Slashdot Mirror
The FSF's Campaign Against the Nintendo 3DS
Max Hyre writes "The Nintendo 3DS's terms of so-called service, and the even more grotesquely-misnamed privacy policy, make it clear that you are in the service of Nintendo. Specifically, anything you do, write, photograph, or otherwise generate with the 3DS is Nintendo's possession, for them to use however, whenever, and for as long as they want. On the other hand, if you do something they don't like, they're prepared to turn your device into a doorstop — and you gave them permission when you started using it. And if you have a child's best interests at heart, don't give it to anyone too young to know to never use her real name, type in an address or phone number, or take any personally-identifiable photos. They might, at best, end up in a Nintendo ad."
Is there any way I could interpret this as Sony's fault?
DefectiveByDesign.org is run by the FSF You can read the tiny little letters at the bottom of the page.
In soviet russia the government regulates the companies.
Time to burn some karma, I guess...
There's this strange perception around some parts (particularly around here) that Nintendo are somehow "more ethical" or "consumer-friendly" than the other console manufacturers. This overlooks the fact that Nintendo are the people who normalised console region locking (and who are still trying to push and extend it even now, when Sony and MS have decided they're not interested any more), cracked down on homebrew whenever they can and put out consoles which don't even give so much as a tiny whiff of an "OtherOS" or "PS2 Linux kit" walled garden. In fact, going off their track record, they'll even try to sue you if you have a job they don't approve of and make a post on your blog saying you like one of their games (though I seem to remember they did apologise to the young lady in that particular case after it sparked an outcry).
Ok, they've probably got a way to go until they beat the Sony CD-rootkit fiasco (which didn't actually stem from Sony's gaming division anyway). But in pretty much every other respect, it's hard to say that they're any better than Sony - and I'd personally say that they're more anti-consumer than MS's gaming division (who don't seem particularly evil these days, even if they do occasionally do "inept" or "stupid" over something like Games for Windows Live).
I suspect Nintendo get a free pass from many due to a combination of nostalgia and the fact that they were the industry's underdog for two console cycles. One could perhaps draw parallels with Apple, if one really, really wanted to burn karma. It's not always correct to assume that the underdogs are any more ethical than the.. erm... overdogs. Reflexively and uncritically back the underdogs in every case and you may find yourself in a very uncomfortable position when they actually break through (feel free to insert Egypt/Libya comments here as appropriate to your own political persuasion).
"By accepting this Agreement or using a Nintendo 3DS System or the Nintendo 3DS Service, you also grant to Nintendo a worldwide, royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive and fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display your User Content in whole or in part and to incorporate your User Content in other works, in any form, media or technology now known or later developed, including for promotional or marketing purposes. (Chapter 1, Nintendo 3DS End User License Agreement)"
DefectiveByDesign.org is run by the FSF You can read the tiny little letters at the bottom of the page.
Or you can read the great big letters at the top of the page: "Defective by Design.org A campaign by the Free Software Foundation."
Not legal in many jurisdictions, and not enforceable. Check into your local laws, but most countries are sane about that kind of thing: specifically you cannot preemptively sign away your copyright on things you haven't even created yet.
That said, I wouldn't buy the handheld anyway. My cell phone is good enough for casual gaming on the bus, and I have better things to do with my time than sit around playing video games... if I'm not at home, I'm either travelling or doing something. If I am at home, and the mood to play a video game strikes me, I have much better systems available to me than a handheld.
Now I'm definitely not doing it.
I'm actually one of the apparently few people who really likes 3D tech of all kinds, and could have possibly bought it just for that (I don't really play games much anymore). Still I figured it could be fun to play with.
But this crap sucks all the enjoyment out of it. If I'm not going to have control over what I buy, then I'm not going to buy it at all.
extreme fundamentalist decisions
I know that we're reached a point in humanity where culture, politics and lifestyle have globalised and we're accelerating toward a totalitarian's wildest dreams on groupthink... but I don't think we're at the point that the FSF should be called "extreme fundamentalists".
