Nintendo's Offensive, Tragic, and Totally Legal Erasure of ROM Sites (vice.com) 334
"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.
Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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!
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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.
How to describe this trend (Score:3)
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:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Here is the perfect response... (Score:2)
...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.
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Protest the destruction of illegal copies by destroying legal copies? Great argument for video game preservation there.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Need a "use it or lose it" IP policy (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
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.
To be fair our entire civilization has a (Score:2)
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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.
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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
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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... [slashdot.org]
-CmdrTaco
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Nintendo makes tons of fucking money every time they re(-re)+lease one of those old games.
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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.
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You mean how Nintendo continues to release classic game consoles including old games from the 80s? That sort of "use it"?
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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.
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That's a different issue in my perspective. That's kinda similar to trademark protection.
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but's it's ok for Nintendo to use emu work ines (Score:2)
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)
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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.
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https://www.eurogamer.net/arti... [eurogamer.net]
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..
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 StarF
not just the rom but the emulation system work (Score:2)
not just the rom but the emulation system work that was ripped off.
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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.
What Nintendo deserves (Score:4, Insightful)
Nintendo fans are pretty hard core (Score:2)
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
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Wish people were boycotting Nintendo last year when they released their NES Classic. That shit was impossible to get your hands on...
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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 f
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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.
What sega, NES, SNES rom websites need to do (Score:2)
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 i
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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.
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They have a stake, but no standing to sue over those.
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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.
and yet rom/emulation may of saved a lot of stuff (Score:3)
and yet rom/emulation may of saved a lot of stuff even maybe helped start off the barcade market.
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Visual pinball / pinmame back in 2000 likely helped save pinball from deaths door.
Nintendo is doing its usual shenenigans (Score:2)
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 c
why can't we just buy the rom? and not be forced t (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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>"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-comme
abandonware needs to be fixed as some stuff owner (Score:2)
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.
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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).
No Shortage of free games (Score:2)
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 ab
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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.
Surprised people aren't making the connection here (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [wikipedia.org].
(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.)
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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.
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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 (Score:2)
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.
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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.
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To be fair to Nintendo (Score:2)
But also to be fair, there's some real classics (Panzer Dragoon Saga comes to mind) that are the video game equivalent of unobtainium...
Load of bullshit (Score:2)
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 t
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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.
The ROMs aren't going anywhere. (Score:2)
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.
Yawn (Score:2)
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
Lazy product development (Score:2)
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>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 outpu
You'll have to accept this (Score:2)
But Nintendo, Disney, and others own pieces of your childhood. Your childhood doesn't entirely belong to you.
CONSUME
It's not that really big of a deal. (Score:2)
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 bu
This would all be fixed (Score:2)
Here's one way to get around this: (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
No free lunch (Score:2)
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: Complicit (Score:3, Insightful)
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Not how the law works, angry guy on the internet.
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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.
Re: Complicit (Score:4, Informative)
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 [bitlaw.com] 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)
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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... [beliveaulaw.net]
Re: Complicit (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think Nintendo is an American company. Nice try though.
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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
I still say we should move to... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Not so sure about that... the Internet purges illegal and old works all of the time.
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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.
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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 th
Re:Ok. (Score:5, Insightful)
Willful disobedience is a valid way to protest an unjust system.
Re:Ok. (Score:4, Informative)
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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?
Re: (Score:2)
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 nego
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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
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Punch 2^102400 into your calculator plz.
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Accidentally cut the second line:
Assume you're trying to recreate any 1 of 128 decent games and want a 50% chance for "probably".
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100KB is longer than a work of Shakespeare (whether typed by monkeys or otherwise).
Re: (Score:3)
Many of these sites were also a community for discussing games. This way the community was basically lost.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: You can buy old games on ebay, no need to pira (Score:3)
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
Re: (Score:2)
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.
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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.