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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!!!
If anyone thinks this has to do with any thing other than cashing in on selling people the same games that they have already paid for multiple times as a virtual console cash grab, they are morons.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
3. Anonymous Cowards are cowards.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
I don't get it. Why are they morons? Because they are grabbing cash? Isn't that what companies do?
Cool. So show us where we can purchase those ROMs legitimately.
Thanks.
Amazon has the Nintendo NES and SNES classic editions back in stock. That covers some of the ROMs. Beyond that, as annoying as it may be, they don't have to sell you anything, but still get to keep copyright control. So you can host ROMs or download ROMs, but risk legal trouble if you get caught. But you know all this already.
if you don't cease (and/or desist, which is the same thing), then they threaten to sue.
the other party doesn't cease
so Nintendo sues
that's what C&Ds are for! if you never sue over a C&D, your targets might (such as these guys) just ignore them. Sue, and now your C&Ds are threats again.
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.
Oh so I can now just go grab any Studebaker I see?
The immorality of IP laws is exactly what is being discussed.
Yes, you *should* be allowed to build a Studebaker from scratch based off what any Studebaker you see looks like.
As to your specifically mischosen words, if you can figure out some other way to "grab" any Studebaker you see in a way that doesn't deprive the owner of theirs, then YES you *should* be allowed to do that too.
Unlike you, I chose my words more carefully. *should* instead of *can*
If you take someone elses Studebaker and deprive that person of theirs, that is theft and you both can't and shouldn't be allowed to steal.
If you can magic into existence a Studebaker that looks identical to someone elses without depriving them of it however, you both should be allowed to and are not allowed to.
I now owe Studebaker the cost a new Studebaker?
*IN 2018 dollars even.* This is essentially what Nintendo expects.
Used, on a ROM chip. It's up to you to format shift that - and since there's no DRM it's perfectly legal.
There's clearly still a demand. And the used games market has dried up because piracy is much simpler.
While I fully acknowledge and support an owner's copyrights, I also believe that in absence of clear, genuine use or capitalization upon a particular copyright, certain IP should enter the a "semi-public" domain wherein limited duration licensing to those copyrights may be sold on behalf of the holder.
Example: If Nintendo is still making money on "Pokemon" in general, good for them. However, if they don't find it financially viable to re-make the original GameBoy Pokemon games and thus choose not to make them available on modern platforms, people should be able to pay a fair value semi-public domain license to replicate or acquire those games for use on any platform. The license could be limited (1 year) and affordable ($2/year) with at least 50% of that licensing going to Nintendo with the remaining going to support this semi-public domain licensing system.
This would be better for everyone. Nintendo doesn't have to ramp up their lawyer pool to squeeze blood from stones (users and distributors of emulators and games) and those "stones" could pay their share in small amounts. Nintendo continues get to get paid and retain control while users get their games and don't get dragged to court.
The same could be done for books no longer in print (I have a couple I'd like to replace but cannot find anywhere) and movies that haven't made the transition to digital media. Hell, I'd happily pay a flat $0.50/DVD to be able to rip them and store them for my own convenient watching while being 100% certain that I can never be sued for having done so (instead of having to argue fair use in court).
Bart Simpson had the only valid policy on shorts.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
People already played all the old games and downloaded all the roms.
Now we want VR games.
Since the patents have long since expired, yes, you are free to make a perfect copy of any Studebaker hardware that you see and drive it 'round town to your heart's content.
Any software in Studebakers made before 1923 is also free for you to reproduce in its entirety. Software that was published without a copyright notice in Studebakers made between 1923 and 1977 is similarly free to reproduce, but the rules get more complex depending on if any software published with a notice was renewed or not. Since the last Studebaker rolled off the line in 1966, to be perfectly safe you might consider waiting until 2061 for the last remaining copyright on its software to expire.
Good luck with that, though. The Mouse will have long since extended copyright to 1000 years past the death of the sun by then.
I suspect that there is a very good reason why Nintendo has not re-released some vintage games. Most likely they sold off, or never had, the rights to the game. Because Nintendo has made so many of their vintage games available I won't criticize them for going after companies who are illegally profiting from their copyrighted work.
They have become a blight on the gaming community and are very big copyright maximalists.
If you care about the gaming economy, stop buying Nintendo.
Honestly, after 14 years with potentially a single 14 year extension TOPS. This stuff should be public domain by now.
I own them on NES, SNES, Gameboy, Gameboy Advanced, and N64 and those are just the Nintendo consoles I have owned and still have the cartridges too. I am not buying those games again and will stick the the emulators, thank you very much.
And the cat is already out of the bag here, even if they get a few sites, they won't even remotely put a dent in them and then we got the torrent sites spreading the Goodsets of these things which is literally the entire collections of every game, which many will download and store just to keep from every downloading them again if they ever get harder to find. They aren't even remotely big by todays standards.
There is a CRC lockout chip on every cart so there actually *is* DRM on every cart.
One of the earliest forms of it actually
Odd that you chose the word "purchase" in your statement. Do you think it's ok to make a copy of someone else's work and sell it, for profit, just because the original is difficult to obtain?
One of my good friends collects vintage games, with NES being his #1 passion. He has legitimately purchased many cartridges over the past 10 years.
