Slashdot Mirror
Nintendo To ROM Sites: Forget Cease-and-Desist, Now We're Suing (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Nintendo's attitude toward ROM releases -- either original games' files or fan-made edits -- has often erred on the side of litigiousness. But in most cases, the game producer has settled on cease-and-desist orders or DMCA claims to protect its IP. This week saw the company grow bolder with its legal action, as Nintendo of America filed a lawsuit (PDF) on Thursday seeking millions in damages over classic games' files being served via websites. The Arizona suit, as reported by TorrentFreak, alleges "brazen and mass-scale infringement of Nintendo's intellectual property rights" by the sites LoveROMs and LoveRetro. These sites combine ROM downloads and in-browser emulators to deliver one-stop gaming access, and the lawsuit includes screenshots and interface explanations to demonstrate exactly how the sites' users can gain access to "thousands of [Nintendo] video games, related copyrighted works, and images." The biggest amount of money Nintendo is seeking comes from "$150,000 for the infringement of each Nintendo copyrighted work and up to $2,000,000 for the infringement of each Nintendo trademark." The company has also requested full disclosure of the operators' "receipts and disbursements, profit and loss statements, advertising revenue, donations and cryptocurrency revenue, and other financial materials."
LoveROMs has since removed all Nintendo-affiliated links, including ROMs and emulators, and the site announced on its social media channels that "all Nintendo titles have been removed from our site." Meanwhile, LoveRetro.co now redirects visitors to a page that reads: "Loveretro has effectively been shut down until further notice."
LoveROMs has since removed all Nintendo-affiliated links, including ROMs and emulators, and the site announced on its social media channels that "all Nintendo titles have been removed from our site." Meanwhile, LoveRetro.co now redirects visitors to a page that reads: "Loveretro has effectively been shut down until further notice."
Cool. So show us where we can purchase those ROMs legitimately.
Thanks.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
1. Sue websites for hosting 30 year old games
2. Anger customers
3. ???
4. Profit!!!
Except copying is not theft. The car analogy is stupid and worn out.... Especially for vintage works. You're saying if I buy a junk car and make it look like a Studebaker I now owe Studebaker the cost a new Studebaker?
"Oh so I can now just go grab any Studebaker I see? "
No, but you can build one for yourself that looks and behaves exactly as the original.
But he can't sell it (an exact copy would have the Studebaker monikers too) or give it away with intent to profit (by forcing someone to watch an ad (which he's been paid to show) before getting the keys for example.) Whoever owns the Studebaker IP can, but probably won't unless production turned into a few cars, sue. You can, buy an original Studebaker, make changes to it, and then resell it which is comparable to buying a chart, changing/editing the ROM, placing the ROM back into the original cart, and then resell the cart.
They are distributing copies of the ROM without packaging it with original carts, gaining profit from ad revenue. The action of sharing is illegal assuming the site owners also own the original carts that the ROMs were pulled from. If they pulled the ROMs from someone else, then that someone else also committed an actionable legal issue.
Nintendo is actually one of the better ones for popular games from their back catalog for modern consoles. This is a far cry different from a publisher that has gone out of business or who longer sells the old titles.
The original intent of copyright was to protect ownership for 28 years. That would put many NES games in public domain at this point. You'll have to wait until 2022 for the complete catalog, however.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
Sure it is; copyright theft is the theft of the right (control) to copy.
True that, however that really needs to be balanced against time and the community built up around those works. If we look at Disney they claimed huge amount of European works as the basis for their stories then lobbied to keep extending their copyright control (for lifetime of artist + 120 years now IIRC). So who exactly has the right to perpetual copyright control over our culture?
There has to be a time when, as Spock once said, The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one, should I pay CBS a licence for saying that? They got paid for making a contribution to our culture, for creating something that grew, matured and then faded into memory. They made a lot of money. When do we get to finish paying the lease on memories?
If Nintendo aren't maintaining the works and the community is where is the harm of people getting joy out of playing them? Is Nintendo offering these games for sale anymore, have they offered the sites a means to create a licensing option for people who what to play them or did they just come to the party to spoil everyone's fun? Sure they offered a retro console recently but does that allow a method to access these works?
The bottom line here is when these companies start acting like a member of the community, instead of pretending they own it, is when our culture will be richer for all.
Let's hope that one day they see that.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
We also shouldn't have a greed driven, corporate written copyright system where things are still under copryright 30 years after they're released, but here we are.
I'm all for strong IP protection. I work in a field where patents enable a lot of innovation, so believe me, I get that IP is important. But come on, there's no reason why something released over two decades ago should not be in the public domain. If they want to sue over torrents of something like Super Mario Odyssey, Breath of the Wild, or Pokémon UltraMoon, then sure, I'm all for taking down the sites who are hosting pirated copies of them and hitting them with lawsuits. But if we're talking about the original Metroid or Kirby, then I don't have much sympathy.
The companies that wrote the laws don't like the idea of works falling into the public domain because it hurts their ability to sit indefinitely on films, music, literature, and games and collect perpetual profit, but I saw screw 'em. Yes, they do legally have a case, but we shouldn't forget that it is only because of how messed up copyright laws are due to their clever investments in various nations' lawmakers.
That Dragon, Cancer is not a game, it's a visual experience. The developer is supposed to provide a meaningful interaction that challenges players to want to play themselves and see how they do on their own. Games that fail to do this are literally better to watch than to play. Streaming and Lets Plays stopped me from buying many a crappy game, and encouraged me to buy many an awesome game.
Please try claiming streaming and Lets Plays harmed the sales of PUBG, or Fortnite, or DOTA. I'll wait.
It should be that a ROM is considered a legal backup of the cartridge you own. But Nintendo has deep pockets and the DMCA.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
Then I guess we disagree on definitions. The Statute of Anne was the first copyright granted to authors, not to a printing company.