roms, and links to freeware games that people have created.
Why team up, and share the profits, when they can just file a patent, and keep any potential profits to themselves? That makes much more sense to me. It's also partially what they're doing.
Except for games rereleased on their handhelds.. you know, like, the mario brothers game for snes was rereleased on the GBA.
The games are their "property." They can do what they want with them, including keeping you from playing them
Oh the typical slashdot replies. How terrible it is that Nintendo are taking away people's rights? Well I personally don't see it that way. Imagine for a second that I started up a company that made Gameboys, compatible 100% with the Nintendo Gameboy. Essentially I'd be profiting of the design of the Gameboy without paying any money to Nintendo. This would be wrong. Right?
How is an emulator any different? If a company produces a GBA emulator for a Palm Pilot, even ignoring the fact that guaranteed the majority of it's users would be pirating the games for it (yes - they would, admit it), it's essentially a unlicensed gameboy compatible device.
This patent covers Nintendo against this happening, and is as such a very valid use of a patent, i.e. to protect their business interests from being ripped off by third parties.
Oh and no, I don't expect to be modded up BTW, being as I'm not towing the Slashdot party line of "oh my god, what about fair use?".
Although I do agree the patent on emulators is a bad idea, that is really the fault of the patent office for issuing it (and so many other stupid patents). Nintendo is just trying to defend their intellectual property, which when you consider the heavy competition they are facing these days is completely understandable.
Besides, this is no different than anything Microsoft or Sony has done.
Recently in Japan, Nintendo have been re-releasing some of their old 8-bit NES games on the GBA. So you can buy the original Super Mario Bros. on the GBA now, as well as many other old school NES games legally.
This patent no doubt ties in with the fact that Nintendo want to fleece their back-catalogue.
I wonder if they borrowed a certain GBA NES emulator to get the effect though?
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Emmulating games which are out of print is fine, but games which are still shipping in mass quantities?
I love those old games. I hear people argue for emulators that nintendo isn't using those old roms anyway.... well I think this is shortsighted. I mean we HAVE been seeing nintendo re-release some of these old games in various forms. The laws allow them intellectual property rights over these programs... and you cant blame them for trying to excercise those rights. They may yet have plans for the old games they own.
I am torn. The free software nut in me wants these legal battles to go away. but the truth is that most or ALL of those games would never have been written for free. I love free software... I am not perfect... but nearly all of the software I use is free.
I can't forget however, that I am the guy that grew up with an NES controller in my hand. I have never been a kid that spent a TON of time on it. I was just as likely to go outside and play as I was to sit down and play nintendo. OTOH I have spent much of my more recent life studying computers and software, and I realize that I owe that to those years of playing good old copyrighted, proprietary, video games.
When I was a kid I didn't worry about making RMS cry. I was too busy trying to figure out what that guy in zelda meant when he said "Master using this And you can have it!". I certainly don't think it should be illegal to make an emulator, or rip your roms for you own use. I strongly believe I should be able to do anything I want with the hardware I own (unless it causes some problem in society, like the death of my neighbors from radiation exposure). This issue DOES illustrate however, what is in my opinion a grey area in the free software movement.
This is the only area where I still have reservations about which side of the fence I want to be on. When I think that great games like Contra wouldn't have been created without the proprietary game market... I feel that maybe us free software guys should be careful what we wish for. Sure there are great free games out now. Bzflag is a good example. But Go look up NES on ebay and think about how many THOUSANDS of console games are out there. I want all these legal troubles to be a thing of the past... but at the same time I DON'T want to hurt the market that created these games.
I just don't know what the answer is anymore.
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
Listen. It's not fair use if you download a ROM off of the internet because it's not a backup YOU made. If you make the backup for private use and don't share it with anyone, then it's fine, but if you make a backup and post it on the internet, then that's obviously not for private use and thusly is why Nintendo's going after them.
Personally my ethics with emulation is that if the system is still available to be bought at most places then emulating it is very bad. Anything else I don't mind. Here's my reasoning. You probably would have to go through fifty hoops and pay out of the ass to get an old game that will probably be used so the company that made it isn't making any money off of you anyway. But with current games and consoles the companies haven't fully milked the games for their worth yet so emulation eats into their market, even if a large number of emulator players are downloading and playing ROMs because they can't afford the real game there's still some that are doing it to avoid paying any money. Since these are video games that take anywhere from 6 months to 3 years to make (when was the last time it took a musician 6 months to make an entire album?) for a a week , I'm more inclined to side with the "big bad" company rather than the emulators on this one.
