Nintendo's Offensive, Tragic, and Totally Legal Erasure of ROM Sites (vice.com)

"The damage that removing ROMs from the internet could do to video games as a whole is catastrophic." From a report: In July, Nintendo sued two popular ROM sites, LoveROMS and LoveRetro.co, for what it called "brazen and mass-scale infringement of Nintendo's intellectual property rights." Both sites have since shut down. On Wednesday, another big, 18-year-old ROM site, EmuParadise, said it would no longer be able to allow people to download old games due to "potentially disastrous consequences." Nintendo owns the intellectual property for its games, and when people pirate them instead of buying a Nintendo Super NES Classic Edition or a downloading a copy from one of its digital storefronts, it can argue it's losing money. According to Nintendo's official site, ROMs and video game emulation also represent "the greatest threat to date to the intellectual property rights of video game developers," and "have the potential to significantly damage" tens of thousands of jobs. Even when a Nintendo game isn't for sale, it's still the company's intellectual property, and it can enforce its copyright if it wants.

But the damage that removing ROMs from the internet could do to video games as a whole is catastrophic. Many game developers and people who have otherwise made video games a major part of their lives, especially those who grew up in low-income households or outside a Western country, wouldn't have been inspired to take that path if it wasn't for ROMs. Entire chapters of video game history would be lost if ROMs and emulation didn't preserve games where publishers failed to. And perhaps most importantly, denying people access to ROMs makes the process of educating them in game development much more difficult, potentially hobbling future generations of video game makers.

Comments

Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[Anonymous Coward]

IP Protection laws need to be on a "use it or lose it" basis. If you're no longer producing or providing the ability to use an IP, you lose it to the public domain.

IP Protection laws are meant to protect profits derived from innovation. Once the innovation is finished and there are no more profits to protect, you're done.

That's the way it ought to be.

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[The New Guy 2.0]

Atari has a 2600 reboot, Nintendo has NES Retro and SNES Retro, and there's a Sega Genesis Flashback console as well. All in stores now!

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[MightyYar]

This just shows that copyright terms are too long. Copyright is meant as an incentive to produce new creative works, and no one (especially a business) is significantly motivated by what might happen after they are dead. Make it roughly equal to patent protection and move on - Toru Iwatani didn't create Pac Man because he thought royalties would be paid to Namco for 90 years, he did it because Namco paid him to fulfil an immediate need they had to sell competitive arcade consoles. If they only had 5 or 10 years of protection, they still would have paid him to create Pac Man.

Re: Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[FFOMelchior]

Mario and Link aren't most of the thousands of old NES/SNES games.

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[farble1670]

IP Protection laws need to be on a "use it or lose it" basis. If you're no longer producing or providing the ability to use an IP, you lose it to the public domain.

Agreed. What do you think is a better course of action to achieve that end?

1. Lobby lawmakers.
2. Play a bunch of games you downloaded and didn't pay for.

I'm guessing most freedom-fighters here opt for option 2.

Re: Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[The New Guy 2.0]

Mario is Nintendo's Mickey Mouse... and even if Mario Bros. falls into public domain, Super Mario Bros. would have even longer to go.

Steamboat Willie is known as Mickey Mouse's first appearance... but it had to be redrawn in order for there to be any clips to use in today's media, therefore restarting the copyright clock.

Re: Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[cheesybagel]

That's a different issue in my perspective. That's kinda similar to trademark protection.

Re: Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are actively working on it, the NEW work would be protected under copyright. The old stuff that isn't updated is not.

Re: Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[MightyYar]

What is this big fear of other people using your work? If you do almost any occupation, people are using your work. The idea is that you have time to make money from it, so you'll keep making work.

If you worked at Toyota, people would use your work. I make equipment for industry - literally so that other people can make tons of money making stuff that other people can use. It's GOOD when people use your work - it means you are doing something useful.

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[Anonymous Coward]

They do use it.

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. What do you think is a better course of action to achieve that end?

1. Lobby lawmakers.
2. Play a bunch of games you downloaded and didn't pay for.

I'm guessing most freedom-fighters here opt for option 2.

Fun fact. I tried that once. Wrote a letter. Sent it to my Congressman. Guess who he was? Mike Pence. Got a pretty cordial letter, all things considering. Basically regurgitated the importance of copyright without really at all addressing my concerns.

I understand your position. The only realistic chance I have of seeing a change where I live would be to run for office. I think even optimistically I have no chance of winning, but at least in theory that could drive what candidate had a chance of winning. I doubt it'd change copyright law substantially the way I want (14-20 years max) in my lifetime, though.

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[sweet 'n sour]

Innovation != Profitable. I wouldn't add that requirement.

Maybe what we need is a squatters type of law. If the IP is really abandoned, claim adverse possession. If the owner doesn't refute by the allowed time, it goes public domain.

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[Z80a]

All with 1% of the total game library of those systems, and sometimes running em really badly, such is the case of the Genesis flashback.

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[ls671]

IP Protection laws need to be on a "use it or lose it" basis...

Hey! I have got a copyright on this term since 9/9/99, see proof here:
https://slashdot.org/moderatio...

-CmdrTaco

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[sexconker]

Nintendo makes tons of fucking money every time they re(-re)+lease one of those old games.

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[Anonymous Coward]

"Writing a letter" really isn't the same thing as "lobbying."

In theory the difference is mostly a matter of scale, but in practice proper lobbying requires coughing up some money, and convincing large numbers of other people to do the same.

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[mysidia]

If the IP is really abandoned, claim adverse possession. If the owner doesn't refute by the allowed time

That's cute, but your copyright on a work is not "property"; It is a set of exclusive rights over X granted to you by the federal government,
so it is not subject to state laws that typically govern real-estate (Real Property) or even Personal Property; Although the feds have provided processes
by which you can transfer away your right Or confer to someone else permission to use your rights by license or contract ---- the states cannot apply their property rules, so it would be necessary for Congress to pass an act allowing this, and the powerful rightsholders' lobbies would pressure all their people firmly against this.

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[msauve]

IP Protection laws need to be on a "use it or lose it" basis.

Absolutely not. Terms should simply be shorter. It's a perfectly legitimate marketing strategy to make things unavailable for some time, then re-release them to a new generation. Disney did it for years, their movies going in and out of distribution. That's not do say that Disney isn't also evil - they're a large part of why terms are unreasonably long.

Re: Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[Riceballsan]

The real question is when thinking of the overall public good, logically the system should be made in the way to incentivize you to keep making us more and good things. Because obviously if you are such a genius we want to encourage you. obviously too short of a window is bad. If you spend 300 hours coming up with a great idea, and 5 minutes after you go to market someone copies you and decides to sell at just barely above cost because it only took them 5 minutes to copy your work (or in the case of information just plain give it away free), that's terrible, you'd say screw this and go work for mcdonnalds where at least you could get paid for the hours you work. On the other hand, there is the oposite. If money is constantly rolling in at you from your great idea 40 years ago, you don't actually have any need or incentive to make more stuff, What is it that extreme conservatives fear about universal basic income, oh yeah that if people actually have rent, food and heaven forbid some level of luxury expenses covered that they would almost never chose to work. Long story short, patents and copyrights do the most good for society as a whole, if they last long enough to make sure the inventor can fully make back his investment, and get a meaningful return that rewards that investment. but not infinately past that.

Re: Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[NormalVisual]

Well I'm sorry cupcake, but that's exactly the opposite of why copyright exists. The idea is to allow you to benefit from your work for a LIMITED time, in order to encourage you to create other works, with the end result of enriching society as a whole when it eventually becomes public domain. If you want to say "screw society", then maybe society should return the favor and just do away with the idea of copyright altogether, hmm? It's a right that SOCIETY grants to you, not a natural right.

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[omnichad]

If they only had 5-10 years of protection I'd never buy a new game again. I have games I've purchased already that I've owned for that long without getting around to it. There are 40+ years of home video game releases, and 75-90% of them would be public domain if you had your way. Where's the incentive to buy if there is so much available for free?

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[reanjr]

You mean how Nintendo continues to release classic game consoles including old games from the 80s? That sort of "use it"?

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[reanjr]

While copyright IS too long, suggesting that copyright length is impacting video games like Pac-Man assumes a copyright term that is too short. Pac Mac is barely old enough to run for President. I think it has a few more years of shelf life for its creators.

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[reanjr]

You know triple A game titles nowadays sometimes take 5-10 years to develop? So, if you start releasing early marketing materials, your game's assets are essentially out of copyright by the time you hit your first year of sales. That's fucking stupid. Perhaps think about why we have copyright in the first place, rather than how you can get your cheap, grubby hands on free shit.

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[thegarbz]

IP Protection laws need to be on a "use it or lose it" basis.

Two problems with that:

a) It won't change TFS. Nintendo actively use and sell their old IP.
b) All that will happen is a bare minimum release to keep the IP legally active. Sell a single old cartridge with the code on it: It's still active, look, just because you can't play it anymore doesn't mean it isn't still being "used" as IP.

Re: Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[thegarbz]

I want to make money indefinitely

So do I, but since I live in reality I don't.

Re: Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[WolfgangVL]

Because copyright is supposed to be a deal, made in the interest of the people. You are granted a LIMITED monopoly on the work, FROM THE PEOPLE so as to encourage the conception and realization of said work.

If you are still getting paid for your game 40 years after its been created, good for you, but the deal was made 40 years ago. It's time to allow the public access. You've had your time, you've BEEN paid, and are now encouraged to create something new.

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't play the other 100+ games that were originally made for those consoles because the developer/publisher never bothered to keep the original rom data, or does not have the license to the property, or doesn't have the license to distribute any more.

Like I'm of two views of this:
1) I loathe copyright infringement, and wish at the minimum anyone who did it would serve at least a week in jail without any entertainment of any kind, not house arrest, just be locked in an empty room with nobody around.
2) I loathe "sitting on IP" policy that big publishers and IP licensing companies have done. There are hundreds of games, anime, comics, films, etc that were never localized because of "cost" that the fans would do for free if the company would just not be a shit in the first place and sell their content worldwide to begin with. With digital distribution comes never having to pay to market something once it's old. Simply make it available to buy legally, and people won't bother seeking it out from the piracy sites.

