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?
I find it strange and somewhat stupid that Nintendo hasn't tapped into this market... they should be teaming up with the people making emulators, rather than trying to stop the community from doing what they love. It's not like they're going to get any money from the Nintendo/SNES/Etc. at this point anyway. I can understand their frustration with a GBA emulator, but the others... just think of the possibilities, Nintendo!! Surely Nintendo couldn't hurt itself by teaming up with the creators of ZSNES and releasing a commercial version (rather like Linux commercial releases) that includes a bunch of games and some extra features (PDF guides for the games, maybe some touch-ups to the emulator, etc.). Plus, people would get a warm fuzzy feeling for knowing that they'd be collaborating with both Nintendo and emulator creators.
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
These guys seem to have stepped into legal hot water in several places.
- Emulating a video game platform is okay, but the patent Nintendo is claiming is against a program emulates multiple handheld videogame consoles based on analysing its input file to declare what format it has been given and therefore which console it needs to emulate. 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, but this is definitely something the write of such a program should have a lawyer look over before they release their product.
- Emulating a video game platform is okay, but if there are no legal non-cartrige games available for that platform, there's a problem. The Atari emulator community has managed to not just reverse engineer the platform, but have also reverse engineered development tools for that platform so there are some legal freeware Atari 2600 games in circulation. I don't think there are any freeware Game Boy Advance games in circulation yet.
- 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, but you can't legally do anything else with your backup copy and still hide behind the backup fair use shield.
- The moral justifiation that you can download from the internet what you legally have another copy of is not a legal one. Maybe it should be, but under today's laws it isn't so that's not a defense to hide behind.
In short, this seems like a tool that encurages piracy and cannot seem to come up with a "substation non-infringing functionality" yet. It should be held tight to the developer until somebody can come up with one... maybe a lawyer can help find one.
You're new here, aren't you?
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
"Virtual LCD" means that the emulator emulates an LCD and all its interactions with the emulated CPU, specifically the Hblank and Vblank states and the current scanline number. But still, any Game Boy emulator first published on the Internet before November 28, 2000, is prior art that a reasonably-funded defendant could use to invalidate most or all of this patent.
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.
"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."
Or we could just forget what's legal and simply do what's fair.
It was fair, though not legal, for Rosa Parks to sit in the front of the bus.
It was fair, though not legal in many states, for gay people ot have intimate relationships.
It's fair, though possibly not legal, for me to play my legaly purchased games from any media I choose on any platform I choose.
When we start doing what is legal instead of what is fair then we lose our most basic right and one that's not even in the constitution; our right to do no more or less than we would have done to ourselves. When we do what's fair then we might lose in the short term, but everyone wins in the long run.
TW
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]