Couple Who Ran ROM Site To Pay Nintendo $12 Million (vice.com) 160
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Nintendo has won a lawsuit seeking to take two large retro-game ROM sites offline, on charges of copyright infringement. The judgement, made public today, ruled in Nintendo's favor and states that the owners of the sites LoveROMS.com and LoveRETRO.co, will have to pay a total settlement of $12 million to Nintendo. The complaint was originally filed by the company in an Arizona federal court in July, and has since lead to a swift purge of self-censorship by popular retro and emulator ROM sites, who have feared they may be sued by Nintendo as well.
LoveROMS.com and LoveRETRO.co were the joint property of couple Jacob and Cristian Mathias, before Nintendo sued them for what they have called "brazen and mass-scale infringement of Nintendo's intellectual property rights." The suit never went to court; instead, the couple sought to settle after accepting the charge of direct and indirect copyright infringement. TorrentFreak reports that a permanent injunction, prohibiting them from using, sharing, or distributing Nintendo ROMs or other materials again in the future, has been included in the settlement. Additionally all games, game files, and emulators previously on the site and in their custody must be handed over to the Japanese game developer, along with a $12.23 million settlement figure. It is unlikely, as TorrentFreak have reported, that the couple will be obligated to pay the full figure; a smaller settlement has likely been negotiated in private.
LoveROMS.com and LoveRETRO.co were the joint property of couple Jacob and Cristian Mathias, before Nintendo sued them for what they have called "brazen and mass-scale infringement of Nintendo's intellectual property rights." The suit never went to court; instead, the couple sought to settle after accepting the charge of direct and indirect copyright infringement. TorrentFreak reports that a permanent injunction, prohibiting them from using, sharing, or distributing Nintendo ROMs or other materials again in the future, has been included in the settlement. Additionally all games, game files, and emulators previously on the site and in their custody must be handed over to the Japanese game developer, along with a $12.23 million settlement figure. It is unlikely, as TorrentFreak have reported, that the couple will be obligated to pay the full figure; a smaller settlement has likely been negotiated in private.
Copyrights Hijack History (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyrights are now hijacking cultural history. If you're not actively selling the material to for some reasonable period (10 years) then the copyright should go to the public domain.
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It's really unreasonable when the consoles necessary to run these games themselves are now considered obsolete, not just nintendoware
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Oh come on, these companies stopped making/selling these games 20-30 years ago. You reasonably believe they should still be able to claim theft? Explain that.
Re: Copyrights Hijack History (Score:4, Informative)
You've obviously never browsed the Nintendo online store - lots of ancient games back up for sale, prewrapped in crappy emulators that lack any of the impressive features of your typical 20-year-old PC-based emulator.
Let's hear it for perpetual copyrights! Hip hip...*crickets chirping*.
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To be fair to Nintendo their Virtual Console emulators are generally thought to be some of the best, in terms of accuracy. Compared to a lot of other commercial offerings they are top tier.
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I've never seen a commercial emulator that was worth a damned, so I'm not surprised. Pretty much all the good ones are open source - there's just no money to be made in emulators unless you're the copyright owner of vast libraries of content. Without that you've just spent vast amount of effort creating a tool that can mostly only be used by criminals.
And I would venture a guess that the vast majority of emulator users could care less about accuracy beyond playing properly. I've never met an emulator use
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My local post office was selling Blaze Atari 2600 consoles built into what looks like an Atari joystick controller. Something like 10 games built in.
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In that case you shouldn't really care about getting your hands on it so much, right?
Oh, wait.
Re: Copyrights Hijack History (Score:5, Insightful)
As a creator you work a few years to make something, you typically make 90% of the total money in the first few years, and can then milk the long tail for a tiny trickle of residual income for decades afterwards while depriving society, including other creators, of the ability to use your work.
It's that last part I have a problem with - how is that in society's best interest? Because there's nothing sacred about copyright, it's an artificial gift from society, given to encourage creators to create more things. How exactly is that goal served by continuing to let you lock up your creation for another 90 years beyond when you've already extracted most of the total money you'll ever get from it?
