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Comments: 189 +-   Nintendo Upset Over Nokia Game Emulation Video on Tuesday December 01, @01:45AM

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday December 01, @01:45AM
from the super-mario-takedown dept.
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An anonymous reader writes "Nintendo is investigating potential copyright infringement by Nokia during some video demos of their N900 phone, which can be seen emulating Nintendo games. Nintendo spokesman Robert Saunders says: 'We take rigorous steps to protect our IP and our legal team will examine this to determine if any infringement has taken place.' In the video, Nokia says, 'Most publishers allow individual title usage, provided that the user is in possession of the original title.'"
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  • Oh, Nokia.. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Psaakyrn (838406)

    "Most publishers allow individual title usage, provided that the user is in possession of the original title."

    This might explain why their platforms failed so much (well, other than side-talking and whatnot). I have not really heard of any major publisher that allows copies of their titles (disregarding software officially released free) so I don't know who gave Nokia that info.

    Not to mention this is NINTENDO. If there's a single game company who is most likely to oppose emulation, it's Nintendo.

    • And for reference, Nintendo's Policy (Score:5, Informative)

      by Psaakyrn (838406) on Tuesday December 01, @02:09AM (#30280152)

      http://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp#roms [nintendo.com]

      How Does Nintendo Feel About the Emergence of Video Game Emulators?

      The introduction of emulators created to play illegally copied Nintendo software represents the greatest threat to date to the intellectual property rights of video game developers. As is the case with any business or industry, when its products become available for free, the revenue stream supporting that industry is threatened. Such emulators have the potential to significantly damage a worldwide entertainment software industry which generates over $15 billion annually, and tens of thousands of jobs.

      What Does Nintendo Think of the Argument that Emulators are Actually Good for Nintendo Because it Promotes the Nintendo Brand to PC Users and Leads to More Sales?

      Distribution of an emulator developed to play illegally copied Nintendo software hurts Nintendo's goodwill, the millions of dollars invested in research & development and marketing by Nintendo and its licensees. Substantial damages are caused to Nintendo and its licensees. It is irrelevant whether or not someone profits from the distribution of an emulator. The emulator promotes the play of illegal ROMs , NOT authentic games. Thus, not only does it not lead to more sales, it has the opposite effect and purpose.

      How Come Nintendo Does Not Take Steps Towards Legitimizing Nintendo Emulators?

      Emulators developed to play illegally copied Nintendo software promote piracy. That's like asking why doesn't Nintendo legitimize piracy. It doesn't make any business sense. It's that simple and not open to debate.

      People Making Nintendo Emulators and Nintendo ROMs are Helping Publishers by Making Old Games Available that are No Longer Being Sold by the Copyright Owner. This Does Not Hurt Anyone and Allows Gamers to Play Old Favorites. What's the Problem?

      The problem is that it's illegal. Copyrights and trademarks of games are corporate assets. If these vintage titles are available far and wide, it undermines the value of this intellectual property and adversely affects the right owner. In addition, the assumption that the games involved are vintage or nostalgia games is incorrect. Nintendo is famous for bringing back to life its popular characters for its newer systems, for example, Mario and Donkey Kong have enjoyed their adventures on all Nintendo platforms, going from coin-op machines to our latest hardware platforms. As a copyright owner, and creator of such famous characters, only Nintendo has the right to benefit from such valuable assets.

      • Nintendo is famous for bringing back to life its popular characters for its newer systems, for example, Mario and Donkey Kong have enjoyed their adventures on all Nintendo platforms

        WHAT ABOUT EARTHBOUND?

      • Re:And for reference, Nintendo's Policy (Score:5, Insightful)

        by fractoid (1076465) on Tuesday December 01, @02:37AM (#30280260) Homepage

        The introduction of emulators created to play illegally copied Nintendo software represents the greatest threat to date to the intellectual property rights of video game developers.

        Wow, self-centered much? So piracy of Nintendo games is the greatest threat to date to the IP rights of video game developers as a whole?