I'm not trying to defend Nintendo but I cannot defend someone that makes money by selling or giving away ROMs (because it's highly unlikely they don't turn a profit from the ad revenue).
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
As far as most civilized nations around the globe go theft is usually defined as depriving someone of something, causing damages in the process. Copying is not depriving something of the exclusive rights to copy something as they've still got that right. Copying is infringing that exclusive right.
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.
On the note of copyright, infringement, and public domain, as long as there is a rights holder for an IP it is still considered copyright content. The more compelling question is why did Nintendo wait until now 30+ years later?
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.
Yeah, because when I think of a site that survived litigation to remain relevant I think of Napster...
You use a strange definition for the word "theft", which is not like everybody else uses it.
"I don't think that word mean what he thinks it mean."
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Sure thing. All you need to do is go to a site like eBay or Amazon, purchase the cartridge/disc for the game you want (buying it used should be fine), and then rip it yourself using one of the numerous ripping devices that are legally available. Easy peasy.
When you get down to it, the process is more or less identical to ripping audio from a CD or a video from a DVD (in fact, I used to rip all of my PS1 games from disc, just like I would my CDs, and I actually intend to go back and do so for all of my disc-based games in the next few years here) and, for the most part, just as legal.
The most obvious way that you might run afoul of the law with the steps above is that some emulators require that you separately download a copy of the console's BIOS before they'll work, which is an act of copyright infringement. Thankfully, more and more emulators are moving away from that practice by doing the tough work of reverse engineering the original BIOS so that they no longer need a copy of it to work, and the standing precedent in the US is that they are perfectly legal. The other way you might run afoul of the law is that newer systems may have copy protection mechanisms in place. Just as you're allowed to format shift a blu-ray but you're not necessarily allowed to break the encryption on the blu-ray to do so, you may run into issues with games on newer consoles that have similar protections in place.
Alternatively, if you don't want to deal with ripping ROMs from your own, legally-purchased copies of the game, most of the popular games from old Nintendo systems (as well as others) are available for purchase on newer Nintendo systems. Were you actually interested in pursuing this legally (rather than simply asking a rhetorical question as a poor rationalization for your illegal behavior), you'd already know that the Wii and Wii U provide a rather extensive back catalog of old titles that are available for purchase (though I think the Wii is losing access to the store in a few months). Likewise, many old console games are available on Steam, GOG, or similar storefronts. And for older games that had a PC release, many are still playable thanks to WINE, ScummVM, or other pieces of software that allow you to simulate outdated hardware.
Honestly, it's easier than ever to go about this stuff legally. Unless you're talking about obscure games that have been lost to time, there's almost always a legal avenue open that (after a possible fixed cost for the some necessary hardware) only costs whatever the prevailing price is for the game.
Copyright rulings have historically gone in favor of the preserving institution and the DMCA has gotten explicit exceptions for it.
In Nintendo's case they could argue they still sell the games in different formats (eg. on the Wii) though although some may argue that's "not the same game".
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And availability of legitimate copies is irrelevant to copyright infringement cases.
Nintendo is certainly within their legal rights to do this, but I don't get the point of it as a business strategy.
Is the idea that if people can't get the ROMs anywhere they'll just play new games on the newer consoles? Those are completely different market segments. I don't see how that idea would work at all.
Is the idea that they're losing NES/SNES classic sales because people are getting the ROMs instead? That's the same kind of argument the MPAA/RIAA uses that never seems to work out in the real world.
It just seems like they're spending more money on litigation than they'll ever get back in sales from this. Just because you have the legal right to do something doesn't mean it's smart to do it.
This is the first accurate explanation I've seen.
That locks out the NES in its absense. The content is not copy-protected in any way.
And that's 100% legal for you to do as long as you don't use trademarked terms in the process, so fire up the IDE and start coding your "Legend of Melda" today without fear.
The demand is obvious, given the Nintendo NES Classic re-release (after that disasterous launch in 2006). Sure you can probably build a cheaper one, but again, Nintendo's version has all the ROMs licensed properly.
(And Nintendo didn't see Sega and Atari screwed themselves when they sold their stuff to AT Games, which is why those retro consoles never sold well - they may say 1000 games on the box, but it's really about 10 official real Sega Genesis or 2600 games, and 990 "inspired" games by AT Games themselves, so it's really a box full of shovelware). Whereas the NES Classic (and SNES Classic) contain nothing but real games.
And the re-release is done quietly this time around so it's actually possible to get them. Launch day stock lasted beyond the first day because unless you knew, it wasn't advertised.
Any why are we so quick to condemn actions like this, but cheer on the likes of people who go after GPL violators? it's exactly the same thing A GPL violator is a pirate - they've committed copyright infringement. Distributing GPL binaries without source is copyright violation - if you didn't agree to the GPL, your rights are what the law grants you.
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"
I was an avid NES / SNES player back when they were originally released, but my general opinion is that these are mostly old games I don't want to play anymore. I'm not really interested in buying a NES or SNES mini that would pretty quickly find their way to my tech junk box and start collecting dust. Just doesn't appeal to me.