The problem is that licensed games (eg Anything Disney, Star Wars, Star Trek, James Bond, Jurassic Park, Home Alone, Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, The Simpsons, Sailor Moon, Ranma, DBZ, and so forth) are often produced under license, and once that license expires not only does the game disappear (see the "Scott Pilgrim vs the World" game/comic/movie) but the comics and films that were also licensed, also disappear from all but their home market.

There needs to be a new kind of copyright law established, something that is essentially the same as "Public Domain" but rather more like "Unlicensed Domain". This could be a law set designed to put copyrighted content into a pseudo-Public Domain, where the content is currently unlicensed (not necessarily unlocalized) that used to be licensed is legally permitted to be distributed so long as two goals are achieved:
1) The primary goal is accurately playing the content on new media (eg something only released on VHS would qualify if no DVD, BD or Digital Deliverable formatted version is available. Playing C64/AppleII/NES/SNES/SMS/MD/TG16/Amiga500 games on HDTV/Mac/PC would qualify, but see goal 2
2) The secondary goal is research. Thus for a video game, the game must be reverse engineered into it's constituent parts (art assets, sounds, game code, data tables) and documented so that goal 1 can be achieved by re-creating the game engine while using the original assets only. Creating new assets turns it into a derivative work, and thus "fair use" of all assets must be considered.

So "rom" sites would still be illegal, but a packaged "new engine" that uses the existing ROM would be legal to distribute that ROM with it, regardless of the license (eg gpl, MIT, propietary) of the re-engineered game engine. It would not be legal to sell the ROM by itself except if the original publisher does so. (eg SEGA's classics are essentially this.)

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[mysidia]

That would mean all games older than 5 years becomes free. If all games released until 2013 where available legally for free, I think a lot of people would be a lot less motivated to buy games released in 2018.

Correct... I advocate returning copyright to its ORIGINAL term. 20 Years after publication; Renewable IF REGISTERED Upon paying a RENEWAL FEE, for at most one additional 20 year term for a MAXIMUM TOTAL of 40 years to profit from a work.

Re: Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[CohibaVancouver]

The idea is to allow you to benefit from your work for a LIMITED time

Why LIMITED though? Stephen King published "The Shining" 40 years ago. People are still discovering it, and buying it. Why shouldn't he still benefit from that?

Why should I be able to sell a copy of the The Shining to you without having to give Stephen King his cut?

Re: Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[dissy]

Why LIMITED though?

Because that is what artists agreed to for copyright to exist.

You don't just get to limit everyone's rights for no reason or benefit to them. We exchanged some of our rights for a limited time, to give you some incentive to create art.

Remember that our deal to you was optional, it is todays government that is forcing that deal upon you no matter if you like it or not. Go blame them for that.

Or alternately if you'd prefer, if we didn't get anything out of the copyright deal, we wouldn't GIVE you a deal at all.
So limited is there so you have an additional reason to make art, you have a time to profit.
Not limited means no deal, you get nothing, no protection, no time to profit, nothing.

The thing is, as an artist, you have to follow the law just like everyone else.
Perhaps not you personally, but the VAST majority of artists today feel so entitled they can simply break the law and ignore the deal set forth in copyright law.

Finally, eventually, we have said fuck it. If artists refuse to follow the law, there is no reason for us to do so either, thus the piracy is pretty universally thought of as moral. Even artists who say it isn't moral pirate, showing they really feel the same.

Look at Nintendo. Right there in their statement:

According to Nintendo's official site, ROMs and video game emulation also represent "the greatest threat to date to the intellectual property rights of video game developers,"

You may not be aware, but Nintendo has consistently claimed emulator software is illegal and infringes their rights.
They are, falsely, claiming ownership of a CPU they never were involved in making. They have NO rights to the 6502 CPU yet right there in bold they claim they own all rights to a piece of hardware completely designed and produced by MOS Technology.

Nintendo has no problem claiming things created by not-nintendo are theirs.
How can they, or you for them, possibly follow that up saying its OK when they claim ownership on other peoples property, but not OK when we claim ownership of Nintendo's property?

Nintendo doesn't wish to follow the law, they outright admit following the law shouldn't be done, evidenced by the fact they haven't done so for over 30 years.
There is no moral complaint possible from them when we don't follow the law either and refuse to give them any copyright protection.

This thinking isn't unique to Nintendo either, most all artists think this way, and your question implies you do or did think that was somehow the normal and standard.

You should think long and hard about questioning the value of a gift given to you, because the fact of the matter is we chose to give that gift to you in the first place, and we can choose to stop offering you gifts completely when everyone is so ungrateful for it.

Re: Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[Wycliffe]

The original copyright term adequately addressed this: 20 years automatically and 40 if you registered.

Re: Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[Kevin108]

"[i]If you worked at Toyota, people would use your work.[/]"

I've always agreed with you, but never thought about it that way. Me personally, I took an FJ Cruiser, lifted it, added lights, a tent, awnings, power ports, and aftermarket tires to create a capable and comfortable overlanding rig. Take the OEM reliability, add a hot shower and comfortable bed anywhere, and you have what I've built upon the work of others.

Besides that, my career is in construction. While I have built items of my own design, most of the time I have taken structures built by others, then modified them meet modern wants or needs. In no instance was the individual who came before me compensated again.

Re: Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[gravewax]

quite often you make the least amount from your work while it is in its infancy while the bulk of your costs are also spent in this time. A major video game franchise is a long term investment as are many other front weighted investments. Unfortunately IP law treats everything the same but the reality is without those laws many games, medicenes or other high risk projects would never exist without those protections.

Re: Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[jpatters]

Why should I be able to sell a copy of Hamlet to you without having to give William Shakespeare's heirs their cut?

Why should I be able to sell a copy of Moby-Dick to you without having to give Herman Melville's heirs their cut?

Why should I be able to sell a copy of The Tale of Genji to you without having to give Murasaki Shikibu's heirs their cut?

Why should I be able to sell a copy of Charade (1963) to you without having to give Stanley Donen his cut?

Re: Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[UnknownSoldier]

> Because that is what artists agreed to for copyright to exist.

Copyright was invented by --> Publishers <-- to maintain control by preventing other publishers from making a profit !!

I've posted about this in the past ...

"The history of copyright law starts with early privileges and monopolies granted to printers of books. The British Statute of Anne 1710, full title "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned", was the first copyright statute. Initially copyright law only applied to the copying of books."

and

"Pope Alexander VI issued a bull in 1501 against the unlicensed printing of books and in 1559 the Index Expurgatorius, or List of Prohibited Books, was issued for the first time."

and

"The first copyright privilege in England bears date 1518 and was issued to Richard Pynson, King's Printer, the successor to William Caxton. The privilege gives a monopoly for the term of two years. The date is 15 years later than that of the first privilege issued in France. Early copyright privileges were called "monopolies," ...

and

"In England the printers, known as stationers, formed a collective organization, known as the Stationers' Company. In the 16th century the Stationers' Company was given the power to require all lawfully printed books to be entered into its register. Only members of the Stationers' Company could enter books into the register. This meant that the Stationers' Company achieved a dominant position over publishing in 17th century England"

Companies latter lobbied ^H^H^H^H bribed congress to extend it.

You'll probably want to read History of Copyright Law

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[jpaine619]

Your argument makes zero sense. He was paid either way. Why the hell, in that instance, would he care what the copyright term was? Besides, works for hire are (in the US and I believe in all Berne Convention countries) the property of the employer.

Do you base your work for hire on how long the company, that is paying you, is going to benefit from it?

Re: Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[jpaine619]

Well, 120 years is a limited time.. It's limited to 120 years...

Quit acting like it's not a limited time. Your argument isn't for limited times, it's for a limited time YOU like. Well, I don't like your time, I want my time....

See the problem?

Re: Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[jpaine619]

Why LIMITED though?

Because that is what artists agreed to for copyright to exist.

You don't just get to limit everyone's rights for no reason or benefit to them.

120 years is a limited time. It's limited to 120 years..

Enough with the "this isn't a limited time". At least have the balls to make the argument you want to make... Which is more like "I want to decide how long copyright lasts"

Until they pass a law extending copyright to eternity, then it is, by definition, a limited time...

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[MightyYar]

I think we are actually making the same argument. He does not care what the copyright term is, and that is my point. Either way, we'd have Pac Man.

Re: Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[MightyYar]

I'm suggesting that we treat entertainment IP the same way (~20-30 year protection) that we treat medicines. Certainly medicine is more important than Dig Dug?

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[MightyYar]

Why resort to name calling? If it weren't for "cheap grubby hands" using free shit, we wouldn't have most of the Disney animated movies that are now protected basically forever. Reusing prior work is awesome and a large part of how we differ from other animals.

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[MightyYar]

I'm not suggesting that we overturn trademark law - just that the original 1980 game code not be subject to copyright anymore. You can make and sell a life saving drug from 1980 without paying the inventor a red cent, but you can't make a replica Pac Man cabinet without paying Namco? That's crazy.

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[MightyYar]

The 5-10 years line was just to get people thinking. I actually advocated the same terms as patent protection in my post.

Re: Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[MightyYar]

Why shouldn't he still benefit from that?

For the same reason that I don't get continued royalties for work I did 40 years ago. I mean, welcome to what 99% of the population experiences, where you only get paid when you work!

Re: Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[that this is not und]

Disney stuff isn't that important. Most of the best Disney content derives it's value from folklore that is in the public domain. We need to just rout around the locked-down content and make new culture.

Re: Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[that this is not und]

The Disney movies are bowderized shiny copies of the original folklore they took from to base the films on. In most cases we'd be better off just getting rid of the Disney version.

Re: Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[that this is not und]

Enjoy the public domain stories, then. You can probably download them from Project Gutenberg.

Reading is such a powerful form of entertainment. We have the world's most powerful 3D rendering engines built right into our heads and just need to plug in the source media and start rendering it.