Disney, in addition to being one of the major architects of the current near-perpetual copyright terms, is an excellent poster child of why it's a bad deal. An incredible number of their hits are retellings of much older stories, mostly unencumbered by copyright. From Sleeping Beauty to Moana those stories are all, at their roots, other people's creations, given new life by a new interpretation in new media. Why should Disney get to strip-mine other people's creations without giving anything back?
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It's that last part I have a problem with - how is that in society's best interest?
How is us being able to not repair or preserve our videogames in the public interest? Little shits like you have been piggybacking on corporate money for a long time. We essentially have eternal copyrights where nothing goes public domain.
Copyright law has been extended 5 times in favor of "value creators" over the public interest every time, arguments like yours fall on deaf ears because corporations own our governments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
IP law was created to incentivize you to produce wor
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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GP was agreeing with you by saying that the whole purpose of extending those copyrights is to let people continue to squeeze out the last drops of value to the detriment of the public.
Sorry about that, I misread your post or was replying to someone else.
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The fact that we don't get source code for PC games that we've all bought is also a big pisser, which is why we have to resort to revese engineering and emulation, if we'd gotten the source code with the games we were paying for every game that has been created for PC would not need an emulator and could be enhanced and updated.
I mean, aside from being an ass to whomever you replied to, who was effectively agreeing with you; you want companies to give you their secret sauce that they spent millions on developing, for the price you pay for a game? It's bad enough the Chinese are making cheap knockoffs of everything already.
The progress we see in games is driven in large part by the fact these companies take huge gambles developing their AAA games. Obviously this is happening less and less, where everything is getting rehashed, but
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That's weird, because there are countless stories about valuable vintage cars that get discovered stored away in a barn or outbuilding. Often, the owner gets a lot of money for them from a collector.
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"The key phrase here being -your work-. My work is my work. You have no rights to use it. Ever."
We do because your "IP" is a publically granted monopoly, we can revoke your property rights if you defy the public interest. AKA you only get "IP" (aka monopoly rights) on the grounds it servers the public interest.
As soon as it stops doing that we can trample your "rights" because they weren't rights at all IP is much different from regular property, since information is not a rivalrous good, I wouldn't want t
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So just because Shakespeare plays are still for sale his heirs should get a royalty for those sales? Yes I realize this is an extreme example but Nintendo isn't a person so will not die and could conceivably be in business in 200 years. Would it be ok at that time to post ROMs of 1980's games online?
Copyrights, patents, etc. aren't to show that you have an inherent right to the item covered. It is society (via our government) stating that we are allowing you to capitalize on those items for a limited period
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So just because Shakespeare plays are still for sale his heirs should get a royalty for those sales?
Yes because otherwise what incentive will Shakespeare have to produce more content?
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The key phrase here being -your work-. My work is my work. You have no rights to use it. Ever. It is not yours. It is mine.
Then keep it to yourself. Don't go running around town showing your work to everyone and then get pissed off when someone decides to imitate or copy you.
After you have owned your car for 5 years and it lost 90% of its value I am taking it. Why? Because why not?
Taking is not copying. Copying is not theft. Only an idiot of the highest caliber would confuse the two.
If you want to make a non-destructive atom-by-atom copy of my crappy old vehicle while I am away shopping at Walmart (I can't afford to shop anywhere else) and you can complete the copy by the time I get back to my vehicle you are most welcome to it.
How managed come of age and not understand the very basic concept of ownership is baffling to me.
It
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Actually, your statement should be "Photocopying my car is the same as me photocopying your art and selling it. Hurrrr.". The whole point of the OP's statement was that the IP wasn't being stolen. But then I guess the ignorant Right don't see the difference between copying and stealing (see I can sling meaningless political insults too).
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>
The key phrase here being -your work-. My work is my work. You have no rights to use it. Ever. It is not yours. It is mine. Most children learned this by age 5 regarding cookies. How managed come of age and not understand the very basic concept of ownership is baffling to me.