I did buy Final Fantasy 3/6 in the Android store. I had never played it originally, and heard so many good things I thought I'd give it a try. I think it was $14 if memory serves. Was it worth it? I don't think so. I got bored pretty quickly and never finished it. There was nothing wrong with it, I actually prefer the touch screen controls to a controller. I just didn't find it all that fun. I will probably re-visit and try to finish it some other time. Not a total waste, but too much money for what I received in my opinion. I think as much as $10 of the price was due to nostalgia, and $4 was actual value.
My son has a New 2DSXL, and I'll probably see if I can buy WarioLand 4, Advance Wars, and maybe a few others if I can get them for $5 each. If they are too expensive, or not available, I guess I won't buy them. This does not anger me more or make me sad.
As far as legality vs. "right or wrong" / grey area, I feel like on one hand Nintendo has the legal right to their own IP, but they have also benefited from ROM sites keeping their games popular over the years while they figured out a way to mass market them again.
It kind of feels like the end result of this is that Nintendo will keep selling overpriced "mini" products, people will keep buying them, and most of these old games will just be bundled in with more popular titles and never played anyway.
Something being out of circulation does not give you the right to access it freely.
What if I do own the rom and I can't access the console anymore? Do I have a right to play the games I really like if I can play it on an emulator?
Is the rom media the license or is it the method of delivering the software?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Nintendo have shown they have an active business model for old games and they seem to be targeting mainly sites that are using the emulators and roms as a revenue stream either directly or indirectly through donations and advertising. It is better to nip such stuff in the bud earlier rather than when it actually has a significant material impact to them.
I just use a retrode and dump them from my original carts. You can even backup your save progress.
Nintendo tried to outlaw second hand market for nintendo games they even sued a company selling and buying used games
Mendacem Memorem Esse Oportet
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.
All games should be preserved, not just the ones you consider to be good.
Prior to modern copyright, which began in the early 18th century with the Copyright Act 1710 aka the Statute of Anne, a monopoly called the Stationers' Company owned rights comparable to copyright in the form of the exclusive right to operate a printing press.
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.
Third, if a game isn't compelling enough to buy after viewing a "Let's Play" then I have to question what value it provided in the first place.
Walkthrough videos reportedly hurt sales of That Dragon, Cancer by Numinous Games.
Source: "That Dragon, Cancer dev calls out Let's Plays for why game hasn't turned a profit" by Allegra Frank
Odd that you chose the word "purchase" in your statement. Do you think it's ok to make a copy of someone else's work and sell it, for profit, just because the original is difficult to obtain?
No, no I do not. Note the word I used right before "purchase".
One of my good friends collects vintage games, with NES being his #1 passion. He has legitimately purchased many cartridges over the past 10 years.
I'm not trying to defend Nintendo but I cannot defend someone that makes money by selling or giving away ROMs (because it's highly unlikely they don't turn a profit from the ad revenue).
Good, and you shouldn't. Of course there's no way NES games should still be within copyright protection in any jurisdiction, but that's a battle for another day.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Unfortunately the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause makes it illegal to dump anything that uses any sort of copy protection. This includes basically all disk-based games except the Dreamcast and a decent number of cartridge games too.
First off, you can't rip a NES cartridge with a DVD drive. Second, I already paid (well, my mom paid) $50 for Super Mario 3 in 1990, so I have the legal right to download a ROM. Fuck Nintendo if they think I'm paying for the game *again*, not to mention $300 for a Switch or Wii or whatever console they decide to lock it to (PC Master Race). It's pathetic that they're actively selling 30 year old games from stone-age consoles for non-trivial amounts of money in the first place.
This shit is why you hoard data. Download things while you can and save them on a hard drive somewhere, because in 5 years when the corporatization of the internet is complete it will all be gone.
First off, you can't rip a NES cartridge with a DVD drive.
First off, you ought to read past the first sentence before you respond. I addressed this directly in the second sentence, including with links.
There, FIFY.
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used games are far from dried up. game stop brought them back ebay prices have gone threw threw the roof.
It's even been ported to the Nintendo Switch, which didn't exist when Microsoft bought Mojang.
Most of the new ports aren't written in Java, BTW, the Java version is considered 'classic' at this point.
oh god yes they are. nintendo of japan are the ones that hate youtube and clame every video if its anything nintendo.
Tolkein-tier.
What does that even mean? There isn't anything new from Tolkein because he wrote the Hobbit, the Rings Trilogy, and a few other things. It's all out there, there isn't a lot, and it lives in our imaginations when we read it.
There are some films, I understand, but that's really not so relevant.
What are you not allowed to do with Tolkein's work that you want to do? Crappy fanfic? Thank goodness you're prohibited. We have Christopher to do that, and it's easy to just ignore the one dude than a whole fanhood.
totally gonna sue you for works we have not sold in 30 years and titles we dont own.
there was litterly thousands of nes games ninteo only owns a small fraction of the libary.
The mini-consoles have full games. The fact that both are now available for regular retail prices is sort of a laugh at the people who paid huge markups for them from scalpers.
You shouldn't steal things that don't belong to you. No sympathy here.
Except big business stole the public domain and our right to own our software first long before idiots like you enable massive corporate corruption and lawlessness, but lets not let the facts out lobbyist bought IP law because of morons like you slide. The evidence is overwhelming, historically and politically illiterate people like you are useful idiots that allow robber barons to exist.