Also, from what I can read (and I'm not a lawyer, of course) the patent is for "software implementation of a handheld video game hardware platform," which means to me that the emulation is for handheld hardware meant for gaming first and foremost. Don't go all "Nintendo's gone too far! They could possibly stop emulation of [blah] on [blah]!" because unless the first one reads "Game Boy" something, Nintendo probably couldn't give a shit. Nintendo's not SCO. Period.
Flame me away, whoo!
It was fair, though not legal, for Rosa Parks to sit in the front of the bus.
But was it fair? Not to the people who thought that she was stealing their space (though now I'm sure they feel differently, and as a society we have definately changed our perception of fairness in this case).
Were the purges in Russian fair? Depends what side you were on.
Does Nintendo think its fair that you can't emulate their games? Damn straight. Do you think it's fair? Hell no.
'Fairness' is not a useful way of determining right or wrong (or correctness, if you don't like the terminology).
I agree Sega is better, but Nintendo does not suck. They have created great titles just like Sega does. Sega and Nintendo are kind of teamed up. Sega now releases exclusive titles for the Nintendo GameCube AND Gameboy Advance.
Everyone complaining about fair use and backup copies, but lets be realistic. Very few of you out there have ever ripped a cartridge just to have a backup copy. If people were just making backup copies, Nintendo wouldn't be taking the actions they are taking. When you download a ROM and play it without buying the game, that is stealing. Don't lie to yourself, it's stealing, just like if you walked out of the store with the cartridge under your coat. If you actually like the games you play, you need to buy them or they will stop being made. This is basic economics; supply and demand. You cut off the demand, and they stop supplying. If you must pirate something, pirate an old NES ROM, or something outdated that no longer matters.
why would they?
as things stand currently they can sell all the old games as 'new' titles for gba, and that's pretty much what they've been doing. "ok, so you want to play arkanoid? hand over 30-40$ and here it is. what you say you already have bought it 3 times? well time to buy it again!".
as they(nintendo) are the only official source of carts there's no free(as in ones that would exist outside of hacker communities) versions of games like arkanoid that are trivial to write even.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Revolution was possible "back in the days" because the government and corporations did not have so much control over informatio - and so many ways to gather them. The way it is now, any large scale attempt will be squashed and branded as terrorism before they can even launch an attack. Combined with the fact that they will be branded as attacking the population and painted wrongfully in the media the general populace will most likely not support them either. And since you neither have control over a majority of the army it would be impossible to stage a coup-de-etat and overthrow the government by arms, as there is a standing policy "not to negotiate with terrorists", meaning it will end in bloodshed, but there will be no revolution.
For those who keep crying "fair use", let's assume for a second that it's 100% legal to backup every piece of software/electronic media that you own (tapes, CDs, DVDs, computer software, games ...)
... more specifically, an emulator that can emulate multiple consoles, and I believe one that runs on handhelds.
Where do emulators fit in to this?
It's not a backup of the actual console, it's a piece of software that has been created to "emulate" pieces of hardware (which yes, does contain some software too).
So where does this fit into "fair use"?
From what I've read, this isn't about whether or not you can make a back up of the game (which makes no sense, since how are you going to play a backup without using something that the original game wasn't intended for?), it's about the actual emulators
No, Nintendo's always been like this when it comes to the rights of the legitimate cart owner. Remember that shit in the back of manuals basically saying that the mere act of copying the game is illegal, no matter WHAT you did with it, oh but 'this may not apply where you live' or some shit along those lines.
Nintendo KNOWS that emulation, in and of itself, is 100% LEGAL. They also know that in and of itself, dumping ROMs is also 100% LEGAL. The only thing that is illegal, is unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material that one does not have license to distribute. If the copyright owner says yes, Nintendo has no say (of course, this only applies to third party games). If you code the ROM yourself, Nintendo has ABSOLUTELY no say.
They know how far they're overreaching. They just want to scare as many people as they can into thinking that they're right.
Nintendo makes great fucking games, but their lawyers are some of the worst bottomfeeders I've ever seen (outside of SCO, anyway).