Ideas and cookies are not equivalent. If someone takes an idea and adapts it and adds to it, at what point is it still one person's work?
Claiming an idea as your own and no one else may have the same idea or expand upon your idea for the rest of your natural life (and then some) is not some sort of inalienable right endowed upon us by our creator that deserves to be enshrined in some sort of declaration, it's basically just an unreasonable demand by someone who, like everyone else born in the past several h
Re: Copyrights Hijack History (Score:4, Informative)
"basic concept of ownership"
That's when you have something that if someone takes from you, you are deprived of possessing or using. That's the "basic concept".
If someone uses your brain-fart it doesn't deprive
you from usage.
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Children also learned that sharing their cookies was a good and kind thing to do, and that being good and kind are traits to admire not ridicule.
Your post basically comes across as a self-centered and entitled ME FIRST AND SCREW SOCIETY!
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In my opinion that is the main problem we have in society today. Parents have stopped being that, parents. And it has allowed society to go into a nose dive of greed and "me me me" selfishness. And it is not just happening in the USA it it world wide. I believe it started in the USA with the shaming and criminal charges against people who disciplined their children. I'm not saying beat your kids senseless, I'm saying you will be hard pressed to find a decent person that hasn't has their back side turned red
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My mother did that all of once, and slapped me across the face once as well. I'd like to think I came out somewhat decently on the other side of it all.
The thing about punishment is it stops working if you do it all the time, it just becomes par for the course. There has to be a shock effect to it if you want it to be effective.
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Which comes back to not beating your kid senseless. Some children need to be disciplined more than others. No child needs to be beaten daily. And some lessons can be taught without an ass whooping.
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it started in the USA with the shaming and criminal charges against people who disciplined their children. I'm not saying beat your kids senseless
I think SOME minority of parents DID over-discipline their children and perhaps did "beat their kids senseless," and then
some of those kids who had to endure that remained senseless and never recovered AND found their way into government seeking "revenge" against all future parents in the name of getting back at their own parents.
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You may be onto something here..
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>My work is my work. You have no rights to use it.
Absolutely wrong. Physical artifacts can be owned - information can not. That's why it's called "copy right", and not "intellectual property", which is just a term made up by corporate interests trying to extend their control.
Ideas cannot be taken, only shared. When you take something, you deprive the original owner of it - and it's not possible for me to deprive you of your idea short of killing you.
If you create an idea you can either keep it secret,
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Also it's not just *YOUR* work - it's a work you built out of bits and pieces of countless other people's work - because that's how culture operates. Every plot twist, character, etc. you create is heavily influenced by the plots and characters you've seen throughout your life, even if you're not consciously aware of it.
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Re: Copyrights Hijack History (Score:4, Insightful)
sound like you have never created anything in your life.
I have. I know the hard work that goes into making something new (in my case it would be a patent matter not copyright, but still), however at the same time I acknowledge that did it on the shoulders of those who came before me. That should be the deal with copyright and patent law. You get protection for a reasonable period of time, enough time that you have a chance to make a living and support further creative work, then it goes back to the public domain. Sounds fair to me.
This has stopped happening in the case of copyright. Corporations want the first part of the bargain but, thanks to clever investments in the right politicians, they don't have to do the second part. There's a give and take, but all they want to do is take. That's not a fair balance.
I'd have sympathy if someone was distributing something recent, like Smash Bros Ultimate. If that were the case, then yeah, sue them. But if it is some old game from 20 years ago, or something that they aren't even selling anymore, then no. Companies shouldn't get to sit on culture indefinitely, even long after the artists are dead in some cases, and keep collecting paychecks. I think it is absurd that major cultural works, things whose creators died before I was even born, are going to be controlled by media corporations for decades to come, maybe even long if/when the media companies buy new copyright extension laws.
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You would have been better off creating something under copyright. Patents are only good for 20 years.Copyrights last a lifetime (and the lifetime of your offspring).