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[MrPater]

Yea probably far to short a time period

Though speaking as someone who also has a pile of games that I've never gotten around to, if a game is 10 years old and you still haven't been compelled enough to play maybe it wasn't all that worth creating in the first place? Maybe a short burn time like that would help drive up the average quality of content if you knew it had to be good enough that people just couldn't stand to wait that long?

Then if something does turn out to be a bit of a flop things open up a bit and maybe someone can muck around with what you did and generate something cool. I mean if you think of games that have kept themselves really open to modding that has given birth to some massive, massive stuff because people with good ideas had the barriers to entry lowered. Games like DOTA which started out as a Warcraft 3 game mode. All of the things that came out of the open nature of the Source engine.

Really I can see flaws with a 10 year cap like that it is interesting to think about what effect it might have. There will always be a market for games and if you can't make enough money off of it after 10 years to make it worthwhile was it really that good in the first place?

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[omnichad]

if a game is 10 years old and you still haven't been compelled enough to play maybe it wasn't all that worth creating in the first place?

Or maybe I don't have that much free time and way too many other hobbies and interests.

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[The New Guy 2.0]

Genesis Flashback accepts cartridges if you've still got 'em... so you can go beyond the built in games.

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[farble1670]

Fun fact. I tried that once. Wrote a letter. Sent it to my Congressman. Guess who he was? Mike Pence. Got a pretty cordial letter, all things considering. Basically regurgitated the importance of copyright without really at all addressing my concerns.

That's kind of an indication that this isn't an important issue to his constituents.

I understand your position. The only realistic chance I have of seeing a change where I live would be to run for office.

Ya...

Living in a democracy / republic means you don't always get what you want. Laws are made by and for the masses not individuals. That's not license to disobey the law. Disobeying (or ignoring) every law you don't agree with boils down to no law. For you that might be copying a ROM. For someone else it might mean raping your wife.

Personally I agree the laws should be changed, but it's low on my list of societal injustices. I have access to an incredible amount of media. Much more than I could possibly consume.

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[Agripa]

IP Protection laws need to be on a "use it or lose it" basis. If you're no longer producing or providing the ability to use an IP, you lose it to the public domain.

Agreed. What do you think is a better course of action to achieve that end?

1. Lobby lawmakers.
2. Play a bunch of games you downloaded and didn't pay for.

I'm guessing most freedom-fighters here opt for option 2.

Think of it as civil disobedience which undermines respect for all law. Petitioning lawmakers is as useless as voting when concentrated interests like NIntendo select the lawmakers beforehand.

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[farble1670]

Think of it as civil disobedience which undermines respect for all law. Petitioning lawmakers is as useless as voting when concentrated interests like NIntendo select the lawmakers beforehand.

Think of some sort of disobedience that doesn't result in you getting a bunch of free shit. How about not buying any Nintendo products? That seems like a darn good way to tell Nintendo that you don't like how they do business.

Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy

[farble1670]

And I follow through with option 2 in an act of civil disobedience - not only do I get to enjoy old video games that I can't legally obtain anywhere, I will have a chance to make some noise if I ever wind up in court over it.

Sigh. It's not civil disobedience if no one knows or cares you are doing it. You are not furthering the cause of copyright reform by sitting alone and playing old video games. No one that has a say in it even knows you exist.

but's it's ok for Nintendo to use emu work ines

[Joe_Dragon]

but's it's ok for Nintendo to use emu work done from ines and others in there own systems? or even used dumped roms from others (as if they lost there own roms)

Re:but's it's ok for Nintendo to use emu work ines

[farble1670]

but's it's ok for Nintendo to use emu work done from ines and others in there own systems?

If they are using it,

1. They are paying for it. Can you see the difference between that and NOT paying for something?
2. They are not paying for it. In which cause the author has a clear legal case against them.

or even used dumped roms from others (as if they lost there own roms)

What does the even mean. Link something.

Re:but's it's ok for Nintendo to use emu work ines

[Junta]

https://www.eurogamer.net/arti...

It's funny, but at the same time they are perfectly within their rights to download from a site for their use, and even sue that same site for infringement. They are the copyright holder after all..

Re:but's it's ok for Nintendo to use emu work ines

[Anonymous Coward]

This is exactly the same thing as a musical group releasing a live album of music that was originally from illegally recorded and distributed bootlegs. The musicians can do this since they own the copyright to the music even if they did not physically record it themselves.

Re:but's it's ok for Nintendo to use emu work ines

[Anonymous Coward]

There was one instance (I think for Super Mario Bros) where it was found that Nintendo had not dumped its own ROMs but had used a pirated ROM of its own game for one of its emulated re-releases. It's an idiotic thing to care about - the pirate had no copyright in the pirated ROM. Did they think Nintendo would give them a credit on the box or something?

It's worth a chuckle, nothing more. It saved some guy at Nintendo a few days of work probably - either to dump his own ROM or to track down an official ROM image inside the byzantine bureaucracy that is a Japanese corporation.

Re:but's it's ok for Nintendo to use emu work ines

[The New Guy 2.0]

It's a classic court case. A steals from B, and then A makes the stolen item better... B is awarded the better item in the end.

Re:but's it's ok for Nintendo to use emu work ines

[farble1670]

It's funny, but at the same time they are perfectly within their rights to download from a site for their use

Um, yes? They own the copyright. Are you suggesting that someone can violate a copyright they themselves hold by using their own IP?

Re:but's it's ok for Nintendo to use emu work ines

[sexconker]

It's bullshit. The ROM files for the NES and SNES Classic Edition consoles use a common header format.

People are crying that Nintendo is using ROMs from the internet as their source. That's bullshit.
People are crying that Nintendo is stealing the work of emulator developers. That's also bullshit.

Nintendo has access to everything they've published on their platforms and they have their own, in-house emulators.
One of the big deals with the release of these Classic Edition consoles, and the release of StarFox 2, is that we now have an official, good (but not perfect) way to properly emulate the SuperFX2 chip.

So why did Nintendo use that header format? Probably for the same reason they left the system, the successor system, and the rereleases open to "hacking". (There's really no hack involved - it's bog standard shit for the included hardware.) And the same reason they gave them more storage than they needed to have.

It's their wink wink, nudge nudge to let people put a whole lot more shit on there. You can load up your NES Classic or SNES Classic with tons of fucking games. Use the included ROMs with a different emulator, use external ROMs with the included emulator, or whatever the fuck else you want. They knew what certain people wanted to do with these boxes, and they went out of their way to let it happen.

Re:but's it's ok for Nintendo to use emu work ines

[Junta]

My point was simply that it is a funny thing because they on the one hand obviously were helped by the sites, but also want to shut them down. It's not about copyright ownership and rights, it's about the weirdness of the situation.

Re:but's it's ok for Nintendo to use emu work ines

[Junta]

But if your recording violates a copyright, I don't see how one could assert copyright protection over your recording that was already in violation.

For example, going beyond a recording, the Verve sampled a symphonic rendition of a Rolling Stones song, and even had secured rights. Despite multiple layers of indirection, the guy had his credit removed and all revenue to Allen Klein...

So good luck with asserting any rights over a direct recording.

Re:but's it's ok for Nintendo to use emu work ines

[omnichad]

What happened was that they "sold" their rights to the song to the (for nearly nothing) to avoid litigation that could have cost an astronomical amount. The actual symphony recording and the original Rolling Stones song were both put out by the same label, so it's really crazy that they had no obligation to inform them of the conflict and ask for that licensing up front.

Emulators and ROMS created retro-gaming.

[Anonymous Coward]

The vast majority of people playing these games before the NES/SNES/ATARI emulators did so via illegally downloading ROMs and playing them on Emulators. The whole market exists because of piracy.

Now Nintendo is making money off these things again, and of course suddenly it's all about suing. Of course, it doesn't really stop anyone. All the NES ROMS are on the order of a few hundred megabytes, and an individual ROM is maybe 100KB. SNES are a little bigger. The point being these things are so small they're incredibly easy to share.

Re:Emulators and ROMS created retro-gaming.

[The New Guy 2.0]

Piracy on the grand scale seems to indicate the copyright holders wanted publicity.

Back in the bad Napster days, there were big artists suing, but little artists loved getting played anyway. Paid Napster showed up, and proved the only thing Napster was missing was the paywall.

Back in the bad BitTorrent days, blockbuster movie owners started suing, but small time movies with messages started loving the attention. It was too easy to get a movie on demand, and that lead to the current pay-walled systems like Napster, Amazon Prime and other Downloads, and Hulu.

Now we're up to the end of the bad ROM days, Nintendo started suing, and there's solid retro consoles out there... what's next to get pay-walled?

Re:Emulators and ROMS created retro-gaming.

[sexconker]

Punch 2^102400 into your calculator plz.

Re:Emulators and ROMS created retro-gaming.

[sexconker]

Accidentally cut the second line:
Assume you're trying to recreate any 1 of 128 decent games and want a 50% chance for "probably".

Re:Emulators and ROMS created retro-gaming.

[omnichad]

100KB is longer than a work of Shakespeare (whether typed by monkeys or otherwise).

Re: Complicit

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

And that's OK. If you don't have your own copy of Nintendo's entire library yet (and copied across multiple locations) then shame on you. And if you're one of the folks who wakes up and wants to build a Raspberry Pi ROM machine in two years, it will still be as easy as downloading Game of Thrones (i.e. trivial for anyone on SlashDot).

Shortsighted move

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt the Mario/Zelda franchises would have the same penetration if ROMs weren't widespread as they are(were). Illegal use increases brand awareness and often leads to legal use.

What Nintendo deserves

[hcs_$reboot]

is a global boycott.

Re:What Nintendo deserves

[reanjr]

Wish people were boycotting Nintendo last year when they released their NES Classic. That shit was impossible to get your hands on...

Re:What Nintendo deserves

[Jason1729]

The sheep just don't care enough.

As far as these ROMs, I had an original NES back in the 80's, I had a large collections of games I paid full price for back then, that are long since disposed of, broken, thrown in the garbage whatever. Why should Nintendo care if I want to fire up a 30 year game to play for 30 minutes to stroke my nostalgia before going back to a modern game. It's not like I'd pay enough for the experience to be worth their while.