Lets look at the constitution:
Intellectual Property Clause. Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, of the United States Constitution grants Congress the power "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for **limited times** to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Note it says limited times, not infinite times, it was never intended to grant a permanent private monopoly on human culture to giant corporations. Technically IP is owned by the public and since it is already owned by us we are not stealing since we are the ultimate owners of OUR IP. Intellectual property was a temporarily granted monopoly to encourage the preservation of human culture not the destruction of it.
If it wasn't for ignorant people like yourself governments of the world wouldn't be so corporately owned and corrupt.
George carlin said it best about humanity:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
counter sue for useing ines headers in there own emus.
They benefit from the free workload of the people doing the emulator work but want to shut them down and force people to use there own emulators that do less then the free ones.
What about being able to just buy the roms?
So you can use your own emulator or use an flash cart on real hardware?
Trademarks are protect it or lose it. If they don't protect their trademarks, they can lose them. That would definitely lose them more money in the long run.
I assume Nintendo is preparing to release some online switch store where you can get a rotation of games for a membership like PSN and XBOX does or you can directly purchase access to old games.
As such, they are getting rid of any low hanging fruit before release now that these rom sites are possibly costing them money.
"Old Nintendo games" and "Nintendo copyrighted works" are not the same thing.
If your NES or SNES rom was not published or developed by Nintendo then Nintendo has no issue with you.
The company that did publish it might care if its still in business but its not Nintendo's problem. Notice
the sites they are suing are making money off their IP and trademarks.
Folks, this is what happens when you get REKT. Nicely done sir! I retract my original statement.
Trademark law does not prevent people from talking about Zelda or Windows or Pepsi. Indeed, it would be quite counterproductive if it did.
What it does is prohibit you from marketing a product that could confuse customers. So no Melda video game, but a Melda soda would be a-ok.
I don't disagree the least bit, but I believe Nintendo has started to make money by selling old games on Wii U and Switch. Probably what prompted them to take this more seriously all of a sudden.
We're talking about making clones of a Studebaker being legal, which they would be right up until the instant you installed Studebaker branding on them. So to keep the analogy I was saying while taking a copy of Legend of Zelda is not legal, you are perfectly within your rights to code your own game called Legend of Melda as long as you do all of the work yourself and don't do something like decompile the Zelda ROM to borrow code.
First off, why is it OK for a rich company to charge more than once for the same product?
They aren’t. If I see a movie in the theater, should I be entitled to a free DVD of the film? No, of course not, they’re different products. If I bought a paperback book, should I get the hardcover for free? No, of course not, it’s a different product. If I bought a game on cartridge for the NES, should I get a free Steam copy? No, of course not, they aren’t the same product. The content may be very similar, but you’re starting from a false premise if you’re suggesting it’s the same product.
Moreover, other than providing you with a false sense of entitlement, what does their being rich have to do with anything?
What did they expect? Nintendo is actively engaged in these old games' sales with the retro / mini units. Obviously a lot more people would be buying the units if free ROM downloads didn't exist. It's just business. They didn't seem to care much for years before the units came out.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
https://www.glassdoor.com/Sala...
Is the idea that they're losing NES/SNES classic sales because people are getting the ROMs instead? That's the same kind of argument the MPAA/RIAA uses that never seems to work out in the real world.
I'd be cautious comparing these. The NES/SNES classic sales are a hardware device with a shitton of ROMs, made available again. The arguement for the MPAA/RIAA compares small segemented short term entertainment along side of services that make them freely available. Not having access to a song may not translate to a sale to the MPAA because I may just stream it from Spotify, or play it on Youtube whenever I want to, not to mention it may be on the radio right now.
The same can not be said for the NES/SNES which has a sole legitimate source.
No. It's copyright infringement. It may be wrong. It may not. If you want to claim something is wrong, explain why on its own terms, not because it's similar to something else which may or may not be wrong.
No, it's because those sites were raking in the adrevenue thus profiting on Nintendo IP.
Can't have that.
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
How is depriving someone from income not theft? Don't give me the crap of "otherwise I wouldn't have bought it anyway", as you consumed it, therefore should have paid for it which would have given the creator income, or "but you cannot get it anymore", well most is still available secondhand, yes it might cost a lot and it isn't available all the time, but so are a lot of other products..
You seem confused. That a rights holder decides againt selling something to you, on any terms, doesn not give you any right to create illegal copies.
To be fair that's because current mobile phones are more powerful than PCs and consoles were for around 80% of computer gaming history.
"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.
I’m too lazy to make anything of my own, so I’ll just sit around in yours and make car noises, that’s ok right, I mean you’re not out anything.
Nah mate, you magic yourself up an exact duplicate then you can go whatever the fuck you want with it.
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To be fair, if I have a Studebaker worth X dollars that's been driven (not in mint condition), and then everyone is able to copy it for free, my Studebaker is now worth considerably less than X dollars.
Did you get your Studebaker to drive or to sell?
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
It just seems like they're spending more money on litigation than they'll ever get back in sales from this. Just because you have the legal right to do something doesn't mean it's smart to do it.
even worse, a loss in sales as respect for the companie decreases. it's not as if there aren't other consoles available.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
You can't deprive anyone of something that they don't already own. That is what it basically comes down to.