Examples of extreme fundamentalism:
- Obey this book or you go to Hell - since you're ignoring the book, let me help you there!
- Science provides the answer to every question - including the unfalsiable ones!
- An eye for an eye - so let me burn out your eyes!
- All property is good - I kill you if you're starving and you take some of my food store!
- All property is bad - I want your hammer to smash stuff up!
etc.
Examples of positions probably founded in some ideal which are not extreme fundamentalism, and which may apply to the FSF:
- Don't grant anyone the right to do anything its wants with any information it can obtain off you.
- Don't grant anyone the privilege to destroy your stuff at will.
- Expose people who try to do either of the above in order to spread awareness and modify behaviour.
- Oh, while you're here - if it doesn't harm you, how about sharing instead of hoarding?
It's sad but it does seem to be the case. Maybe they have become disillusioned after years of trying to raise awareness and finding that the common folk just didn't care. If they speak about the importance of free software principles, their words will fall on deaf ears. But if they aggressively raise these red herring issues that the average person can relate to, they will get some much wanted attention. It's hard to tell whether they will win any permanent mind share this way.
Even though Stallman is absolutely right about free software, the message of bright red colours, screaming slogans and extreme statements does paint the FSF in a bad light and will probably put many people off.
FSFe seems to be much more reasonable: maybe the two are playing a game of good cop/bad cop?
The extra problem, with modern electronic devices, is that the absurd terms can often be enforced automatically, which makes them hard for anybody without significant technical knowledge to avoid, and hard for anybody without significant legal backing to seek redress for after the fact.
The practice of printing crazy shit vaguely grounded in a wet dream of copyright law on packaging goes back at least as far as Edison cylinders. However, an Edison cylinder wasn't going to phone home to the mothership and automatically enforce the terms whenever it got within range of an internet connection. If you did something in breach of the shrinkwrap EULA, the burden was on them to find out and sue you. Now, many of the terms can be enforced automatically, and it is on you to demonstrate that you were wronged in some legally actionable way and that the clickwrap is unenforceable.
In this case, Nintendo appears to be claiming the right to hoover up, and use for any purpose, basically anything stored on the hardware, and to brick the hardware if they don't like its state. Both of these activities would be quite easy to do automatically. It may not be entirely true that "possession is nine tenths the law"; but starting from the position where the opposing party has already done unto you, and you have to fight to keep them from getting away with it is not a pleasant business...
There's little data you can create on a 3DS using built-in software and purchasable games. It's mostly just pictures and StreetPass data. StreetPass data is already broadcast promiscuously to every other 3DS you come near, so it's hardly going to be considered 'private information' by the owner (or shouldn't, if they have any sense).
Nintendo collecting this information and using it for anything public and that anyone might object to would be foolhardy, as they'd have to navigate privacy laws. Even aside from COPPA etc., minors are legally unable to sign contracts, and that includes clickwrap EULAs. Nintendo would have to obtain written consent from the (potentially minor) players in order to use their pictures or other personal information. Aggregated game statistics are something that noone is likely to object to being publicly disseminated, even if the legal basis for its collection is murky/invalid.
There is a built-in web browser but I'm skeptical that anyone would do serious web content creation from a 3DS and care that Nintendo could theoretically lay claim to it.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Sure, the person who owns the 3DS might have agreed to the terms, but what if a friend comes along and takes a picture using the device? They haven't agreed to allow Nintendo to use their picture.
Virtually all services and products produced which are useful or fun in some way have got dodgy ToS' or EULAs or other disclaimers that screw the user's rights. At this rate if I boycott each and every company who's been or is currently being a dick towards the consumer, there'll be nothing left.
Not that it's a bad thing for the FSF to make such hostile agreements public of course. But having said that, I doubt the FSF would support buying any modern console given they are all from dodgy companies and/or have dodgy terms/EULAs. So what's left? Certainly not the PC - the prime platform is Steam these days, and I find it hard to believe the FSF could support something like Steam for a multitude of reasons.