On the other hand, I have 2 kids who are too young for a game console right now. I was already planning to buy them whatever comes after the switch in 3-6 years. Now I have such a bad feeling towards Nintendo I really don't see that happening. They can play PC games with me.

Re:What Nintendo deserves

[thegarbz]

is a global boycott.

Why? Nintendo is a poster child of a company that doesn't troll old works out of existence using IP laws and instead continuously updates and republishes and makes available its IP.

I'm generally against the takedown of old works, but Nintendo doesn't have old works, just a current active library.

Re:The internet...

[The New Guy 2.0]

Not so sure about that... the Internet purges illegal and old works all of the time.

Re:Ok.

[FictionPimp]

The joke of this is that it actually inspired me to finally download all the roms for the systems I love. It's not like there is a legal way for me to download and play these games. Such a pointless waste.

What sega, NES, SNES rom websites need to do

[voss]

1) Remove anything published by Nintendo itself. That's what got the rom sites sued. Nintendo did not care about anyones's IP except theirs.
They are enforcing their copyrights and trademarks and their trademarks are still in active use. There are MANY nes and snes games that ninentendo did NOT publish and has no particular stake in.
2) If you get a letter from a copyright holder asking you to take something down you take it down, thats not rocket science it may even be basic courtesy.
If a copyright holder is active then its not abandonware.
3) Do not put any ads on the pages listing the roms themselves. Only the original copyright holder has the right to make money off these roms.

Re:What sega, NES, SNES rom websites need to do

[Junta]

There are MANY nes and snes games that ninentendo did NOT publish and has no particular stake in.

Not true. For example, the NES classic edition has Capcom, Konami, Square, and others. They have a stake in it. Also, I would presume they also have some copyrighted material even in third party roms (e.g. library code) so they also almost certainly have a right.

If a copyright holder is active then its not abandonware.

It's worthkeeping in mind that abandonware is not a legally recognized thing. The holder of the rights can at any point decide to go after it.

Only the original copyright holder has the right to make money off these roms.

Financial gain is not a requirement to be sued for violating copyright.

Re:What sega, NES, SNES rom websites need to do

[omnichad]

They have a stake, but no standing to sue over those.

Re:What sega, NES, SNES rom websites need to do

[Junta]

I'm skeptical that Nintendo wouldn't have any copyrighted content of the licensed games. Someone may more authoritatively come in and say 'no, Nintendo provided no code to be included with games', but it seems probable they had some sort of library code that game developers would have included.

Re:What sega, NES, SNES rom websites need to do

[omnichad]

I highly doubt there was any library code prior to the N64. Programming on bare hardware in assembly seems like the only good option when dealing with hardware constraints like that.

More of the same

[thunderclees]

Nintendo is up to its old tricks.
Atari management did a lot to kill itself but Nintendo was there to help by telling developers that if they produced titles for Atari they would be banned from writing for Nintendo.
With Nintendo being bread and butter for most of these guys they had to comply.

Boo Hoo you cant play your video games for free.

[jellomizer]

I am sorry, but video games are just games.
If you are not willing to part a few bucks for the game then you really don't need it.

Back in them old days before ROMs kids would have to save their money to buy these games. Having bought them with their own money had them put a little extra value behind it.

and yet rom/emulation may of saved a lot of stuff

[Joe_Dragon]

and yet rom/emulation may of saved a lot of stuff even maybe helped start off the barcade market.

SFW?

[owenferguson]

All this content should be on magnets, not site, anyway.

Nintendo is doing its usual shenenigans

[cheesybagel]

I purchased a Nintendo Super NES Classic Edition and I use emulators regularly. Not only did the SNES CE have a more comfortable form factor BUT it was a way of giving back to the company which made the games in the first place. Nintendo also had not doing been all that well financially of late so I bought one despite personally loathing the company because of issues like this. I also bought a Raspberry Pi around the same time to emulate platforms and games for which emulation are not readily available. I could have simply used that instead of purchasing the SNES CE, which cost me QUITE a bit more, but I still got one.

Nintendo is a bit like the Disney of gaming really. All games need to be "family friendly" and any competition or fan works are meant to be crushed.

We really risk losing a couple of decades of cultural history due to this stupid legislation. Much like a lot of books from the XIXth century were lost forever because of the use of acid tree paper to print books. I regret that a lot of these sites closed. Take Mortal Kombat for example. I played it in the arcade with dual joysticks, you can only replicate that with a cabinet or MAME. If you go to some place like GoG.com you can only get the remarkably putrid PC port of the game. Why don't they just include MAME with the ROM files is beyond me. Other companies do that with DOSBox and PC data files. Yet this is not an obscure game! Good luck with replicating some of the more obscure titles if sites like these vanish.

Personally I think if software companies did not make the product available through their catalog for a set amount of years the copyright should simply lapse. Period.

why can't we just buy the rom? and not be forced t

[Joe_Dragon]

why can't we just buy the rom? and not be forced to use there crappy emulator?

There are lot's of poor paid emulators out there that suck next to the free ones that do more. Also there are people with flash carts that want to use real hardware as well.

Re:Boo Hoo you cant play your video games for free

[tepples]

If you are not willing to part a few bucks for the game then you really don't need it.

Where can I buy a lawfully made copy of those games that are not currently available through Virtual Console?

No Shortage of free games

[Layth]

Steam has so many free games... my favorite game DOTA is free and after thousands of hours only gets more fun.
People get attached to free stuff and like the Buddhists say attachment is the source of all suffering. It sucks to lose but lets not blow things out of proportion.

There are so many free games on pc and cell phone and tablet people dont need your childhood games.
I get it I love mario too but the industry will survive without a new generation playing mario. its an old outdated game and id never be able to put a thousand hours into it. what it did influences what we see now and it will continue to do so without rom sites.

Re:No Shortage of free games

[Z80a]

Those free games you talk about are virtual casinos, not actual games.
Also we don't burn old books or old movies "because they're outdated", but we're allowing the game industry to burn the old games.

Re:No Shortage of free games

[Layth]

Direct quote from steam "The free games section consists of games that contain no microtransactions. You might be able to buy extra episodes or DLC packs, but you'll get the full core experience for your download in this category."

This isn't a tragedy.

[johnsillings]

The tragedy element of this story is totally overblown, imho. First of all, people will still be able to download ROMs and play them for free. Torrenting a big bundle of ROMs, vs. downloading them from a nicely organized website, is more of an inconvenience than anything. Second, even though ROMs were such a formative part of these developers' lives, there are lots and lots of innovative, inexpensive and free games out there today. There are oodles of free-to-play and super cheap indie games available on Steam, for instance, and frequent Steam sales where penny-pinching gamers can pick up the mid-priced titles for a reasonable price. Even with these ROM sites shuttering, the barriers to making and playing games are probably lower now than they've ever been.

Re:This isn't a tragedy.

[cheesybagel]

Many of these sites were also a community for discussing games. This way the community was basically lost.

Re:This isn't a tragedy.

[sixsixtysix]

They couldn't have just removed the infringing content?

Surprised people aren't making the connection here

[Solandri]

Nintendo owns the intellectual property for its games, and when people pirate them instead of buying a Nintendo Super NES Classic Edition or a downloading a copy from one of its digital storefronts, it can argue it's losing money. [...] Even when a Nintendo game isn't for sale, it's still the company's intellectual property, and it can enforce its copyright if it wants.

Emphasis mine. If they're not selling the game, then they can't be making money off of it, so obviously they can't be losing money due to copyright violations. The purpose of Copyright is "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."

If Copyright is preventing progress of the useful arts by allowing a copyright holder to block distribution of a pre-existing work by both not selling it and preventing its illegal distribution, then that's evidence that the duration of Copyright is too long. Copyright duration is so long that it is no longer financially viable for the copyright holder to continue to distribute the work, yet because they still hold the Copyright they can prevent others from distributing the work to "promote the progress of the useful arts."

It's been suggested before, but Copyright really needs to move to a dynamic duration rather than fixed. The point of Copyright should be to allow a content creator to profit from their work, but once public interest has waned and the profit motive has mostly disappeared, the Copyright should expire. Give everything a 10 year initial copyright. At the end of 10 years, the copyright holder can elect to renew it for another 10 years by paying a fee. The amount of the fee should increase with each renewal - something like

$1000 the first extra 10 years (expires after 20 years)
$3200 the next 10 years (expires after 30 years)
$10k for the next 10 years (expires after 40 years)
$32k for the next 10 years (expires after 50 years)
$100k for the next 10 years (expires after 60 yearsl)
$320k for the next 10 years (expires after 70 years)
$1 million for the next 10 years (expires after 80 years)
$3.2 million for the next 10 years (expires after 90 yearsl)
$10 million for each subsequent 10 years (100+ years)

That would have the effect of flushing out financially unviable copyrighted works into the public domain rather quickly, while allowing hugely successful works like Disney's to continue indefinitely as long as they're making money from it. The way current Copyright durations keep being extended, some works are so old and lost from public awareness that the only copy is held at the U.S. Copyright Office. That makes us vulnerable to one of the greatest losses of historical intellectual property since The Library of Alexandria burned down.

(Hmm, I suppose an easier way would be to require that after the initial 14 year term (the original duration set in 1790), in order to retain copyright up to its current maximum duration, the copyright holder must continue to offer the work for sale.)

Re:why can't we just buy the rom? and not be force

[markdavis]

>"why can't we just buy the rom? and not be forced to use there [sic] crappy emulator?"

I support reasonable copyright laws (ours have become overkill now), but it is a crazy position for Nintendo to "protect" intellectual "property" which they no longer license or sell to the public. I believe there should be a grace period of a few years or something, and if a company no longer sells or licenses their "property", they forfeit it and it should go public domain, or at least some type of public, non-commercial, free-to-use/distribute license.