Think of it this way. You run a record store and sell music perfectly legally. You have a rather loyal customer base that frequents your store. Based on this regular income you plan your business expenses.
Now I come along and open another record store across the street selling exactly the same stuff as you do. In my opening weeks I run special attractions that give people free records with the purchase of other records.
In the following weeks your income sees a sharp decline, because a considerate number of your customers is getting their fill at my store. And because you relied on that income maybe it disrupts your business plan a bit and causes you financial damage as a result.
Sounds like there's grounds for a lawsuit, right? But what would you sue for exactly?
Theft? Because I stole your customers and therefore your income? Are you entitled to your customers and their money? I'd dare to say that this is not true. Only if a purchase agreement is made between you and your customer you're entitled to their money and they're entitled to your product/service. You could sue for theft if I stole the records from you. But then again that would not be stealing your income, but stealing your wares.
Infringement? Maybe you have something like a licence that gives you exclusive distribution rights for certain records? If I don't have such a thing I would be infringing your exclusive rights by selling those products. That would be a lawsuit that can hold up in a court of law.
Maybe the records that I sell or even give away for free are unlicensed copies. In that case I would be infringing your right of exclusive distribution and the exclusive rights of making copies of whoever holds that right. Again, infringement, not theft.
The slippery slope becomes more apparent when we use another example.
Imagine running a hot dog stand. Maybe near a factory plant. During lunch break you get a nice number of hungry labourers that create a steady income.
Now an asshole like me decides to open another hot dog stand in the same area. Again with some kind of special attractions.
And after they consumed my food they're no longer hungry and therefore won't spend their hard earned money at your stand.
Is this theft were I stole your customers, or just competition - one of the basic principles that keeps our markets and economy running?
Other arguments can be made for the resale of products. Because technically you're also depriving someone from some hypothetical income, since if you didn't resell it, other people would certainly have bought it at the full price from an official vendor. Is that illegal? There's certainly a lot of people in the industry who think that it should be illegal. See all the DRM shenanigans where you no longer buy the software or equivalents themselves any more that can be redistributed, but you have to buy digital access rights to a remote platform, which can be easily sold by you without voiding your contract. Fortunately enough people seem to be sane enough to see that this is bogus.
I'd postulate that it is not deprivation of hypothetical income that makes such acts illegal, because that opens a can of worms. It's infringing certain rights that makes it illegal. In the case of making unlicensed copies it's infringing their copy right, which is illegal.
My hypothesis here being that the concept of theft is a lot easier to grasp for all the dumbasses out there than the concept of infringement. Because nobody likes if someone is taking away from them. So becoming a victim of theft is something most people can emphasize with - certainly something a jury could emphasize with a lot better than having their rights infringed.
Sure it is; copyright theft is the theft of the right (control) to copy.
True that
In what way?
If there is no incentive for people to create something why would they spend their time and money doing so?
Get a grip, it's give and take. Not take take take like everyone seems entitled to do.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
The idea is that investors demand corporations protect their IP no matter what because one day that random obscure game from 1987 might suddenly be in demand and make them a few bucks. Same with old music, books and movies. Maybe someone will decide to remake that lame 1962 horror movie and have to pay to licence the rights. Even the 1000 copy limited DVD re-release is profit they want to protect.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Nintendo is basically the mafia (I mean this almost unironically- check their history on how many times they've been busted for their business practices such as price-fixing), and the ROM sites made money giving their IP away for free.
I'm not going to shed a single tear for Nintendo however since they suck as a company and have pretty shitty practices on shifting the electronic content you buy from them around (No virtual console on the switch, meaning eat shit if you bought a bunch of stuff on your WiiU. Hope your dead console keeps working!) and have an 80 year-olds view of the internet as far as their properties are concerned. Remember that they mass DMCA'd fucking Let's Play videos, and demonetize anything with a microscopic amount of footage of their games even if that footage is used in a way that satisfies fair use. They also wanted to start a sort of profit-sharing agreement with youtubers and streamers who merely DISCUSS their games.
Nintendo is scum. They don't deserve your money.
ROM sites are also not innocent obviously. They made money off your downloads, and there was always a better way to get them. There's not much to them- you risk your PC's safety dealing with intrusive ads, bitcoin miners, malware, etc.- the site owner makes money off the download of material they don't own.
Really, if you want to just pirate all of the games for old Nintendo system (which IMO there's nothing wrong with, because they've resold them in one inferior form or another a dozen times, or not at all in the case of many) they've been on bittorrent in the form of easily-to-store ZIP files for years and years. Every NES title ever known (including demos, bootlegs, unreleased games, etc) can be had in a ZIP file that's a hefty 50-ish Megabytes. Every SNES game ever made cames out to the low hundreds of Megabytes. Pull down one of those archives and store it however you wish if you're worried. In the case of the NES/SNES there's even cycle-perfect emulators (which the NES/SNES classic do not use).
He has legitimately purchased many cartridges over the past 10 years.
And his physical collection of actual things will be worth money, potentially quite a lot depending on quality and rarity and also be a nice thing to look at and actually use. If I had a folder with every single rom of every single game and the best ever emulator it wouldn't be worth anything at all really.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
It might be OK if you could actually buy the games, you know?
