Nintendo Confirms It Will Sue UltraHLE Creators

ewhac writes "Fastest Game News Online is reporting that Beth Llewelyn, PR manager for Nintendo US, has issued a formal statement confirming that Nintendo will pursue legal action against "Reality Man" and "Epsilon", the nom de plume of the creators of the UltraHLE N64 emulator. Says Llewelyn, "Nintendo is very disturbed that Reality Man and Epsilon have widely distributed a product designed solely to play infringing copies of copyrighted works [ ... ] We are taking several measures to further protect and enforce our intellectual property rights which, of course, includes the bringing of legal action. Emulators and ROMs are clearly infringing and damage not only 'larger industry players' such as Nintendo but hundreds of smaller companies who invest millions of dollars and thousands of hours to develop and program software only to have it stolen on the Internet." "

Flagrantly Biased Editorial: Once again, Nintendo is inventing intellectual property rights out of thin air. Miss Llewelyn states as axiomatic that emulators A) are illegal, and B) exist solely to permit playing illicit copies of games. This false premise leads them to a variety of flawed conclusions, such as the belief that Nintendo has the right to dictate what buyers can and can't run the games on. Regardless of what shrinkwrap "agreements" may say, it is my adamant position that once a product is released into an uncontrolled retail market, what the purchaser does with that product is entirely their business (within the confines of applicable statutes), and the vendor has no right after the fact to constrain use. Further, running a program under an emulator, despite Nintendo's fervent desires, does not constitute an infringing "derivative work" under copyright law. In fact, translating your personal copy of a copyrighted software program to achieve compatability with another platform is recognized as fair use, as Nintendo well knows. (Redistribution of the translation, however, isn't kosher.)

Nintendo's narrow position also fails to take into consideration that I'm seriously considering buying a copy of Zelda-64 now that I can play it on my PC. If, however, their principles compel them to forego my (meager) contribution to their revenue, I would be happy to oblige.