Might as well just not play any games... except for the FLOSS stuff. If that's the case, I'd get a new hobby. The FSF sure makes life fun. Maybe the solution is to realize things are fucked, and just go with it. Better to not be ignorant of the state of the world, and at least get some enjoyment out of it. It's the only reason why I can stand using Steam - don't want to sound like a bitter old bastard later on in life while every else is enjoying themselves. :)
I have to agree. Where's my Gnu Call software to replace Skype now that there's a massive impetus to move away from MS-owned Skype? We already have all the components in place and it's a "high priority" thing for the FSF apparently but yet - nothing. SIPWitch has been around since 2008 in 0.0000000.0.000.001 releases and there's no sight of how it will replace a Windows binary, how it will become as ubiquitous as they want it to, how well it actually works when scaled up, there's no push to use it or test it or hack on it etc.
I've always considered the FSF "the petition kid". They like to stand up and shout whenever they see an injustice but, overall, they don't get much done towards showing a better way. Most GNU projects, with the exception of a handful of "huge" projects like gcc, are on the backburners most of the time - hell, the one that pretty much started it all (HURD) "is still some way from being ready for daily use". I always worry when a project I need is on http://savannah.gnu.org/ because my experience is that most things on there tend to die quicker than they would elsewhere.
Want to impress me, FSF? Stop faffing about moaning about idiots who voluntarily sign away their lives without checking, and concentrate on a couple of your main core and high-priority projects that are sadly neglected (or even in some cases non-existent).
specifically you cannot preemptively sign away your copyright on things you haven't even created yet.
Nonsense. That's the basis of most employment contracts, recording contracts, publishing contracts etc.
I, for example, work for "insert massive international technology conglomerate" and they own the rights to ALL work I do during the time oft he contract including work I _MAY_ do in the future. That was the terms of my employment contract - and they can in fact do _anything_ they see fit with _anything_ I do during the instigation and termination of the agreement (it is a matter of debate whether this includes work I do during company hours or my own projects at home.
So, I'm fairly certain they can write that into a contract and make it enforceable... The problem is that this is a "license" not a contract which brings up the thorny issue of enforcement.
You would be on good, or at least interesting, legal grounds by saying that you did not agree to the terms provided. The "contract" provided by Nintendo, at least in UK terms, could be seen as abusive as it can not be terminated (unlike my employment contract). I find it unlikely that the clause "or using a Nintendo 3DS System" would be valid in that it means that you are bound by action (not contract) to an agreement not provided with the device you are using - that is to say you would have no idea that you had agreed to the license or even know what the license terms are just by playing Metroid... kinda stupid. Well, those are just random thoughts - I'm not sure anything like this has actually shown up in court so the number of possible ways to defend yourself and the the "provider" to defend themselves is currently a bit of an unknown.
At least the agreement is non-exclusive!
I have no idea why Nintendo have produced such a draconian license for, what is essentially, a toy.
I'm not an lawyer but I have to work with dozens and dozens of damn software licenses and contracts every day - it's tiresome.
on the other side the tone that the FSF uses comes across as kind of lunatic
what is lunatic is a company daring to be able to claim the rights to your name, private info.
Read radical news here
That's right. Extreme fundamentalist freedom- and democracy-mongers!
They should take a little bit of fascism with their democracy, for a healthy balance... ;)
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
The 3DS is region locked. First handheld ever to be so. Every Nintendo home console since the year dot has been region locked. Sony ditched region locking for games on the PSP and PS3. The 360 has region locking, but while it used to be mandatory for certification, MS leave it up to the publishers these days and most of them don't use it. Earlier handhelds such as the Gameboy, GBA and DS were probably not region locked because it was simply too much hassle to put the extra gumpf needed for it into the handhelds at the time while keeping size etc down. And not only does Nintendo region lock, but they also have a paternalist, authoritarian approach to which games can come out in which regions - witness The Last Story getting locked as Japanese-only, despite the success of previous Mistwalker games in the west.