Why isn't there a legal understanding of that?
A blog I run for the wealth
If an artist wants to throw up an art installation, then take it down the next day, that's their prerogative. You don't have a right to someone's work.
Even the most conservative copyright regimes have always granted protections for the lifetime of the artist. When Shigeru Miyamoto dies, we can START having that discussion. Not just because you're nostalgic for a child hood that was enriched by the artists you want to take advantage of.
about cars john Deere wants to make all repair/diagnostic software dealer only. Other car manufacturers as well.
The analogy is broken and misdirected because it's nonsense. You need real analogies to understand.
The problem is largely a matter of depth of pockets. People talk about stealing a car and downloading a movie, but it's not like that: a car and a physical movie print are the same thing, while a download is a copy.
Making a copy costs nothing. The download bandwidth, the cost to serve millions of downloads in time-efficient manner (i.e. high site traffic), divide it out and it's a penny for thousands of copies.
Copying a car is harder. Building a one-off is nigh-impossible without tens or hundreds of times the cost of a car. For a car manufacturer, it's on the lower end of the scale. A car manufacturer can also retool a factory and build a car for reasonable cost, compared to the cost of a car as usual.
Both the car manufacturer and the movie studio make an expensive product. Creating a movie and creating a car design both involve lots of labor investment, wages paid, materials consumed, the lot. It can cost millions or hundreds of millions. The same goes for a video game or a book--and even the cheaper things, like JK Rowling's books, are cheaper because they consume large swaths of one person's life instead of dozens or hundreds.
Patents protect creators from theft by other wealthy manufacturers. Copyrights protect creators from theft by the poorest of us. It's called "intellectual property" because you're not stealing a car; you're stealing information. A car is made using the design method of a car, which can be particular. A video game's data is its design method, as is the text of a book. Those things take time and effort, and require compensation.
Now, these days, we've got a copyright system which extends copyright infinitely. This is also theft, and of the same nature. You see, these copyrighted works become part of our heritage, part of our culture. We grew up with Mario; we grew up with Sonic; we grew up with Harry Potter. I don't mind letting Jo keep her copyrights for 14 years--and I don't mind absolutely destroying those unscrupulous publishing houses and developers who deny her any royalties by delaying production of derivatives until after those copyrights expire--but simply holding the same property for eternity? Bollocks.
If you ask me, they should be allowed to keep control over commercial derivatives for perhaps a longer time, and copyright on single works for shorter duration. It's now ours. It's part of our culture. Nevertheless, the creators must have some protection, within reasonable limits.
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Slash's guitar on appetite for distruction was a hand crafted replica of a Gibson made by a guy called Kris Derrig. Someone made something out of wood, they didn't walk into a guitar shop and pinch it. The guitar shop lost no money.
sag
You can't deprive anyone of something that they don't already own. That is what it basically comes down to.
Well, people begin with infinite freedom. You have the power to speak, to imprison, to rape, and to kill. You can take from others their infinite freedoms.
People then give up some of this infinite freedom to the government; in exchange, the government provides them protections.
Accordingly, a person gains protection of the control over their own intellectual property. They have the right to create--to have an idea, to put their time and labor into it instead of into something that would produce a tangible and saleable good they can physically control--and to control that creation. They have a right to ensure that they can sell a pulse stepper motor that took years of constant research and a third of their personal wealth to get working rather than having every manufacturer tear down every motor they find and make a copy for a cheap tweak to their own production.
This gives people the right to spend millions making a movie, to spend months or years of their lives writing a book, and to have that time returned to them through the trade of labor--represented by money earned through...labor. Such things are trivial to copy.
Theft is an infringement of your right to property.
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Source: https://www.merriam-webster.co...
Source: https://en.oxforddictionaries....
... the exclusive right of making copies, which is reserved by the right holder, is violated.
According to these definitions: theft, as an act of violating the (terms of) law or rights of another, it certainly is a form of infringement - all crime would be a form of infringement in one or another way. However the point is that not every infringement is also theft.
Think of cows for example. They're mammals or even more abstract vertebrates. But is every mammal or vertebrate a cow? Of thing of fingers and thumbs. Every thumb is a finger, but is every finger also a thumb?
Similar to thumbs or cows in the above analogy, theft is a very special case of infringement. Certain criteria must be fulfilled to call it theft. Therefore, at least sometimes, we express what kind of right is infringed - like in "copyright infringement", which signifies that
My point is that the government exists to protect your rights by taking hold of other rights under a social contract. Theft is an infringement of the right to property. The law only codifies this as a responsibility of government: it steps in and prohibits, via the use of force, others from taking your property.
Governments must expend to operate, and so with our overall consent has the power to tax and to spend. That's not an infringement of the right to property.
Governments allow one to actually enforce control over intellectual property as property. It's something you own, and so over which you have control. You deprive someone of that control--of essential possession of intellectual property--when you infringe their copyright.
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For example if I copied your post - your intellectual property - without your agreement, do you no longer have control over what you write? Do I now have control over what you wrote or can write?
I'd argue that this stretches the definition of theft a bit too much. Certainly, your right to exclusive control is violated by others as they force you to share it against your will, which is illegal and should be illegal in my opinion, but you still have control. If they deprived you of that control in the sense of theft, then they would have exclusive control over the property while you don't have any.
