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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.
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.
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.
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).
is a global boycott.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
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.
and yet rom/emulation may of saved a lot of stuff even maybe helped start off the barcade market.
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.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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.)
Many of these sites were also a community for discussing games. This way the community was basically lost.
Willful disobedience is a valid way to protest an unjust system.
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.
Not how the law works, angry guy on the internet.
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 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.
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.
I don't think Nintendo is an American company. Nice try though.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
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)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
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)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
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?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
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.
Don't kid yourself. It's a fucking lazy way to protest and unjust system.
I don't respond to AC's.
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...
once more into the breach
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...
At this point, patent and copyright law directly and effciently degrade progress. It's time — past time — to just say no.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.