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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?
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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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).
'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.
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