I have no particular brief for MS. I own 360, a PS3 and a Wii (as well as a PSP, a 3DS and a high-end gaming PC). I like my 360 - and I like my PS3. Admittedly, Sony are in my bad books at the moment because I've just had to change my credit card thanks to them (which does tend to grate a bit). I don't tend to beat-up on them in the long term, though, because there are always plenty of others to do that. While at the same time, Nintendo do a lot of other things that are really, really bad (and if you are in Europe, then region locking is really, really bad) and generally seem to get away unscathed - indeed, with a little halo.
I've also got no idea why on earth you think that I just want games full of space marines. A quick glance at my posting history will show that games I've written nice things about lately include Valkyria Chronicles and Ar Tonelico Qoga, both of which have a distinctly non-space-marine aesthetic. In fact, Halo bores me rigid (though I do have a soft spot for Gears of War, largely because it's just so ridiculously over the top).
The absence of a browser in the 360 is an oddity, I'll admit. I've never really understood why they never put one in, given that the Wii and PS3 both have them (though the Wii's is borderline unusable and the PS3's is only marginally better). But to be honest, a browser is pretty low on the list of things that most people want from their consoles. Decent online multiplayer functionality tends to rank a bit higher on the list - and has yet to appear on any Nintendo console.
Just saying.
Legal or not, enforceable or not, this is hostile behavior on the part of Nintendo.
It really is time that companies pay a price for being hostile to their customers, don't you think?
And history has shown that legal or not, when a powerful corporation's legal department wants to go after someone who doesn't have endless resources, there is a de facto enforcement.
You are welcome on my lawn.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htTs9CC52cA She brings up some pretty interesting points. I was thinking about getting one as well but I'm definitely not anymore, not after this. I've also seen a few sites defending Nintendo because it "protects against piracy". When I asked the girl who covered this on her youtube channel she said she thinks it's not about piracy at all, but that Nintendo is using Piracy as an excuse to radically control its users and profit off of them. Interesting points, even if a bit "extreme".
Not legal in many jurisdictions, and not enforceable. Check into your local laws, but most countries are sane about that kind of thing: specifically you cannot preemptively sign away your copyright on things you haven't even created yet.
Legal or not, enforceable or not, Nintendo can afford more lawyers than you.
FTFY.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
All hail the glorious CentiPod!
Did they lose money to the flashcarts?
I know several people with DS units, all of them have flashcarts and bought the DS specifically because of the convenience offered by a flashcart. In fact, of these people i doubt any of them would have bought a DS if it weren't for the ability to load a large number of games onto a single portable unit, without the hassle of carrying around a big stack of tiny cards that are easy to lose.
Considering nintendo make a profit on every DS sold, they have actually benefitted from such people.
I certainly wouldn't have bought a DS if i would have been forced to carry round a load of carts in addition to the unit itself.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
The FSF does advocacy, not code. I contribute to a project that had a request for contributors on the front page of the FSF site for about a year (which netted us a total of 0 patches). The FSF will happily say that something is a priority project, but that just means that they think that you should spend your time on it. They won't pay for people to work on it.
We occasionally get Stallman complaining that we're using the LGPL, not the GPL, and trying to force us to move to LGPLv3 (not going to happen - several downstream projects are GPLv2-only, and LGPLv3 is not GPLv2-compatible), but that's the closest that we come to having any contributions from the FSF. We don't even get much support from the rest of the GNU project - bugs that prevent us from compiling are not classed as release blockers by the GCC team.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
This comment is all kinds of stupid.
No, it's a fairly common viewpoint among rational Nintendo customers. But it does omit Nintendo's battle with pirates. I think the DS and its latest incarnations is a neat little device and so I purchased a certain cartridge for it recently for $5 from some Chinese site. Unfortunately upon visiting the site to retrieve the latest firmware for their cart, I noticed that they were also hosting movies and roms for the latest games (of all regions) in their file directory tree. This is reality. You might not see it here but you can walk down the street in some Asian nations and pick up every game for the DS on a tiny little cart for very little money ($50?). On the other hand, I want to tinker with what I paid for! My device? Then I'll run what I want to run on it.