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You would have been better off creating something under copyright. Patents are only good for 20 years.Copyrights last a lifetime (and the lifetime of your offspring).
Yes and no. Even though copyright has much longer life time enforcement, it has much lower power than patent. In patent, if anyone makes and sells something as described in your patent, you can sue the person regardless the person knew nothing about the patent and came up with the idea himself/herself.
In copyright, if someone creates work and holds copyright of the work, you can still create the same work with similar technique and won't infringe on the copyright. For example, a famous photographer takes a
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Copyrights are now hijacking cultural history. If you're not actively selling the material to for some reasonable period (10 years) then the copyright should go to the public domain.
I would agree with you if I didn't just buy a whole lot of original 30 year old games from Nintendo's store to play on the Switch.
may need some chapter 11 and 7 to get out of that (Score:2)
may need some chapter 11 and 7 to get out of that no way that there sites made that much.
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How many of these court cases have to be won by rights holders until you entitled gayme tards stop stealing.
These court cases affect only a tiny fraction of a percent, and only the dumb ones.
Just offshore your server, and register the domain with a fake name or a shell corp in the Cayman Islands. How hard is that?
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If it was stealing they would have been charged in a criminal court and imprisoned. This was a civil suit, where they were charged an amount to compensate for the losses claimed by Nintendo.
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It's not stealing. It's copyright infringement. They really can't be more different. If it was stealing they would have been charged in a criminal court and imprisoned. This was a civil suit, where they were charged an amount to compensate for the losses claimed by Nintendo.
I don't really care, I will never understand why people do this because everybody loses. If I am understanding this correctly these people are making old games that Nintendo no longer markets or supports and for which there is no new production hardware available playable on emulators. Since I don't think this retro games niche market is massively cutting into Nintendo's modern games business it seems to me that it serves no purpose to shut these businesses down. If I was Nintendo, and I was vexed by people
Super lame. (Score:1)
The internet used to be so much better.
Misleading Headline (Score:4)
"Smaller settlement" (Score:4, Insightful)
I imagine that smaller settlement includes a declaration of bankruptcy by the couple. What else could one do in such a situation?
predicted unexpected outcome: (Score:2)
Faxanadu coming soon to Switch Online. :-D
Nintendo added to my boycott list (Score:5, Insightful)
The message that Nintendo is sending fans seems clear. Don't use, buy, play or in any other way invest your time or money in Nintendo, as their only interest is in bleeding you dry by whatever means they can. As a company they are signaling that they have neither social insight nor ethics, and do not treat fans as assets nor as free publicity.
Message received and understood, so I'm adding Nintendo to my short boycott list. It's just a personal statement and of course will have no effect on Nintendo individually, but I doubt that I will be the only one making such a decision. Evil deeds and blind corporate greed should not go unpunished. Conversely, competitors now gain an extra chance.
My poor Wii will never have a brother or a sister.
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If all you have is a Wii, you were never a real Nintendo customer. That's just a mainstream console that 'everybody was buying.'
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That's a pretty poor application of the meme. The Wii was a 'high water mark' console. Owning one is mainstream, not the mark of a gamer who likes Nintendo. How many 3DS carts do you own? What's your favorite Wii U game.
Including third-party NES game publishers? (Score:2)
Conversely, competitors now gain an extra chance.
Does this include competitors making indie games for Nintendo's older consoles, such as Haunted: Halloween '86 (The Curse of Possum Hollow) [youtube.com] and Micro Mages [youtube.com]?
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When pursuing ROM sites, Nintendo has authority to assert copyright over only its first-party games. Or what am I missing?
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Nintendo does not have the authority to prevent someone from "USING nintendo ROMs" either, but when you sign an injunction saying they do for you personally....
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Sony has been just as abusive toward George Hotz, and Microsoft is responsible for Windows 10. So which set-top gaming appliance's maker isn't abusive?