Same thing with music, movies, books, software. If there is no reasonable, legal way to buy/license/obtain it, then there is really nothing left to protect because they seem to imply it has no value anymore. An example- I asked Netflix why there are so many discs that are not being replenished... their answer? Many are no longer available for them to buy anymore. Ridiculous.

Load of bullshit

[apoc.famine]

The hyperbole in TFS is insane.

The damage that removing ROMs from the internet could do to video games as a whole is catastrophic.....Many game developers made video games a major part of their lives....denying people access to ROMs makes the process of educating them in game development much more difficult, potentially hobbling future generations of video game makers.

Bullshit. Old Nintendo ROMs aren't teaching anyone about game development other than how to try to work around horrific hardware limitations. Limitations that even the phone in my pocket doesn't have today.

I'm sorry. I've tried go to back to the games that I loved from yesteryear, and most of them were absolute rubbish. If all the Nintendo ROMs go away today, there will be no significant impact to the world. There have been thousands of derivative works since that time, and they've built on the incrementally better hardware and game design theory that we've built over time.

ROMs are the vinyl 45s or 8-tracks of the music industry. Sure, you might be a collector, but to ascribe to them the level of importance to the art that TFA does to ROMs is asinine.

Re:Load of bullshit

[CronoCloud]

Bullshit. Old Nintendo ROMs aren't teaching anyone about game development other than how to try to work around horrific hardware limitations. Limitations that even the phone in my pocket doesn't have today.Sure, you might be a collector, but to ascribe to them the level of importance to the art that TFA does to ROMs is asinine.

you have to remember that these emulation sites are aspie-heavy. And yes they're the sort of guys who say things like that because THEY are still obsessed with NES Tetris or Concentration and spend hours upon hours making their Tetris clones or Concentration clones. To them Tetris or whatever is their obsession and the Most Important Game in the Universe and everyone should know that and it's a horror that the Tetris Company doesn't let their Aspie fans do whatever they want with their IP.

not just the rom but the emulation system work

[Joe_Dragon]

not just the rom but the emulation system work that was ripped off.

Re:not just the rom but the emulation system work

[Anonymous Coward]

NO it wasn't. The only thing someone "found" was that the ROMs embedded in the virtual console games, where using the "iNES" file format, which is the de facto format for NES ROMs. It's a trivial format (16 byte header followed by the PRG and CHAR ROM).

Since the format is so simple, there isn't much wiggle room for variance, so two correct dumps of the same game will usually mean an identical output file. Comparing pirate ROMs with Nintendo ROMs and finding them identical basically means nothing.

The ROMs aren't going anywhere.

[xtal]

Nintendo just helped provide a huge additional use case for hidden services though.

The ROMs are also everywhere if you know where to look.

Neither of those will help Nintendo make more money, of course. Silly Nintendo.

Re:The ROMs aren't going anywhere.

[luther349]

people forgot they pulled this stunt in the 90s and lost in court.

Re:Ok.

[FictionPimp]

Willful disobedience is a valid way to protest an unjust system.

Re:Surprised people aren't making the connection h

[iggymanz]

I see no reason to give any advantage to the entertainment cartel by letting Disney and similar get to circumvent the original intention of copyright.

The original intent was to let the creator make profit for a time, but then for the work to have the opportunity to become part of the culture, part of what the public owned.

Our cartel thugs with lawmakers in their pockets need a purge.

Here is the perfect response...

[emil]

...anyone involved with Nintendo's legal action should publicly destroy all of their own Nintendo hardware, and upload the footage to Youtube. If Nintendo wants so badly to be erased from our memories, we should certainly help them.

It is unfortunate that I have nothing to smash.

Re:Here is the perfect response...

[omnichad]

Protest the destruction of illegal copies by destroying legal copies? Great argument for video game preservation there.

abandonware needs to be fixed as some stuff owner

[Joe_Dragon]

abandonware needs to be fixed as some stuff does not really have an owner or it's really hard to know who really owns it now.

Re:Surprised people aren't making the connection h

[Nidi62]

Nintendo owns the intellectual property for its games, and when people pirate them instead of buying a Nintendo Super NES Classic Edition or a downloading a copy from one of its digital storefronts, it can argue it's losing money. [...] Even when a Nintendo game isn't for sale, it's still the company's intellectual property, and it can enforce its copyright if it wants.

Emphasis mine. If they're not selling the game, then they can't be making money off of it, so obviously they can't be losing money due to copyright violations.

Disney Vault. Especially with the success of the NES/SNES classics, Nintendo is going to sit on the IP for a few years, clamp down on alternate methods of playing the old games, then rerelease the games for sale on different mediums. It's just like what Disney does with their movies where they go on sale for a few months and then wait a couple years before releasing them.

also can't change big fees for software to repair

[Joe_Dragon]

also can't change big fees for software to repair / restore images.

Let's say I have an arcade game that the HDD / sd card fails on. I should be able to download an image and not pay $50+ for an new SD card or pay for an NEW HDD from them with an markup.

Re: Complicit

[Anonymous Coward]

No not really. They were okay with ROM sites up until NES Classic.

They had a legal right to shut those sites down 18 years ago. Now that they have been complicit so long they should have lost that right.

Re:Unlike black lives

[UnknownSoldier]

Aren't you fun at parties.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

> Unlike other forms of entertainement , art and culture, gaming

No one died and made you God to judge what it, or isn't, a valid form of entertainment. Get off your fucking high horse already.

> Like other forms of entertainment, gaming is NOT a colossal waste of time, resources and energy when done in moderation

FTFY.

Yawn

[duke_cheetah2003]

But the damage that removing ROMs from the internet could do to video games as a whole is catastrophic.

If you believe this, I pity you. Just because these sites are getting nuked by litigation (or threat of) means nothing to ROM's being available online. It's the typical software piracy scenario, for every site they quash, 10 more will take it's place.

Also, all these ROMs are pretty easy to get via torrents. Claiming the sky is falling when it isn't is pretty old and worn out. Nintendo is perfectly in the right to be attacking these sites, but if you or they think it's going to stifle the availability of these ROMs, I got several bridges to sell.

Re:Surprised people aren't making the connection h

[duke_cheetah2003]

Copyright was never intended to be extended. That more than anything else has completely crippled the entire point of copyrighting works. Until the extensions Disney keeps winning stop, we'll never see rational and reasonable copyright law.

If it was kept at 20 years like it was intended, all would be fine and good. The founding fathers had great insights on how to run a country, and every time we tinker with the original vision, our country becomes weaker.

Lazy product development

[damn_registrars]

The popularity of ROM sites shows how much money there is to be made by companies selling these titles again (along with of course the popularity of the new NES, SNES, Genesis, Atari, etc ... consoles and the money Nintendo has made on virtual console). They just need to decide how they want to do it. If there is a way to buy these, I'll give them my money and I'll even agree with them on the lack of validity to the "victimless crime" argument. But if I can't buy a working copy of Battletoads (amongst many other titles) anywhere for any amount of money, then I will download it from a ROM site instead.

If they can't see me putting money in front of them - because their own heads are too far up their own asses - then I have no pity for them.

Re:Lazy product development

[Baron_Yam]

>The popularity of ROM sites shows how much money there is to be made by companies selling these titles again (along with of course the popularity of the new NES, SNES, Genesis, Atari, etc ... consoles and the money Nintendo has made on virtual console). They just need to decide how they want to do it

Hardware costs continually drop. If I were running one of these places, every 20 years I'd sell a controller that had all the games 20 years and older built right into it and had the latest multimedia outputs. There are already a few such devices for sale, but it'd be nice to see that become standard practice.

Every new console cycle, you'd also put out an updated 'classic' console that's contained within a controller and is 20 years behind the times but contains *all* titles the company's ever released prior to 20 years ago. Wouldn't you buy those, for each gaming system, even if you rarely played them?

Re: Complicit

[Anonymous Coward]

Not how the law works, angry guy on the internet.

You'll have to accept this

[OrangeTide]

But Nintendo, Disney, and others own pieces of your childhood. Your childhood doesn't entirely belong to you.

CONSUME

Re:You'll have to accept this

[OrangeTide]

Good for you. But shitting on other people doesn't achieve your goal of behaving in a more mature way.

Re:Boo Hoo you cant play your video games for free

[CronoCloud]

buy old games at retro-shops, pawn shops, Goodwill, garage sales, e-bay, whatever.

You want them on virtual console? well yeah, maybe I do too. But the rights for many old games are complicated.

Lets take for example, Rock N Roll racing. Who owns the rights? The game had TWO developers, Interplay was the publisher and does not exist as a singular entity. Who has Interplay's publishing rights? And what about the rights to the music, they were instrumental versions of rock songs, remember? Were they negotiated for a fixed term? fixed fee? royalties?

Heck it might require negotiation for EACH platform so say if it was on Wii, it might require more contracts and negotiation and MONEY to put it on WiiU, 3DS or Switch.

Or lets talk Diablo on the PSone which is NOT on PSN. The credits have Blizzard, Climax Entertainment, Davidson & Associates, Virgin Interactive, and EA! Think about the complexity of Sony trying to get the rights to put it on PSN.

no one thought of writing in accomodations for future technology into contracts. So you can't entirely blame Nintendo or Sony or whatever.

Re: Complicit

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets say I take a picture. Just a normal picture of something semi interesting. Maybe not the best, but it suits its purpose.

This picture gets pirated by a number of people, they use it in ads, they use it on their websites, they use it everywhere. I know this is happening, and just don't care enough to stop it.

18 years later I find out that there are people that will PAY to see my picture. Even though its been essentially free for the past almost two decades. Why exactly should I be allowed to force everyone else to take it down. It was essentially abandoned property.

Re:and yet rom/emulation may of saved a lot of stu

[Merk42]

[citation needed]

Re: You can buy old games on ebay, no need to pira

[timrod]

The answer is simple: because in many cases, that's simply no longer viable even if you have the money to do so.

