Lawsuit Threat Shuts Down ROM Downloads On Major Emulation Site 'EmuParadise' (arstechnica.com)

Following Nintendo's recent lawsuits against ROM sites LoveROMs and LoveRetro, a major ROM repository called EmuParadise announced it will preemptively cease providing downloadable versions of copyrighted classic games. While no lawsuits have been filed yet, the site's founder, MasJ, writes in an announcement post: "It's not worth it for us to risk potentially disastrous consequences. I cannot in good conscience risk the futures of our team members who have contributed to the site through the years. We run EmuParadise for the love of retro games and for you to be able to revisit those good times. Unfortunately, it's not possible right now to do so in a way that makes everyone happy and keeps us out of trouble." Ars Technica reports: EmuParadise will continue to operate as a repository for legal downloads of classic console emulators, as well as a database of information on thousands of classic games. "But you won't be able to get your games from here for now," as MasJ writes. Since founding EmuParadise in 2000, MasJ says EmuParadise has faced threatening letters, server shutdowns, and numerous DMCA takedown requests for individual games. Through it all, he says he was encouraged by "thousands of emails from people telling us how happy they've been to rediscover and even share their childhood with the next generations in their families."

Comments

Torrent

[110010001000]

Shirley there is a torrent that contains all the emulation files for these early consoles. It can't be that big.

Re:Torrent

[Anonymous Coward]

I would think so. And don't call me Shirley.

Re:Torrent

[ArchieBunker]

I downloaded that giant torrent and even had to find a third party program to unzip the damn thing. The one built into Windows would have taken days. The Stupid part is MAME never had long filename support so you have 50,000 roms all in 8.3 file format. You'll never know what any of them are without a GUI front end.

Oh look, copyright holding culture hostage ...

[UnknownSoldier]

Many of these ROMs are no longer even sold -- the original developer and publisher are LONG gone from the market.

This is a classic case of copyright holding culture hostage due to greed.

The fact that people WANT to download these old ROMs shows there is a demand, even if minor. The _financial_ value is INDEPENDENT of this.

Can we stop trying to make everything about money and just let people enjoy the classics already instead of copyright holding every fucking thing of culture hostage?

No one gives a fuck if some kid downloads a game that has been out of print for 20+ years except parasites, aka, lawyers.

Re:Oh look, copyright holding culture hostage ...

[tepples]

Can we stop trying to make everything about money and just let people enjoy the classics already instead of copyright holding every fucking thing of culture hostage?

Apparently not. There are plenty of ways a government could fix this, but there isn't enough interest among voters to make this a ballot-deciding issue.

I've seen a few proposals that wouldn't appear to facially violate the Berne Convention's prohibition of formalities:

Property taxation People who refer to copyrights as "intellectual property" would love this: Starting 28 years after first publication, require each owner of copyright in any published work that is not available under a free or reasonable uniform-royalty nonexclusive license to pay a recurring tax. This tax would fund libraries. Infringement of copyright in a work with substantially delinquent "intellectual property tax" is forgivable, as bringing suit for infringement would amount to confessing to tax evasion. Eminent domain The government assesses the fair market value of a published work's copyright, and if citizens pay this amount to the government, the government acquires a nonexclusive license to the work under a compulsory purchase. Combining the two The copyright owner assesses the value of a published work's copyright and periodically pays a percentage of this as tax. A copyright owner has an incentive to value its copyrights accurately: not too high in order to decrease tax liability but not too low in order to keep the work from entering the publ^W eminent domain.

Re:Oh look, copyright holding culture hostage ...

[Stormwatch]

Wrong. By default, every creative work belongs to all people, to be freely copied and redistributed. "Intellectual property" is a temporary privilege granted under the notion that it would lead to the production of more works that would eventually return to the public domain. But if the premise is incorrect, and intellectual property does not contribute to the public domain, it has failed its sole purpose and must be outright abolished.

Re:Oh look, copyright holding culture hostage ...

[Bert64]

Exactly this.
With copyright terms so long, we will all be long dead before anything we remember falls into the public domain. It's also likely that no readable copies will even exist by the time copyright expires.

Re:Oh look, copyright holding culture hostage ...

[AmiMoJo]

It's interesting that people are still buying the NES Classic and SNES Classic, even though they could download these ROMs for free. Seems that people are willing to pay for convenience and things like proper controllers and playing on their TV.

I'm sure a copyright lawyer would claim that Nintendo lost billions to ROM piracy anyway, but as ever the real solution is to provide a legal, affordable alternative. And to be fair to Nintendo, they have been pretty good about getting even obscure games on to their virtual console.

See cat, see bag

[Neo-Rio-101]

See cat. See bag.
Notice how the cat is no longer in the bag.

In any case, I know there are private trackers out there for old games for emulators that have pretty much everything. They keep a very low profile because they follow the first rule of fight club.

Besides, most of this content is now floating about on thousands of pirate retropie boxes being flogged off on ebay

TRIPS: Copyright holds commerce hostage

[tepples]

To leave the Berne Convention, a country must first leave the World Trade Organization because the TRIPS agreement includes the terms of the Berne Convention. That would likely cause other countries to increase tariffs on that country's exports. Copyright thus holds not only culture but also commerce hostage.

Not quite

[DrYak]

Depending on your jurisdiction, using a *downloaded* ROM dump, to play on you computer a game that you legally bought from a system that you legally own too, CAN BE ACCEPTABLE according to local copyright law.

You paid the game, you paid the system, you should be able to do what you want to do with them (<- in most jurisdictions. You paid it you own it)
And it should be acceptable for you to take the internet download short-cut instead of going through the technical hassle of dumping your own ROM chips your self ( <- acceptable in several jurisdiction, most often those that have a compensatory tax for private use on blank media. France being a court-tested example)

But Nintendo's point of view seems to be against the above two.

To keep with your metaphor it's the difference that is between a copyright license, that give authorisation ("license") to make and distribute (non-personnal) copies, and EULAs that would like to set what you are allowed to do or not with something that you bought and thus should own.