      • So wrong it wraps around to correct (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Rix (54095) on Tuesday December 01, @03:08AM (#30280454)

        Emulators developed to play illegally copied Nintendo software promote piracy. That's like asking why doesn't Nintendo legitimize piracy. It doesn't make any business sense. It's that simple and not open to debate.

        They're right that it's not open to debate. Piracy is going to happen, and there's absolutely nothing Nintendo or anyone else can do about it. They can accept that, and find a way to profit from it, or turn away people who want to be paying customers.

      • How Come Nintendo Does Not Take Steps Towards Legitimizing Nintendo Emulators?

        Emulators developed to play illegally copied Nintendo software promote piracy. That's like asking why doesn't Nintendo legitimize piracy. It doesn't make any business sense. It's that simple and not open to debate.

        So thy are just saying that they do not want to make an emulator that works like the Wii VC for computers. (have encryption and sell the roms themselves)

    • Re:Oh, Nokia.. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by mjwx (966435) on Tuesday December 01, @02:51AM (#30280338)

      Not to mention this is NINTENDO. If there's a single game company who is most likely to oppose emulation, it's Nintendo.

      Allow me to introduce you to the Nintendo Gateway System [panasonic.aero] for IFE's (In Flight Entertainment systems). Such systems have been in place on many airlines for some time now, this one is uses GameBoy roms but the one's I've used on Singapore Airlines used NES and SNES roms.

      Nintendo aren't against emulation, they are all for it (after all the whole virtual console thing is emulation) they just want to sell it. Nintendo's problem isn't that the emulators exist it that they are competing commercially (I.E. Nokia wants to make money for itself by advertising Nintendo's products without permission).

      MS and Sony are far more hostile to emulation, they just haven't been in the game long enough to be affected by it. MS has released 2 generations of console, Sony 3 generations whilst Nintendo have had 6 generations released.

  • Note that they haven't accused yet (Score:5, Insightful)

    by coppro (1143801) on Tuesday December 01, @02:04AM (#30280120)
    It's worth pointing out that Nintendo merely wants to find out if infringement occurred - they're almost certainly as aware as every other game company that emulation is legal. It's quite possible, however, that there was indeed some copyright infringement, such as in acquiring the game, and they want to be sure that their competitors are playing by the book.
    This is reasonable, in my opinion.

    • Re:Note that they haven't accused yet (Score:5, Insightful)

      by V!NCENT (1105021) on Tuesday December 01, @07:05AM (#30281742)

      Nintendo: I don't want you to emulate our games on your phone!
      V!NCENT: Dear Nintendo, can I buy a 8bit GameBoy then?
      Nintendo: No we don't sell them anymore.
      V!NCENT: Ehm... ?

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by V!NCENT (1105021)

              Or wait for the next GameBoy... Nintendo's explenation for only supporting the GBA cards is that the DS is not a GameBoy and the GBA would live in parallel with the DS. Supporting older GB cards on the DS would have cost Nintendo too much money.

              Nintendo also said that the next GameBoy would support older GB cards again.

              So I see no need to buy a 30 USD flash card if I have a tiny GBAsp :/

  • How many Mario clones have been made using flash/java web applications this last decade alone? Answer: 2.35 * 10 ^ 34
  • I really don't care what most publishers says, I only care about what the laws in my country says. That's what matters, unless you live in some place where the publishers owns the government and make their own laws (or licenses that supersedes the law). And in my country I have every right to play what I own on any device I feel like.

    (don't know for how long though, given the current copyright jihad.)

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by marcansoft (727665)

      Precisely. Even more important is that emulators do not themselves constitute copyright infringement (unless they contain a ripped BIOS or the like), nor do they bypass copy protection (that's the job of the game ripper, not the emulator), so Nintendo can do squat about the application itself. At most, Nintendo is pulling a PR move here. The only real claim they have relates to whether some employee at Nokia illegally downloaded games that he does not own for the purposes of this demostration.

      • No, they can make a copyright infringement claim over the video itself. It would be the same if a microsoft commercial had someone playing half-life without Valve's authorization.

