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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?
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
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.
"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."
That's not what's happening here. They're telling a company (or team?) trying to sell the product for a profit not to do that. It doesn't help that their site for it touts "1400 GBA games, 1200 GBC games, 600 GB games"
Not saying I'm siding with Nintendo on this one, but the fact that they're expecting to make a profit ilegally off of Nintendo isn't helping their case any. You'll notice other free emulators are out there and not under legal scrutiny. (Note: That's not to say they won't down the road.)
Frankly, this is a road they should not have tried to travel. Who can seriously look at that system with that emulator and not expect Nintendo to go apeshit over it? Derrrr.
"Derp de derp."
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).
Most cartridges since the Famicom/NES have had country lock-out chips (kind of like DVD regions) but aside from a few notable examples there wasn't any kind of copy protection- there wasn't much need as cartridge counterfeiting is pretty difficult when there are custom chips like the SuperFX in them.
IIRC Street Fighter Alpha and Star Ocean both did employ encryption but I those were the only ones.
With the widespread availability of flash cartridges for the GBA I'm surprised Nintendo hasn't started throwing its weight around sooner. It's a shame for emulation fans like myself though,
I can understand why they'd go after the Tapwave Zodiac too, it can currently emulate NES games perfectly and SNES emulation is starting to make good progress, who wants to pay $30 for a GBA port of a SNES game when you can download the original for free and play it on the Zodiac?
I'm sure the fact that Nintendo is now selling expensive collector editions of its old NES games for the GBA in Japan has nothing to do with this.... It's been huge a success so I suspect they are now looking at re-releasing other classics and are making sure emulation isn't going to spoil business.
Actually, if you've ever read the crap that comes with the carts, and this has always been so since I first read them, they explicitly say you're not allowed to copy them for fair use, because they will repair or replace for a reasonable price.
Fortunately, that still doesn't prevent fair use copying from being legal. They can put whatever disclaimers and statements they want to in the packaging and at the end of all of the legal statements it still states that it is all subject to local laws and restrictions.
-PainKilleR-[CE]