Let's start with the display: most old consoles output in 240p. TVs that supported 240p stopped being made probably 20 years ago. Even if you find one, the chances of it having a good tube and the flyback not breaking down from age are pretty low. Now, you could go out and buy an Open Source Scan Converter or a Framemeister, but both of those only work with component input, which means no NES and no N64 without hardmods. Your only other option is something like a component to HDMI converter, which might work provided your TV is good enough. Otherwise, you probably need a PC capture card. There is no one easy solution to this.

Next, let's hope that the capacitors in the consoles themselves haven't gone bad after 20+ years.. or that the CD drive lasers still work if you're talking a Playstation or Dreamcast, since the lasers go incredibly easily on them. Sure, you could order a Chinese replacement laser and hope your soldering job works or re-cap the console, but good luck with that.

Finally, let's hope that expensive cartridge you bought still works, since you're not going the piracy route and using a flashcart. Bitrot is already potentially setting in, and things like save batteries have to be manually desoldered and replaced.

Even assuming you have all of those things, how much longer do you think they're going to last?

It's not that really big of a deal.

[OwP_Fabricated]

It just means the people who onesy-twosy'd ROMs from these sites need to just make like more savvy pirates and just pull the entire NES/SNES/GBA/DS/N64/etc etc libraries from Bittorrent.

Yeah, it's nice to just pick out what you want and get it, but the entire library of every NES/Famicom game ever released (including some that weren't!) is a commanding...50 or so MB. Just do a one-and-done torrent for each system and throw it on a thumbdrive or in your cloud storage (with a password protected archive) or burn it to Bluray/DVD or whatever and never have to think about it ever again?

I've bought a ton of shit from Nintendo over the years. In a lot of the straight-rereleases and Virtual Console games they're literally using the ROMs the pirates ripped back in the 80's/90's with fucking cart readers, along with GPL sourcecode for NES/SNES/etc emulators that they don't contribute their changes to or make code available for. Fuck em.

Re:It's not that really big of a deal.

[hcs_$reboot]

This.

Re:It's not that really big of a deal.

[hcs_$reboot]

What's wrong with reading both?

This would all be fixed

[jediborg]

If we limited copyright terms to instead of 3 LIFETIMES (life of author plus 150 years) to say... 10-20 years. The constitution, which doesn't directly mention copyright but "securing for limited time exclusive right to authors..." I don't think anyone would say three lifetimes counts as a 'limited' time.

Re:and yet rom/emulation may of saved a lot of stu

[Joe_Dragon]

Visual pinball / pinmame back in 2000 likely helped save pinball from deaths door.

Re:theft

[Travelsonic]

Theft is theft, yellow is yellow, potatoes are potatoes, and blowjobs are blowjobs,what's your point? We're talking about copyright, and copyright infringement here.

Re:Not from an IP Owner's perspective.

[Anne Thwacks]

As an IP owner, your ability to alienate potential customers is a power you need to be careful with. If you want us, the general public, to protect your IP, you need to remember not to rub us the wrong way - or, when the genie gets out of the lamp, it might not do you any favours. IP protection is a contract between you and us, and it is looking like our side of the negotiating table has sold us down the river. We are NOT happy bunnies.

To be fair our entire civilization has a

[rsilvergun]

pro-corporate, anti-consumer, anti-worker bias. From our basic gov't structures to our media to our culture as laid out for us. It's easy to get discouraged, especially when you have to make a living doing actual work as opposed to living off the proceeds of your dad or granddad's work.

Nintendo fans are pretty hard core

[rsilvergun]

up there with Blizzard & Bethesda fans. So I don't think that's likely. I'm not sure if this will turn out for them. Give it a few months and the sites will be back minus Nintendo properties. As it gets harder and harder to get Nintendo games they'll lose generations of gamers. Meanwhile anyone who turns the proverbial blind eye will garner those.

For me, I've got so many games I don't know what to do with them. Nintendo is vying for my time more than ever while putting out kind of mediocre stuff. I played a bit of Super Mario Odyssey on a kiosk and it was OK, but Ratchet and Clank, Sly Cooper or even Mario 64 seems a lot better overall. Meanwhile I'm working my way through the Amazing Batman Arkham games (I'll probably stop at Origin, I didn't like what little of Knight I played).

Re:Surprised people aren't making the connection h

[loonycyborg]

I think it should work in different way. Works should automatically go into public domain as soon as tax filings confirm that it brought the amount of revenue equal to its production cost + 30% profit. This will ensure that both creators are compensated and that there is no excessive restrictions once they got their fair payment.

To be fair to Nintendo

[rsilvergun]

they've largely corrected their mistakes with the NES & SNES mini and made them accessible. The WII and WII U virtual consoles are even still up and running and you can buy games. Sega makes a lot of games available on steam and even allows modding.

But also to be fair, there's some real classics (Panzer Dragoon Saga comes to mind) that are the video game equivalent of unobtainium...

Here's one way to get around this:

[Rick Schumann]

Having worked in a previous life in the arcade game industry repairing coin-op games, I can tell you that all you really need to do if you need ROM images for an old coin-op game (if it's a coin-op game we're talking about that is) is to locate one of the companies still around that can repair them, and buy a set of replacement ROMs, then find someone with a chip programmer to read them out to binary files for you. Who you get the ROMs from might even be so nice as to give you image files of them. It's not like there's any copy protection on the ROMs/EPROMs themselves, they're just memory devices. Console game ROMs could be obtained from their original hardware sources with slightly more difficulty, but it's still relatively trivial, all you'd really need is a chip programmer and some basic soldering skills.

Also Nintendo is attempting to close the barn door long after the horses have left, moved on, started over, raised families, had grandchildren, and settled into retirement; never forget that once something has been out on the Internet, it's there forever, someone else will have them. All Nintendo has done is driven the source(s) of them underground.

Wait, what?

[dave-man]

"It's okay to steal if you are poor or otherwise disadvantaged." Really? IP is important. It belongs to someone.

Re:Ok.

[dave-man]

If you don't get arrested for civil disobedience you aren't doing it right.

-- MLK Jr.

Re: Complicit

[omnichad]

Why exactly should I be allowed to force everyone else to take it down. It was essentially abandoned property.

Because they never should have done so in the first place. If abandoned property is fair game, I'd love to raid old buildings for valuable vintage equipment or people's garages.

No free lunch

[swb]

Many game developers and people who have otherwise made video games a major part of their lives, especially those who grew up in low-income households or outside a Western country, wouldn't have been inspired to take that path if it wasn't for ROMs.

Many people who didn't grow up with a yacht wouldn't have been inspired to take up naval architecture or oceanography. That doesn't mean you're entitled to a yacht.

People seem to forget that just because you want something doesn't mean you're entitled to it.

Re:No free lunch

[Patent Lover]

Are you really comparing a tiny rom file to a yacht? Really?

Re:No free lunch

[WolfgangVL]

People seem to forget that just because you want something doesn't mean you're entitled to it.

But in this case, if you can afford to lobby lawmakers enough to extend the copyright laws, you most defiantly* CAN.

*Not a typo

Re:No free lunch

[swb]

Only because it emphasizes the ridiculous sense of entitlement that's taken hold.

Let's face it, if you have someone's IP without paying for it, it's IP theft, and no amount of "but I'm poor" justifies it. Food, housing and healthcare I'd feel differently about, but it seems the sense of entitlement anymore has been extended to everything that people want that mean old capitalists won't give them for free.

I will grant that some old ROM to a game that hasn't been sold or rebooted in decades is a pretty low-rent type of "theft" that not even the corporate shills at Nintendo should waste time on.

But the specifics of the thing people feel entitled to isn't what bothers me, it's the sense of entitlement that because people don't have the material resources for something optional in life that makes it OK to just take it.

The irony is that material prosperity is pretty high these days, because people are whining about their entitlement to intellectual property. 100 years ago it would have been food or shelter and they would have felt entitled to take that by force of arms if necessary.

Re:No free lunch

[UnknownSoldier]

> Let's face it, if you have someone's IP without paying for it, it's IP theft, and no amount of "but I'm poor" justifies it.

/sarcasm Damn! And here all the gifts I've given/received actually turned out to be "IP theft"! Who knew!

/sarcasm Wait till my family finds out that they are commiting "IP theft" when I buy a DVD / BluRay and they watch it for free !

/sarcasm Who knew that Libraries were part of IP theft !? My friends can rent a book / CD / DVD and we can all enjoy it. OH NO!

/sarcasm Wait till you find out about Project Gutenberg -- one can read over 57,000 books! /sarcasm Look at ALL that IP theft!

On a more serious note, you are out of touch with reality. It is obvious you don't have a clue how the Fashion Industry works. It has no copyright or patent protection and yet it thrives.

Are you against books / movies / games passing into the public domain after X amount of time?

* If so, then WHAT length of time is reasonable ?
* If not, then why do you get to hold culture hostage? What gives you the right to dictate to who I can or can't share it with after you are dead??

> whining about their entitlement to intellectual property

Red Herring Fallacy much?

Disagreeing with the premise and/or the definitions is NOT whining -- it's called having a discussion. Not everyone agrees with:

* Hijacking the term "copyright" to mean "Intellectual Property",
* Extending the duration of copyright to some unreasonable length of time, and
* The delusion of "Imaginary Property" that magically becomes some bullshit "Intellectual Property" because lawyers say so. It is in their best self-serving interest to make copyright as long as possible.

Artists did NOT invent copyright. Copyright was invented by --> Publishers <-- to maintain control by preventing other publishers from making a profit.

"The history of copyright law starts with early privileges and monopolies granted to printers of books. The British Statute of Anne 1710, full title "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned", was the first copyright statute. Initially copyright law only applied to the copying of books."

I suggest reading the History of Copyright Law

Not everyone agrees with the shenanigans of life plus 70 years or 95 or 120 years. The ONLY reason the original 20 year copyright was extended was due to excessive greed by corporations lobbying, er, bribing congress.

Copyright is NOT property. It is a compromise contract:

* Creator gets exclusivity for a certain amount of time, and
* In exchange the Public gets free access to it afterwards.

Most people would, probably, be OK with the original 20 year copyright.

The current 120 years is TOO long.