Any why are we so quick to condemn actions like this, but cheer on the likes of people who go after GPL violators?
The point of the GPL is to leverage copyright in order to guarantee certain freedoms to the software's users; freedoms which, at least according to some, users ought to have by right in the first place, and which copyright has helped take away. If you happen to be in the group which thinks this way, there is nothing inconsistent about opposing copyright but still being upset with GPL violators, not because they are violating copyright (which is just a means to an end—using the opponent's preferred system against them) but rather because they are denying the users of their software those freedoms.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
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"
Beyond that, as annoying as it may be, they don't have to sell you anything, but still get to keep copyright control.
That's not just annoying, that's blind stupid and wrong. The law is wrong, and needs to change.
The default is No Copyright. Copyright is a legal fiction created to try to incentive production of works. Until that legal fiction was created, there was no such "right". There still isn't any such fundamental right. It's only a legal right, and it can be changed. It should be changed, since the current terms are failing the public who agreed to a restriction of our rights, and are now no longer benefiting from the deal the way we should be.
Artistic works are culture. A people define their identities, piece by piece, bit by bit, by the art they produce and surround themselves with. But culture has to live and breath to work properly. It has to be adoptable and easy to spread to others, sometimes with changes. Copyright that lasts three and four and even six human generations is broken. Personally, I'm a proponent of eliminating it entirely, but I'm willing to compromise and allow a 14 year term, with formal registration required. No extensions.
Bad example store.steampowered.com/app/6138
You have control over the property which was produced, not the property which may be produced. A person has control over the derivatives of their own intellectual property--control which can be taken, as control includes prevention as much as exercise. Imagine if others drove your car, but only when you weren't using it; what have they taken from you?
So, now I do own your words, but you no longer do?
To the car example: What they have taken from me? Assuming that the premise "but only when you weren't using it" is always true, that would depend on what remains of the original car in my possession when they return the car.
For example if they don't refill the tank when returning the car they have deprived me of the fuel that the car uses. They consumed it for themselves and because it is a limited resource I can no longer use it.
Something like that does not happen with intellectual property.
They are putting extra strain on every car part. If they do not pay for replacements they will diminish the performance and resale value of my car. In some cases the parts can't even be replaced in any feasible manner, like the engine. So that would be something they consume for themselves and since again it is finite I can't use it any more for myself.
Besides of the resale value of the property this neither applies to intellectual property. And in the case of resale value there's no intrinsic value to the intellectual property other than which is determined by supply and demand. You can't diminish the quality of the intellectual property that we are talking about here, because it is not subject to degradation.
Of course in the case of (re)sale value you can argue that by creating unlicensed copies you're driving the price people are willing do pay down by increasing the supply without necessarily increasing the demand by the same degree. I would agree with that. But that is not theft by any stretch, that is violating your rights of exclusivity when it comes to creating copies of your product.
No, I don't think that the law says that the reason you can't deface money is because it is the government's but I'm a little too preoccupied or lazy to look up the law again to see exactly what it says and what the exceptions are.
Correct, Nintendo does not have to provide an outlet for older products (consoles, games, etc) to be available. However, if the people are going to do it anyway, wouldn't it make sense to provide this and make money from it, instead of getting lawyers involved to prosecute the pirates? All this is likely to do is make examples out of some unlucky few, and push the rest on to the dark web.
They should release a vintage console which has an app store, and charge for the apps. It'll be expensive, but will take a lot of the wind out of the sails of the pirate websites. It'll probably make more money than a successful lawsuit or two, and skips the bad publicity of dragging fans & supporters through an unpleasant experience. Plus, I'm sure none of the defendants will actually have the money that Nintendo is seeking in damages. Some corporate types are really naive and out of touch.
Professional Genius
Nintendo's business model for older games is to make a cheap device to cater to scalpers (NES/SNES classics). They should make the price $100 more, and add an app store, and make additional games $2/each. That's a better business model.
Professional Genius
Again. If you ask me personally it depends on whether I would notice it or not. You know, does a tree make a sound if there's no one there to perceive any of the effects that a falling tree may cause?
Following your own premise: If they only ever take it when I don't use it, how can I be sure that it is gone? I would only be able to notice if my property is not there when I need it or if it is/was altered. It if wasn't altered, it effectively is that hypothetical copy, which may as well exist in an alternative universe I can't possibly interact with. Of course besides of affecting possible resale values due to increased supply. But back to alteration, which apply both to diminishing and adding value. I would be able to notice that. I may not like alterations to my finite resource one way or the other, as long as they do not happen under terms and conditions I drafted and or agreed to.
So I may not like it and want it to stop. I might sue the persons who did it for damages and or trespassing. I might put security mechanisms into place to prevent it from happening further. But does that make it theft?
Only if they deprive me of the car it so I can no longer use. For example if they took the car while I wasn't using it, but now I suddenly need to use it and it is not available to me, that would be depriving me of my car and theft regardless of alterations.
For most other cases there's already other legal definitions in place. For example if someone wilfully damages the brake lines of your car, possibly putting you in a life-threatening situation where your brakes don't work while you're in traffic, you don't charge them with theft of your ability to use the brakes in your car of the ability to use your care appropriately. You can charge them for property damage or similar things. Maybe the a district attorney will do half of your work an charge them with reckless endangerment, maybe attempted murder, and what not.