  • Dear Nintendo (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Random5 (826815)
    Either start selling copies of these roms (or licenses to play them) on your website or shut the hell up. You're not losing profit on games for consoles which are 3 and 4 generations obsolete if you're not selling new copies of those games. Charging people say $1, $2 a pop to download 1meg roms off your site would have a pretty damn high profit margin I think.

    • That's basically what the Wii's Virtual Console is. Only caveat is that you have to have a Wii to play them. And, well, you're not SUPPOSED to be able to copy them, but there are hacks that let you.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by TheVelvetFlamebait (986083)

      Nintendo are selling some of the more popular titles via Wii shop (and some DS shop?). Of course, they are not at all obliged to do this to keep their copyrights; they're free to cash in from their work whenever they like.

      In fact, it's very possible that there would be more classic titles on sale if less people were downloading them beforehand. Some games, thanks to their demand drying up, might no longer have the demand necessary for Nintendo to be bothered making them available.

      • I think most 10-20 year old games are popular precisely due to the availiblity to download them over the past years.

        • You know what? I think Nintendo doesn't require pirates to handle their marketing. I'm pretty sure they can make good games popular without people ripping them off.

          • You misread me if you thought I said that.

            I am just refuting your point about some games not being available due to the accessibility of questionable downloads.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by SeaFox (739806)

      Uhh, Doesn't the Wii have an online marketplace where you can get those games from systems past and play them on your new Wii under emulation?

      I'm sure they aren't making these [amazon.com] two items [amazon.com] just to look pretty on a shelf.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Toonol (1057698)
          Why the fuck should we have to buy a Wii to play old nintendo games when we already own perfectly good computers?

          The law? Any rom of a game you haven't bought is CLEARLY illegal; a rom of a game you've previously purchased may or may not be, it's a little bit of a grey area (in the US).

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by justinlee37 (993373)
            You're missing my point. It's a dick move for Nintendo to try and force me to buy a second, proprietary computer in order to play their games when they could just sell them to me on the computer that I already own. I already know it's illegal to pirate games, that's a no-brainer.
            • You could say that about consoles in general, and yet there are three major ones making money right now.

            • No-one is forcing you to buy additional hardware - if you have the games already then you have the hardware to play them on - the original handheld consoles.

              Want to play Tetris - play it on your GameBoy - it uses less power than your PC and its portable too. Golden Sun - play it on your GameBoyAdvance.

          • Uh, have you ever used ZSNES? I'm fairly sure it runs just about every SNES game ever made with the same accuracy that a Wii would, if it had someone tweak every single 'ROM' for the platform as is done for Wii.

            • I'm not advocating piracy here, I'm just saying that forcing the consumer to buy "special" hardware in order to play a game that would work rather well on any PC on the market is a dick move.

              And yet we have three major consoles on the market right now.... Interesting.

  • There's a company that made commercial console emulators for Nokia Series 60 phones:
    Vampent - http://vampent.com [vampent.com]
    Their products are: VNES = NES Emulator
    VBOY = Gameboy Color Emulator
    VSUN = SNES Emulator
    VBAG/VBAGX = Gameboy Advance Emulator

    • Re:Anyone ever read the instruction manuals? (Score:5, Informative)

      by wParam (162415) on Tuesday December 01, @02:30AM (#30280232)

      I checked the book for Mario Paint and the SNES Mario Kart; I didn't see anything obvious one way or the other on this topic. However, systems more recent than that (N64, gamecube and wii) definitely DO have something to say. It actually says the exact opposite of what you suggest:

      "Copying of any Nintendo game is illegal and is strictly prohibited by domestic and international intellectual property laws. "Back-up" or "archival" copies are not authorized and are not necessary to protect your software. Violators will be prosecuted."
      -Inside front cover of Smash Brothers: Brawl for wii.

      They actually manage to make the message even more infuriating by telling outright lies. (Not necessary? Are they seriously implying that their disks can't ever be scratched by anything? Or that an N64 cart can't be killed by ESD?)

      So, while they may have once been cool about it, at some point they decided that being jerks was the way to go. It's been this way since N64, so I'm sure the DS games say the same thing.

