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Nintendo Nixes YouTube Videos of Super Mario Speedruns
The Boston Globe reports (based on Kotaku's story earlier this month) that Nintendo is cracking down on YouTube videos which show speedruns of its games -- computer-guided play that skips completely human hands pressing buttons on a controller. Why? The article notes that these play-throughs "require the use of ROMs, digital backup files of the original game that can be freely passed from computer to computer, or downloaded from well-known websites. Therefore, Nintendo reasons — and YouTube is clearly sympathetic to this reasoning — there are copyright issues at play, since players aren’t using the (ancient) original game cartridges, or newer copies sold directly online by Nintendo." Legally justifiable or not, this seems unlikely to build goodwill with some of Nintendo's most nostalgic fans.
It's also bullshit because that's a handy way to get kids into the guts of computing. They see it and think "I want to do that!" And they can. They can get an emulator, they can get the ROM, and all of a sudden they're looking at the machine code trying to figure out how it makes all the bleeps and the bloops on the screen.
I think that's missing in this age of locked-down everything. Back in my day (THERE. I SAID IT. I SAID IT.) I got into programming by copying the BASIC code for games out of the back of magazines into my Apple IIe. You realize all the stuff on the screen and all action comes from things humans wrote...and it's not really that much...and this is neat and all but how I make the ships move a little faster? Oh, that must be this part of the code right here...I'll change that to a 5 instead of a 4 and look the ships go faster!
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
They're not penalizing normal speedruns, the summary is baiting you into thinking that. If you read the article you'll see that they're targeting tool-assisted speedruns, i.e.: ones that use pirated software.
1. Retards -- let's piss off the consumers ...who _used_ to buy your stuff; Keep it up and Nintendo will find they won't have any consumers left to sell to.
2. Can someone smack Nintendo's Marketing dept with a sudden-outbreak-of-common-sense please?
Speed runs are FREE publicity.
This is the best advertising money can buy -- when consumers _willingly_ advertise your product for you without it costing you a cent! /sarcasm Nah, can't have that -- let's waste money on bullshit DMCA and drive a wedge between consumers.
3. Part of creating something for the culture to enjoy is that it BECOMES part of the culture -- ergo, the limited terms of copyright.
4. Why am I _not_ allowed to use an emulator if I legally have a physical cartridge? The medium is irrelevant -- I already purchased a license by physically buying the cartridge.
Here's a list of tool assisted speed runs that are actually run on real hardware with a real copy of software : http://tasvideos.org/Movies-Ve...
Getting things to sync to real hardware is amazing that so much effort FROM FANS has gone into preserving these games in emulators that it works outside of those emulators.