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I would have thought it was clearly than that - please don't keep giving away the stuff we own that we're still selling because it's quite blatantly illegal and we hardly even need to present evidence to prove that in a court of law.
That's ALWAYS been the case. You think this is something new? ROM sites were being shut down every day as far back as the 90's, because THEY ARE ILLEGAL.
All the "abandonware", "well, it's free advertising for their brands" etc. arguments were primitive attempts to justify whol
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A site hosting hundreds of thousands of ROMs is a requirement for that guy to be able to go online and download the one he has a partial-legal right to. Sounds like you made use of such sites yourself. Why is it that people who speak out for something are often the ones engaging in it?
Copyright was supposed to be for a limited time. In an age without internet, fast cars, or easy distribution, that limited time was 14 years. If anything copyright should be shorter now than then. It isn't. Currently cop
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Currently copyright is multiple generations long.
The "three-generation principle" was allegedly established a century ago. See "The Copyright Term Red Herring" by Leo Lichtman [copyrightalliance.org].
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The message that Nintendo is sending fans seems clear. Don't use, buy, play or in any other way invest your time or money in Nintendo
Actually the message they are sending is that they don't abandon their IP and you can get these old ROMs legitimately designed to run on your current hardware for pennies on their online store.
I get upset at a lot of anti-piracy bullshit, but at least Nintendo actively do something with their IP.
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To be fair, Nintendo do at least offer a huge chunk of their back catalogue, often in many forms, for sale. That they do not offer official ROM releases for user to play on PCs, which is a shame, but if any company has a right to protect 20 old copyright it is the company that is still actively selling that copyright.
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The message that Nintendo is sending fans seems clear. Don't use, buy, play or in any other way invest your time or money in Nintendo, as their only interest is in bleeding you dry by whatever means they can.
exactly, just bought a PS4 for my nephew and another one for me... I wasn't sure if getting a switch or a PS4 but this just help me made up my mind.
I don't see how Sony is any better with the Connectix and Bleem lawsuits (which it lost but attorney's fees drove the defendants to bankruptcy), Geohot lawsuit (which it won), the XCP rootkit, reluctance toward cross-platform multiplayer, and the like.
So the message that Sony sent fans seems clear. Don't use, buy, play or in any other way invest your time or money in Sony, as their only interest is in bleeding you dry by whatever means they can. (Etc., etc.)
Please explain to me... (Score:5, Interesting)
...why Nintendo gets ALL the roms?
I mean surely there are games out there that Nintendo doesn't have copyright for. Why should they get the chance to reverse engineer someone else's IP?
What would the likes of Namco, Accolade, Sega, and so on have to say about this?
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Silly consumer! Petty laws like copyright do not apply to corporations.
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reverse engineer
Reverse engineer a 30 year old game designed for a system that no longer exists? I'm sure if Nintendo wanted to waste money they could just throw cash into the boiler in their basement. But really let's get a grip. It's not like they couldn't just dump the ROMs like any other person did.
Questions of Legal Anons (Score:2)
The Judgment ... The suit never went to court; instead, the couple sought to settle
Can it be said to be a "judgment", if no court, judge, police, or any official officer of justice has anything to do with the outcome?
A permanent injunction, prohibiting them from USING, sharing, or distributing Nintendo ROMs or other materials again in the future, has been included in the settlement.
Is it possible for an injunction to stripe something that is considered a right of all owners of cartridge games from someone? This would seem to not only prevent backup copies, but any sort of participation in the modding scene at all (I am assuming no one has designed something that plugs into a nintendo console to allow you to play mods of old cartridge mario games).
Could
Re: Fuck Nintendo (Score:1)
Nintendo has been releasing tons of old games on their service. They were most certainly still selling some of those roms.
Once these companies learned there was still money to be made in these old games, it was all over for rom sites.
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Nintendo comes out with new good stuff all the time. I am really looking forward to the new Animal Crossing game for the Switch, whenever it comes out. It won't be just a retread of the old A.C. Every new version of Animal Crossing they have come out with has new fun stuff in it.