      Note: I looked in the book for Mario Kart 64, and found this exact message there, too. It's possible that third party titles don't have a message this ridiculous. I remember it being in the gamecube manuals, too, but don't have one at hand to check for sure.

      • "Copying of any Nintendo game is illegal and is strictly prohibited by domestic and international intellectual property laws. "Back-up" or "archival" copies are not authorized and are not necessary to protect your software. Violators will be prosecuted." -Inside front cover of Smash Brothers: Brawl for wii.

        I see the same notice in Super Star Wars for the SNES, and Pokemon Yellow manuals. It is older than N64 but I don't have a NES manual handy to see if it older than this.

        • "Copying of any Nintendo game is illegal and is strictly prohibited by domestic and international intellectual property laws. "Back-up" or "archival" copies are not authorized and are not necessary to protect your software.

          Emphasis added.

          Is that a written guarantee that no 7-year-old kid could possibly manage to destroy a game disk?

      • Re:Anyone ever read the instruction manuals? (Score:4, Informative)

        by thetartanavenger (1052920) on Tuesday December 01, @02:46AM (#30280304)

        The thing is some countries have copyright laws that explicitly allow copying for backup purposes. I'm pretty sure the UK is one of these, pretty certainly for software. Would a SNES cartridge constitute software or firmware and does it make a difference?

        Of course Nokia aren't exactly a UK company and they clearly aren't using it for backup purposes, but frankly I don't see anything wrong with what they did (provided they own the actual cartridges).

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Laws always trump the wishful-thinking fine print of corporations. I don't even read what some company wants to tell me, because it's usually bogus.

          Germany has even less strict laws in some respect. You are allowed to copy for private purposes, if the copy is made from a legitimate source. That doesn't include spreading it on the internet but making a copy for your friends (real friends not twitter/myspace/facebook "friends"). We even pay a certain amount of money on blank discs, scanners, etc. for this pur

          • Same here in Canada (except that last part about copy protection).

            On that note, my guess is that if you were able to bypass it, it wasn't very "effective" now was it? :D

        • Re:Anyone ever read the instruction manuals? (Score:4, Informative)

          by Mr2001 (90979) on Tuesday December 01, @03:40AM (#30280586) Homepage Journal

          The thing is some countries have copyright laws that explicitly allow copying for backup purposes. I'm pretty sure the UK is one of these, pretty certainly for software.

          The US is also one of these. 17 USC 117 [bitlaw.com] applies to any "computer program", even one for a special-purpose computer like a game console.

        • Actually in the UK you have zero rights to create archive or backup copies of copyrighted media, at least you used to, this may have changed. There was actually a push by music companies to give you the right for a backup copy ( on the basis that a single company suing for a tape/mp3 copy to play in a car stereo would make them all look incredibly bad and force a much more liberal fair use law).

          I believe UK law permits one workable version of anything you've a licence for (you can copy a SNES cart but yo
        • In Brasil there is also an explicit provision for a single backup copy of computer programs (they might try and argue that a videogame is not a computer, though).

      • i love that it says "your software" and still go on about things you cant do...

      • Except that certain countries copyright law states that you have the right to make a backup copy of computer system media. A console is still a computer system.

        So national law trumps Nintendo EULA.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Nokia Corporation is three times as large as Nintendo by revenue and assets, although Nokia's market cap is only 50 % larger.

      • what you imply to be a frivolous lawsuit?

        That is *exactly* what I am saying - if they actually did it.

        I don't think Nintendo would be stupid enough to start some sort of legal proceedings but I think Nokia took at unnecessary risk but *offically* and *actively* promoting a video that basically said "Look Nintendo - our hardware can run your computer games" - the video even has a "Nokia.com" watermark over it.

        I think to risk the time, effort and money in marketing and developing the N900 over something as "legally charged" like this is insane.

        Reali

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Jesus_666 (702802)
        The problem is that Nintendo is selling both an emulator for their older consoles (the Wii, via the Virtual Console) and those older games as well. They most likely plan to release a number of games not on the market yet. Essentially, if a game has even been released on a Nintendo platform, they actually expect to sell it until the heat death of the universe or their bankuptcy, whichever comes later.
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