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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!!!
"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.
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.
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.