Anyway, is the act of copying altering the property in itself? In what way is it altered? Is copying depriving them of their property so they can no longer use it for themselves? Does a copy deprive of basic control over one's property?
Maybe you're thinking of plagiarism. Plagiarism and copyright infringement share some attributes after all. The former is fraud and defined as a kind of theft of intellectual property, but with the most important criteria of also passing that appropriated intellectual property off as your own original work. Although this isn't always a crime in the legal sense, because not all intellectual property is legally protected the moment someone creates it.
And as you bring up someone's neighbour sleeping with their wife. Certainly something most people would not like. And there's a lot of angles. Could be devastating for the cheated on spouse. Maybe grounds for voiding a marriage contract - divorce. But is it theft or illegal in other senses than voiding a contract between (usually) two people and the state? Maybe if their wife had no say in it at all. Then it might be rape. Otherwise it would depend on your local laws that may make adultery an illegal act or not, because in many places a marriage contract does not make a wife the property of their spouse. What if the neighbour created a copy of that wife? (hypothetically)
I would only be able to notice if my property is not there when I need it or if it is/was altered.
Nonsense. You'd notice it's not in your driveway at night if you looked outside.
Could be devastating for the cheated on spouse. Maybe grounds for voiding a marriage contract - divorce.
Not if they don't find out.
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If that was the case, then yes, I'd notice. Also yes to the other part.
So we can agree to disagree? Or should we start suing each other for depriving each of their control over how we spend our spare time?
>Unfortunately the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause makes it illegal to dump anything that uses any sort of copy protection.
That's a common misconception. It's totally legal under the DMCA to circumvent copy protection. The DMCA only makes illegal to circumvent access protection (e.g., streaming service*) and to sell black-boxes that circumvent copy/access protection.
*which always makes me laugh. We ended up with streaming services in large part because the Slashdot types were so adamantly against DRM.
...and then wants to search you for any photos you might have taken of their art installation.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
So what would net them more money - opening up their own site and selling official roms because there's a demand for them, or lawsuits?
This doesn't seem like a good decision, either financially or from a branding standpoint.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Assuming the interfaces are publicly available, then an emulator would be perfectly legal. But, of course, that doesn't give you the right to make/distribute copies of the game itself.
>There is a lot of money to be made.
I'm sure Nintendo would be happy to license you their back catalogue for a price. It's the dream of all IP creators to generate revenue from their old/unused assets. "Rembrandts in the Attic" and all that.
The problem is that you need to offer enough to overcome any losses of current/future sales that may cause and the transaction costs for them to do the deal. Expect it to require at least a few million dollars up front.
Except we're talking about 30 year old products
No, we aren't. 30 years ago you paid for a NES copy designed to work with a NES. You received everything you paid for. You are entitled to enjoy your NES copy as you see fit. Your NES version of the game may feature content that is similar to the content in a Sega Master System version of the game, but, despite their similarities, they were quite clearly different products requiring separate purchase. Likewise, your NES version may feature content similar to the digital copies being distributed today, but they are, once again, quite clearly different products requiring separate purchase.
If you want your copy to work with modern systems, that isn't something you paid for, so it falls to you to put in the work to make your copy function with new systems. I laid out the rather simple steps for doing so in my first post. If you're unwilling to do that work, then your other choice is to pay these companies for a product that works on systems other than the one that you originally paid for. Which makes sense, since producing different versions costs these companies time and money beyond the original cost for the product you purchased. They're entitled to the fruits of their labor.
How long do companies expect to profit from the same old thing?
Nintendo isn't sending monthly invoices for your NES collection. You are free to enjoy your collection to its fullest without having to pay Nintendo a single additional cent. But if Nintendo wants to package their old content up as a new product, it's their prerogative to charge whatever they want for it, and it's your prerogative to vote with your wallet.
The rich thing is relevant because they have the ability to make new products and bring them to market
No, that doesn't make it relevant. Moreover, they are able to bring new products to market thanks, in part, to the additional work they have put into keeping their older content accessible to modern gamers. Again, they are entitled to the fruits of their labor.
[...] and don't need more income from an old product they already sold and profited from.
That judgment is not yours to make, either morally or legally. Nintendo in particular has been on the ropes financially at several points over the years. It's almost certain that they actually DO need the income from their older content to continue producing as much new content as they do. Moreover, I have yet to see a "we're entitled to luxury items for free" argument that is anything other than a baseless rationalization for ill-gotten personal gain. Your arguments here are no exception.
At the end of the day, you're basically trying to make a "Robin Hood" argument that it's okay to rob Nintendo because they're rich and are keeping poor you from enjoying the things that you're entitled to. But they're not rich (see above), you're not poor (you're buying video games and your presence on /. makes it likely that you're in world's most wealthy 1%), access to video games is neither an entitlement nor a right (despite what many of us might like), and you already received everything you paid for.
You're not Robin Hood, but you are a thief.
No, those photos are derivative works, especially if they are creative, and so are protected. Copying a ROM byte for byte is not a work, it's a copy of someone else's work.