Even back in 1841 the "dangers" of a long copyright was being discussed by Thomas Babbington Macaulay and the House of Commons.

--
Greed is a cancer that destroys society

Re: Complicit

[Dread_ed]

I don't think Nintendo is an American company. Nice try though.

Re: Complicit

[OrangeTide]

It was essentially abandoned property.

You may feel justified in taking something that has been ignored for many years. But legally you can't implicitly abandon your copyright. You have a copyright on your creations for many decades (in some cases 120 years).

(following is US law, but other countries have similar but not identical laws)
Trademark on the other hand does revert if not enforced. And there is no limit in duration.
Patents are active for as long as they are registered.(20 years, typically), even if you let people violate them for years.
Mask Works also work for as long as they are registered(10 years from start of registration)

Now for an analogy: If I didn't mow my property for 20 years, and your kids grew up playing on it without me saying a word about it. Would they be able to visit that property any time they wanted as adults? Do your grandkids automatically get to use it too. Now I put up a fence, and call the cops on your grand kids for trespassing. Would I be a total dick? Would I have a legal right to do so? (yes and probably)

Re:why can't we just buy the rom? and not be force

[omnichad]

If there's no DRM, then the DMCA in the US says it's completely OK and legal to copy those ROMs onto a PC and run them with your emulator of choice (personal backup copy, format shifting).

Re: Complicit

[OrangeTide]

We don''t want your fucking laws in our country. You are not welcome to rule over us at all.

Even though I'm an American, I have to comply with EU GDPR in order to offer online services to people potentially in Europe (I don't actually know when a user is in Europe, but the EU law does not appear to care that I am operating in the US)

I say: Fuck you shithead Americans.

Nintendo is a Japanese company, not American. And Japan definitely has copyright law, and it those laws apply to games. I guess shame on you for letting your government representatives sign treaties and trade agreements? Have you considered isolating yourself and only run games written in your lawless home nation?

If you want to see something really fucked, look up how territories are divided up by book publishers and distributors. (you have no freedom)

Re: Complicit

[Anonymous Coward]

In the U.S. of A., the answer is Yes, and there are laws that support that
(vary by state, so don't ask for a citation for each state). That's why it's
the land-owner's obligation to "police" their land (we don't think about it
much in the "modern" world, though). If a land-owner allows a "public" use
of their for a certain amount of time, guess what, it becomes public land.
And don't be stupid, you know I'm not talking about when you invite someone
onto you land. This is specifically uninvited and unchallenged land use.
Ask any old farmer (with _many_ acres) how often he had to patrol his farm...

CAP === 'leaflet'

How to describe this trend

[OrangeTide]

It's marketing catering to a 30-something and 40-something mid-life crisis.

It is a bit sad that 30-somethings already want to re-live their childhood. Have things really gotten so bad?

Re: You can buy old games on ebay, no need to pira

[omnichad]

Why deal with the console? Just buy the cartridges, discs, etc, and make a legal format-shifting backup copy (at least for the ones without DRM). I'm not going to argue for the RetroPie because I would rather have accurate emulation than cheap, but just about anything is easier than using original hardware to play on.

Re:Nintendo Super NES Classic Edition?

[omnichad]

You sure about that? My local Target has 3 for in-store pickup today. Wal-Mart, it's a 3 day wait but they can ship it right away.

Re:That's Not How Copyright Law Works...

[omnichad]

Putting it on the web site is distribution. Nobody's saying making your own copy is illegal - just that duplicating it for anyone who asks is illegal.

Re: Not from an IP Owner's perspective.

[wisnoskij]

This. I almost exclusivly buy games i pirate. I am looking at 2 indie adventure games on steam at the moment, and would be more than willing to purchase them, but i simply wont unless i get to play a pirated copy first. Maybe a demo would suffice, but i have never been too fond of demos. Looking back through the list of game purchases i have made, 90 cents out of 100 that the gaming industry gets from me are a direct result of pirating.

Steam sells old games for next to nothing...

[Radical Moderate]

...yet they still seem to have a lot customers for new games. As long as games and hardware keep pushing the envelope, there's plenty of incentive to buy new games.

Re:Steam sells old games for next to nothing...

[omnichad]

...yet they still seem to have a lot customers for new games.

Because this hasn't been implemented.

Re:Steam sells old games for next to nothing...

[djinn6]

Because this hasn't been implemented.

Have you never heard of BitTorrent?

And guess what? People still pay for games.

Re:Steam sells old games for next to nothing...

[omnichad]

Because most people aren't interested in being criminals. Really.

Re:Steam sells old games for next to nothing...

[djinn6]

Nah, even paying gamers like myself still pirate. So do 90% of all gamers if surveys are to be believed.

Re:why can't we just buy the rom? and not be force

[markdavis]

>"Wow, did you not even RTFS? Nintendo's selling retro consoles and licensing these ROMS today."

Every game they ever made? I doubt it. And what about the years between the first market and the retro console?

Re:theft

[WolfgangVL]

Theft is theft, yellow is yellow, potatoes are potatoes, and blowjobs are blowjobs,what's your point? We're talking about copyright, and copyright infringement here.

Say copyright protections expire tomorrow on IP XYZ. It has made it's creators untold amounts of money, and even the creators grand children have been enjoying the proceeds.

Creators grandchildren have since sold the rights to a large corporation, as they knew the rights would expire soon, making them publicly owned. Maybe this corporation has a mouse for a mascot, maybe they don't.

This corporation has spent a very large amount of corporate money bribing lawmakers such as to pass a copyright extension bill.

This bill passes, and the copyright is extended another 20 years, clawing back the rights to everything that was set to fall into the public domain for the next two decades. So that again, for the next 20 years, no IP will become public.

Now Mr. Public had no say in this. He was not offered a chance to explain to the judge that he has played by the rules, and waited patiently for his cultural works to become public. The choice to "Extend copyright" (STEAL FROM THE PUBLIC) was made without his say so. He now no longer has access to the next 20 years of IP that was to fall into the public domain, and instead, must contentiously license the works from big corporations that had no hand in the original publishing of said works.

He is deprived of something that he was supposed to have. It was taken from him, and he no longer has it.

You're so right, theft is theft. Copying is copying, but in the United Corporations of America, there is no difference.

Easy Solution

[wisnoskij]

Just upload the ROMs to the internet archive. Half its catelogue appears to just be copies of torrents and other copyrighted works. And they are legaly exempt from copyright claims from my understanding.

Re: Complicit

[Wycliffe]

120 is absolutely ridiculous especially for abandoned property. Copyright and patent law is supposed to encourage creation of new works by granting temporary monopolies. It's hard to argue that copyrights longer than 20 years still serves this purpose.

Re:Ok.

[dissy]

The joke of this is that it actually inspired me to finally download all the roms for the systems I love. It's not like there is a legal way for me to download and play these games. Such a pointless waste.

Sure there is.

Archive.org has a legal exemption to the DMCA to preserve copyright protected works for when their limited time protection expires. They have preserved NES games in their collection as well
.
(Note that while they can legally distribute them to you, you still can't legally distribute them from there to others)

Despite Nintendo's decades of lying about ownership of the MOS Technology 6502 CPU, they had zero part in designing or creating that chip, so their claims that emulator software violate their rights are just that, lies.
Perhaps the first claim back in the 90s was just a mistake, but after being corrected a few million times, it's clear those claims are malicious and since the DMCA has passed their claims are also criminal.

Emulators are legal to download if the software creator releases it with a license allowing you to, you can safely ignore Nintendo's claims of ownership on other peoples property.

How do destroy your own brand

[easyTree]

in the eyes of fans the world over, in the name of protecting it's IP. doh!

Re:why can't we just buy the rom? and not be force

[Calydor]

And not just every game Nintendo ever made, every game ever made for each console for which the rights still belong to other companies; some of which have since folded and no one really knows WHO owns the rights anymore.

Re:Surprised people aren't making the connection h

[novakyu]

Yap. See a nice avant garde novel that could be made into a great movie? Why, just wait 10 years, after the novelist couldn't afford to get the copyright renewed for the first extension, you don't have to bother with negotiating for optioning it.

I would be happy with the original terms of copyright—28 years, registration required, and renewable for one term for additional 28 years. (And no more worrying about the author's estate—do what rest of us do and bequeath your heirs money, not IP.)

Re:Ok.

[DogDude]

Don't kid yourself. It's a fucking lazy way to protest and unjust system.

Re: Boo Hoo you cant play your video games for fre

[KixWooder]

A few minutes opening up the case for an original NES, and you can get rid of flashing crap. It's caused by their lockout chip, and it's trivially easy to disable. https://www.thevintagegamers.c...

It's not culture, it's IP!

[grep -v '.*' *]

You bought a single bouncy ball, not a prototype for building bouncy balls in general or cloning them en masse.

Many ... people who have otherwise made video games a major part of their lives ... wouldn't have been inspired to take that path if it wasn't for ROMs.

What!? They might have bumped across it anyway, or anyway they'll find something else to do. Maybe they'll like the new thing more, or maybe less.

Poor or non-western country. Yep. And I'm not going to be in SpaceXs space tourism stuff, either. Sucks to be poor and poorer. (Not that I'm either. I'm pretty sure that most (all?) of us in the US are in the top 10% of the world, if not 1%.) Worrying about how many genders there are is MUCH much easier when you have clean water, good food, are healthy, warm and safe than when you're literally dying from thrust and hunger in the rain.

Entire chapters of video game history would be lost if ROMs and emulation didn't preserve games where publishers failed to.

That's nice. Entire chapters of human history have been lost before, this won't be the first and won't be the last. News, 1 day ago: "Archaeologists fear biblical artifacts, monuments won't survive Yemen war." OH NOES, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial video game won't be around noes mores! Oh the humanity majors!

I have unpaid for copies of Nintendo ROMs. I'm literally looking at a video game console: Space Duel. Not a ROM dump -- a real, actual, physical, original working console. A friend of mine owns Joust in somehow like-new condition. I have a "licensed" copy of PacMan for the PC and an unlicensed one for a PC emulator. I'm sorry the sites are gone as well, but each "individual game template" IS theirs. And at least USED to, they don't have the reach to be everywhere in the world at once, or profits to even want to bother. Want to help them with that? Become a distributor.