FC Closer
Which free emulators which satisfy the claims of the patent? You did RTFP, didn't you?
Yeah, competition often has that effect.
Firstly, the whole issue of old games ROMs and Abandonware is very grey anyway. The games companies and authors that own the rights to older games do not accept or approve of the free distribution of ROMs or Abandonware - it's more of a case that there is simply no point from a financial perspective in them taking up legal litigation against ROM/Abandonware sites. If they did, they would need to prove some financial loss as a result and how can any of them prove financial loss from the free distribution of a game that is no longer sold anyway?
Secondly, the interest in emulation is growing globally. To the games manufacturers, this purely means that more and more people are now playing more and more older games free of charge rather than spending money on new games. Sure, the volume of sales of each game is much more than it was, say, 15 years ago in the days of the Commodore Amiga, but then development costs of each game have skyrocketed also so the overall profits are much tighter. The console and games manufacturers definitely do not like free emulation, no matter how much emulation sites claim to be doing it to "preserve games historically", etc. etc.!
From my perspective, the state of computer games is similar to that of the state of music sales today. People are buying more games and music than they ever were but the market for both is now totally saturated - in the case of music, most sales result from people buying older music, possibly through replacing of old vinyl LPs with CDs.
With older games, a few companies have made commercially emulated games available on some platforms (e.g. "Atari Arcade Hits") but these have not sold particularly well because anybody who has an Internet connection can go get hold of MAME (or another free emulator) and a few ROMs and get them for free.
It's going to be interesting to see how the games companies react to this in future.
The music companies are already seeing that they cannot simply continue fleecing the customer for more and more money without putting out truly innovative product unless (in their minds) they start bringing in DRM and copy-protected CDs. In actuality, it's simply about adaption to a change in customer demand, all of whom want the ability to put music on portable players, download individual songs at a fair price, etc.
In the same way, emulation reflects a change in customer demand to the games market. There's a lot of older people, myself included, who spend more money buying CDs of albums released 20 years ago and more time playing games released on platforms that are anything up to 20 years old rather than buying the new products.
In the cases of both music and games, the vendors in both markets need to realise that the markets are now totally saturated and that not everybody wants the latest CD by the latest boy band or the latest state of the art graphics in a game.
It's time for both markets to adapt to customer demand and rather than spending billions of Dollars/Pounds/Euros forcing sub-standard new product down our throats with advertising, they need to simply listen to the customers.
Most emulation fans will have no problem paying for commercial emulators or old ROMs provided that the price is fair to reflect the age of the products, in a similar way that we expect back-catalogue CDs to be cheaper than current releases.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
#1 - Emulation of chips has been around for a heck of a hard time. Emulation itself shouldn't be a patentable concept anymore.
#2 - Emulation of a system on a less-powerful system has been around since people were programming Commodore 64 emulators that would run on a 286 or an Amiga.
#3 - They claim that frameskipping is something they invented. BULLSHIT. See the C64/Amiga emulators above, or any other emulator ever written.
#4 - The moving of an emulator from desktop to handheld system isn't anything new. Even if they somehow claim that prior art doesn't exist, handheld systems have forever had games and applications programmed for them, the porting of emulator applications is merely "logical next step" and CANNOT be patentable under patent regulations.
Fuck you, Nintendo.
'Fairness' is not a useful way of determining right or wrong (or correctness, if you don't like the terminology).
Well, if by "fairness" you mean the "sniff test", I agree.
However, it is possible to try to create a definition of fairness that can be used to create criteria of the rightness and wrongness of actions. Jowhn Rawls" constructed one such theory, which is at its heart very simple. One way of explaining it is to imagine that we are about to sit down to play a game, and have to agree in advance on the rules governing each player's role. The rules are fair if we would agree to it not knowing in advance which role we are going to be assigned.
This is actually a lot like the Jewish concept of tsedaqah, which is usually translated as "rigtheousness" but could also be construed to mean "objective". Objective in this sense: you should remove the overwhelming effect of your subjective stake in the outcome of an action from deciing on whether it is right or wrong. For example you should assist the poor because their condition objectively requires assistance and it won't really hurt you that much to help.
Of course taking this approach means that you then get to argue about whose definition of "fair" is correct. However it's an intrinsically more honest process, because you have to accept the consequences of your definition, whereas the sniff test doesn't put any constraints on you.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.