Nintendo does well because their business model is sensible. They make money on their hardware.
So that's interesting because if they make money on their hardware, why do they care what I do with it after I buy it? Why don't they market it as a gaming/development platform? Why don't they just release all their tool chains for everyone to use to develop on their systems if they already make money on the hardware? I mean, you'd probably sell more platforms that way, right? Why do I need to pay some absurd amount of money for a developer's license and a kit to play with them? Perhaps because their business model also relies on a walled garden and though they may make money on the console, the real money comes from sales of games for that console. I think if you had the numbers, you'd see that their profit model is not a whole lot different than Sony or MS. Everyone plays that game.
They also offer things that everyone wants. MS fanboys need to realise that not everyone wants to play as a big fat space marine or some other "extreme" character doing the same damn thing in every sequel while spurting out god awful dialog that sounds like it was written by the 13 year olds play the game.
Having just played through Beautiful Katamari and Rapala Bass Pro Fishing on my 360 last night, I have to question this statement (not that fishing games don't exist for the Wii). I think your statement works well generically. Observe: (MS|Nintendo|Sony) fanboys need to realise that not everyone wants to play as a (big fat space marine|big fat Italian plumber) or some other ("extreme"|"cute") character doing the same damn thing in every sequel while spurting out (god awful dialog|It's a me, a Mario|PikaPikachu) that sounds like it was written by the (13 year olds|racists) play the game.
So I'm not seeing how you feel Nintendo is worse than the competition. Your comment is uneducated fanboy verbal masturbation at best and not surprisingly all the other little uneducated xbots gave you a +5 interesting for spouting crap.
I think the key here is that the three big names have their ups and downs. Why on earth do you act like there are no "downs" with Nintendo? If price is important to you, go with Nintendo. The Wii was the first of the three I bought. If graphics are important to you, go with the PS3. If online FPS is important to you, go with the XBox 360. If offline multiplayer is important to you, go with the Wii. Etc, etc. I own all three. And I play all three. Your post ironically makes you look like the fan boy and RogueyWon look like a well tempered gamer. Some of your acclamations for Nintendo are more than questionable ...
My work here is dung.
creationism is the belief that we are all defective by design and Nintendo is your God.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I eagerly await enlightenment as to how automatically assigning Nintendo a worldwide license to do whatever they want with pictures taken by a 3DS will battle piracy...
In virtually all relevant jurisdictions(ie. ones where people actually have money) copyright infringement is already illegal, often pretty harshly so, and in a nontrivial subset of those regions, cracking DRM schemes is as well, no clickwrap required. The "rights" that Nintendo is claiming in their EULA are either wildly irrelevant to piracy(except in the sense that grabbing copyrighted material produced by others on hardware they purchased from Nintendo is pretty damn piratical on Nintendo's part...) or not at all clearly legal(destroying somebody else's property because an "unauthorized peripheral" was connected to it) or an uneccessary duplication of existing, non-contractually-based law(copyright violation is illegal even if the clickwrap doesn't say so, DMCA-esque laws hold in a number of areas, again without the assistance of clickwrap).
This EULA is a mixture of invasive, redundant, and abusive, regardless of how much the evil pirates did or didn't cost them last round.
If it's no big deal, damn_registrars, please post your name, address, and telephone number here.
I'm inclined to speculate that there might, just might, be a difference between the terms of a contract of employment, and a license provided with a hardware/software combination. I'm not even sure that the catch-all clauses in employment contracts are enforceable for inventions or creations that don't directly relate to the business of the employer, but I'm too lazy/busy to look up case law on that one.
Maybe the solution is to realize things are fucked, and just go with it.