It's culture only because we made it so (and probably addictive as well), but someone else does actually own it. (Depending on copyright and length of time maybe they shouldn't anymore, but that's a different argument.) Taken any aspirin? Used a Xerox lately? Seen a talking Mouse? Used your Clout recently? (That came from Visa 20 years ago; I still remember their commercials using it.) Language is easier to get away things than with physical (logical) objects -- especially if they can FIND you.

"But Information wants to be free." So what's your bank account number and mothers maiden name again? I'll be right back.

Re: Complicit

[dryeo]

They're using American laws and courts.

Re: You can buy old games on ebay, no need to pira

[CronoCloud]

most old consoles output in 240p. TVs that supported 240p stopped being made probably 20 years ago

What the hell are you going on about, most HDTV's support 240p, no problem. There were some early models that didn't, though. Are you one of those nerds who gets outdated info fixed in their heads and never updates their info?

things like save batteries have to be manually desoldered and replaced

Nope, just pry the battery lose, put a new battery in. Sometimes you can just squeeze the contacts to hold it in place (Did that with a NES Zelda) or you can use a bit of tape.

There's no need to overcomplicate things.

Re:Nintendo Super NES Classic Edition?

[Shikaku]

https://www.amazon.com/SNES-Ni...

What is this? It's in stock too. Also the power cable is USB, so you can buy this if you are even not in EU unless you don't have a powered USB plug somewhere in your house.

Re:Nintendo is being silly!

[CronoCloud]

What Nintendo should be doing is selling a CD or DVD or flash drive with all of its game ROMs for about $30.

They can't, they don't have the rights to all those NES titles, the publishers and developers do.

For example, one of my favorite NES games was the NES port of Might and Magic: Secret of the Inner Sanctum. It was a late NES game, copyright of 94 I believe. If memory serves me well it has 4 copyright notices, One for Jon Van Caneghem, the original developer. Another for New World Computing, another for the game's developer G-Amusements Ltd and another for the Publisher, American Sammy.

Getting the rights to publish this on VC would require dealing with 4 entities. JVC is still alive but New World computing is defunct, the assets are probably with Ubisoft, but you never know. I don't know about G-Amusements but American Sammy is also defunct, though Sega has their assets, but again, you never know if they have all of them.

Or think of The shooter/adventure hybrid game: The Guardian Legend. Copyrighted to Compile, Irem AND Broderbund! Broderbund's assets ended up with THQ and then Nordic, which then rebranded as THQ Nordic.

Or Battletoads, which was Rare, which is now owned by Microsoft. Do you think Microsoft would OK a VC release of Battletoads? That is even if they have the IP, they might not own all of Rare's IP.

Think of how even trying to figure out whom to negotiate with is complicated.

Re: Complicit

[Anonymous Coward]

Your argument is absolutely ridiculous, but there are plenty of works in the public domain that are there specifically because they were abandoned.
https://definitions.uslegal.com/a/abandonment-of-copyright/

It isnâ(TM)t even necessarily the case that Nintendo had the legal right to do this, only that two emulation sites didnâ(TM)t have the resources to challenge them in court.

Re: Complicit

[jpaine619]

Then why did your country sign the treaty?

If it was only US law, you could do whatever you want.. But, almost every country on Earth has signed the Berne Convention.

Besides, angry clueless person, Nintendo is not a U.S. company..

Re: Complicit

[jpaine619]

They may use American courts, but the laws on copyrights are global.

Please try again..

Re: Complicit

[Anonymous Coward]

The kids might own your property through something called Adverse Possession.

Re: Complicit

[dryeo]

Where I am, I'm allowed to copy copyrighted music for personal use and the maximum civil punishment for pirating a movie is the price of a DVD and a max of a couple of thousand dollars for distributing. Works also go into the public domain after 50 years so lots of stuff is out of copyright here unlike other countries.
Most countries might have copyright laws but in America, they're taken up to 11 and getting sued means perhaps 100's of thousands in damages rather then a couple of hundred bucks.

Re: Complicit

[deathguppie]

Now for an analogy: If I didn't mow my property for 20 years, and your kids grew up playing on it without me saying a word about it. Would they be able to visit that property any time they wanted as adults? Do your grandkids automatically get to use it too. Now I put up a fence, and call the cops on your grand kids for trespassing. Would I be a total dick? Would I have a legal right to do so? (yes and probably)

Wrong!, there is something called "adverse possession". If someone has used a piece of land long enough, made changes and it has clearly been in use without you acknowledging or responding to their use. The land may become theirs by law. http://www.beliveaulaw.net/201...

nintendo uses downloaded ROMs

[thygate]

Interesting fact is that Nintendo themselves downloaded ROM images from the internet for use in their Virtual Console. An example for this is a Super Mario Bros ROM for the NES. Where the image used on the console was stored in a format that was first implemented by the developer of the iNES emulator (Marat Fayzullin) and later adopted by other emulator authors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I still say we should move to...

[fyngyrz]

I still say we should move to a "you stop supporting it, you lose your rights to it" intellectual property methodology. If congress won't do it, then the citizens should.

Copyright and patents are utterly out of hand; corporate manipulation of the legal system has tilted the playing field beyond any reasonable conception of...

to promote the progress of science and useful arts

...as laid out in the US constitution (I'm a US citizen, so it's the US I am concerned with.)

At this point, patent and copyright law directly and effciently degrade progress. It's time — past time — to just say no.

Re: I still say we should move to...

[Anonymous Coward]

I say we take off and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure!

Re:why can't we just buy the rom? and not be force

[djinn6]

I believe there should be a grace period of a few years or something, and if a company no longer sells or licenses their "property", they forfeit it and it should go public domain

Pretty easy to get around that restriction, just charge $10^100 per copy.

Re:Surprised people aren't making the connection h

[djinn6]

That's just a matter of adjusting the cost scale. You can start with $1 for the first year and double it every year thereafter. It's a reasonable $1024 after 10 years and a much more costly $1,048,576 after 20. Disney might have a deep wallet, but they don't have an exponentially deep wallet.

Re: Complicit

[OrangeTide]

Wrong!, there is something called "adverse possession". If someone has used a piece of land long enough, ...

Fought this one in court and won already. I'm super familiar with this sort of stuff, and there are lots of limitations on where it can apply. My particular example was very carefully crafted. Playing on my lawn doesn't make it your lawn. Building some fences over my property line could (and has before).

Re: Complicit

[phantomfive]

A small clarification: Trademark doesn't revert if it's not enforced, rather if it becomes common usage. A company doesn't need to enforce it, but that is one way to prevent it from becoming common usage.

Re:why can't we just buy the rom? and not be force

[markdavis]

>"Pretty easy to get around that restriction, just charge $10^100 per copy."

Good point. Maybe it should be based on sales and not offers.

Re: Complicit

[OrangeTide]

But they didn't. We had the county revert to the original property line.

Re: Complicit

[OrangeTide]

You're thinking of dilution of trademark. Which is distinct from failing to meet use obligations for a trademark. Both can be problematic, but dilution doesn't actually revert your rights. But if you cease to use your trademark you do lose it (after 5 years for example). Meeting the use obligation is pretty simple though.

Who gets paid?

[VikingNation]

The vast majority of past games are not available on Atari flashback, NES classic, etc. What happens if there is a game they want to put on a system and the company who developed it are out of business?

Re:Ok.

[amiga3D]

Given how small all these ROMS are compared to the storage available today it's possible to put every SNES game ever published on a microSD card. Same with N64. They're out there, they aren't going to get them back. They're closing the barn gate WAY late, the horses are gone.

Re: Complicit

[phantomfive]

You're right.

Re: Complicit

[kurkosdr]

Not really. Nintendo just didn't have much of a commercial interest in those games in the past, so their legal team was occupied with sending takedowns for other more recent games. Now they have a commercial interest in those old games so they send takedowns for ROMs of these old games too. The DMCA has created an environment where there are infinite nerds in front of infinite keyboards uploading unathorized material all the time but Nintendo has so many people sending takedown requests.

Re: Complicit

[corydoras]

It's pretty obvious that the current system encourages content producers to rehash the same things over and over, not create new works.

Re:Surprised people aren't making the connection h

[MobyDisk]

Or they need to learn from the music industry and just sell the ROMs. They should have gone to EmuParadise and said "You have 3 months to implement a billing system, pay us $2 per download, and lets make millions together."

Bethesda threatens to sue secondhand seller

[tepples]

buy old games at retro-shops, pawn shops, Goodwill, garage sales, e-bay, whatever.

Until other publishers start following the lead of Bethesda in threatening to sue secondhand sellers.

Re:Bethesda threatens to sue secondhand seller

[CronoCloud]

I figured you'd latch on to this, you are so predictable.

Did you see the update where it was discovered that it was someone trying to sell a second hand game as New? No? This is why I constantly tell you to keep your info current and don't fall into the trap of locking yourself into your axes-to-grind.

Re:Bethesda threatens to sue secondhand seller

[tepples]

It's still the case that a company is eager to litigate over whether a factory-sealed copy of its product is "new".

Re:why can't we just buy the rom? and not be force

[omnichad]

Try to prove I didn't. Especially if I bought and sold my ROM dumper secondhand.

Re:Ok.

[strikethree]

It is only a lazy way of protesting if you fear the consequences and try to avoid them; otherwise, it is a great way to protest.

To continue with your negativity, I also think that most people are choosing the "lazy" way to protest. So, you are not wrong... even if you are not right. :)

Re: Complicit

[OrangeTide]

If you got this deep in the thread you already know this conversation is about land laws and veered far off the topic of IP law.

As for copyright, trademark, patent and mask work law I already spelled out how they are different. I also gave examples of where DMCA altered earlier precedent.
The metaphor was unnecessary because even IP law is different from itself. But the analogy was helpful in showing that assumptions of ownership can be surprising.