No. the real solution is to change the fact that these stupid things are lawful. FSF has a nice example, but the wrong target. They should target the law and politics for making these absurd situations possible. The law should protect you from these situations, not encourage them. Nintendo is only guilty of using the possibilities they were given. Target the people responsible for giving Nintendo these possibilities.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Where's my Gnu Call software to replace Skype now that there's a massive impetus to move away from MS-owned Skype?
http://www.gnutelephony.org/index.php/GNU_Telephony
GNU Telephony is a project to enable anyone to use free as in freedom software for telephony, and with the freedom to do so on any platform they choose to use. We also wish to make it easy to use the Internet for real-time voice and video communication, and in fact for all forms of real-time collaboration. Finally we wish to make it possible to communicate securely and in complete privacy by applying distributed cryptographic solutions. Our goal is to enable secure and private real-time communication worldwide over the Internet that is free as in freedom, and is also free as in no cost too!
Dilbert RSS feed
If you purchase a device second hand then you have not agreed to anything. Does their terms of service deny you the right to sell the device? Does their terms of service require you to inform the purchaser of any agreements?
And if those are not the case, an they take your data and use it, then THEY have broken the law. Right?
Sanctioning this and allowing it to exist on their servers is pretty extreme:
http://www.gnu.org/music/free-software-song.html
Now I'm definitely not doing it.
I'm actually one of the apparently few people who really likes 3D tech of all kinds, and could have possibly bought it just for that (I don't really play games much anymore). Still I figured it could be fun to play with.
But this crap sucks all the enjoyment out of it. If I'm not going to have control over what I buy, then I'm not going to buy it at all.
I take it that you only use Free Software then? According to the EULA You don't own Windows, the XBox, the Playstation, any of their respective games, and add to the list nearly all proprietary software. Next time, before you click "accept", scroll through and see exactly what rights you're giving up. (At work, I recently clicked "accept" and agreed to waive my company's rights to a jury trial, and allow the software developer to choose the arbitrator.)
Even with the GPL you are giving up some right -- Specifically: The right to use the source code to make a closed source product, and the right to contribute to the software while keeping a non-permissive patent on the contribution. To me, this is an acceptable trade for being able to distribute the Free Software, and I know my competitors will have to make the same concession WRT our contributions.
The rights to benefits trade is often much less agreeable for many, if not all, proprietary software products or software that can be made into proprietary software eg: BSD/MIT licensed code -- My company recently had to stop distributing a product because it contained patent encumbered BSD licensed code.
If the original authors had used the GPL, their later contributors would likely not have been able to prevent the software's use. In this case, the more permissive license enabled the software to be used in a patent troll trap and its "permissive" rights yanked away after becoming dependent on the software's functionality.
I recently discovered that several of our large printers will not have drivers released for Windows Vista / 7. The manufacturer has End of Life'd the products several years ago -- Our warranties remain valid for another 4 years, and we may purchase another extension; Thus, mechanically they are fit and will continue to be fit for use.
However, the XP OS that spools for these printers will be EOL'd in just 1056 days. Without the source code to the printer drivers we have given up our right to use the printers with any other OS than the MFG supports -- We don't truly own the printer, we don't have "control over what we bought" since we do not have the control to make it work with Windows 7 or Linux.
Note: We didn't buy the hardware because it had great drivers, we bought it because it was good hardware. The proprietary software has allowed us to be subjected to artificial obsolescence, and expressly forbids reverse engineering to enforce this -- Lesson learned.
That said, I wouldn't buy the handheld anyway. My cell phone is good enough for casual gaming on the bus, and I have better things to do with my time than sit around playing video games... if I'm not at home, I'm either travelling or doing something.
So you have no interest in a portable gaming console, and won't be buying one?
Thanks for sharing.
In other news I probably won't be buying a new coffee machine this week even though the one at home is beginning to dribble coffee grounds when you first turn it on so I'll probably wait until my next payday unless of course I go crazy and blow it all on a fancy new washing machine but then the kids might have to go without new trainers this month...
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
DefectiveByDesign.org is run by the FSF You can read the tiny little letters at the bottom of the page.
Or you can read the great big letters at the top of the page: "Defective by Design.org A campaign by the Free Software Foundation."
Or you could view the source. :)
tomorrow who's gonna fuss