41–50 of 89 posts
People, you need to stop disconnecting the moment you realize you are player 2 in super mario bros 1985!
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> If I bought the game in 1989 I can still legally play it in digital form, yes? No, that's not how copyright works. That's a myth. In some cases you can make a backup of the game if you do it yourself. But you still can't download someone else's copy. > I'm not sure why copyright now means a company can charge me 100 times for the same product in different forms. Because copyright means the company that sold you the…
Your first point is not so clear cut. A ROM is a ROM is a ROM. Do you have any citations where you own a physical copy and use an identical digital copy from a different physical source a breach of copyright?
Nintendo's interpretation is some real B.S. though. Basically, that copying devices are illegal, emulators are illegal, and so on.
> A ROM is a ROM is a ROM.
Legally, from my understanding, there's also metadata about the provenance of the data. Where did it come from? Did you read it from a memory chip yourself, or download it from the internet? The data could be identical, but is the data legal if it was acquired illegally?
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> Do you have any citations where you own a physical copy and use an identical digital copy from a different physical source a breach of copyright? https://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp#copy_illegal
The party in question saying "Yes yes, that's illegal" isn't worth the bytes used to transmit the message.
Note: I'm not saying I like it! I'm just saying it is the way it is.
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> Do you have any citations where you own a physical copy and use an identical digital copy from a different physical source a breach of copyright? https://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp#copy_illegal
That's not a very useful citation. Nintendo takes an extremely expansive view of copyright (for example, they try to prevent commentators from using clips from their games in YouTube videos), is not an authoritative source, and is not exactly an impartial commentator on this matter.
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The party in question saying "Yes yes, that's illegal" isn't worth the bytes used to transmit the message.
I see your point. However, these are the lawyers of the party that sold their consumers the license to play the game. Remember, you don't actually own the game. You own a license to play the game on the medium you purchased. If the company that sold you the license also says that copying the game to a different medium and playing it there is not part of the original license, they kind of are allowed to say that. Note…
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That's not a very useful citation. Nintendo takes an extremely expansive view of copyright (for example, they try to prevent commentators from using clips from their games in YouTube videos), is not an authoritative source, and is not exactly an impartial commentator on this matter.
I didn't mean it as a source of commentary on the matter. I meant it as a statement on the legality of making copies from the company that sold the licenses for playing the games to the general public.
Copyright holders are not gods. The idea that their word is gospel is patently false. And in the specific case of Nintendo, they are even less reliable then most in terms of accurately communicating your rights to you. Nintendo have very little respect for copyright law as it actually exists, and instead try to assert whatever rights they wish they had and hope nobody fights them on it.
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I didn't mean it as a source of commentary on the matter. I meant it as a statement on the legality of making copies from the company that sold the licenses for playing the games to the general public.
If I say you are legally obligated to give me $100 if you read my comments, and link to the comment where I said it as proof that you're obligated, will you believe you're obligated to give me $100? I own the copyright on my writings, after all. Copyright holders are not gods. The idea that their word is gospel is patently false. And in the specific case of Nintendo, they are even less reliable then most in terms of…
I don't have access to one of those licenses at the moment but if you happen to have one of them from one of the old NES games, I would be very interested in knowing if it has a section that states that the consumer has a right to backup the game onto another medium and play it there.
Again, you seem to be talking about copyright. I'm talking about the legal rights of the consumer when they purchased the license (game) from Nintendo. This is a good discussion, though.
You shouldn't have posted this :) EDIT: I remember playing a copycat of konami's contra at childhood, and had wondered what the name of that game was. Now I know the original, thanks!
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If I say you are legally obligated to give me $100 if you read my comments, and link to the comment where I said it as proof that you're obligated, will you believe you're obligated to give me $100? I own the copyright on my writings, after all. Copyright holders are not gods. The idea that their word is gospel is patently false. And in the specific case of Nintendo, they are even less reliable then most in terms of…
Reading over your response, I think we are talking about two different things. You appear to be talking about copyright protection. Remember that when you purchase a game, you don't purchase the copyright. You purchase a license to play a copyrighted game on a particular medium. (That part of the game instruction manual we all skipped past as kids.) I don't have access to one of those licenses at the moment but if yo…
The point is that the EULA does not give Nintendo absolute power just because you played the game. They can't, for example, stick "You owe 30 years of indentured servitude to Nintendo" in the back of the Zelda manual and expect to get a bunch of free work out of the deal.
Nintendo have a very aspirational view of how much control they get over people who buy their stuff, and the law may even bear them out in some cases, but you can't take their word as law just because they wrote a license.
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I have an idea: make it so that you have to supply your own rom files that the site will only store locally, and you then can get matched with anyone else who has roms with the same md5s. No legal problem because nothing copyrighted will be on the server, and it'll support much more roms than the small selection supplied.
Neat idea, but I guarantee they would find a way to shut that down too, even if it's completely legitimate and completely non-harmful from a copyright stance. Nintendo is incredibly hostile to even fair use, let alone something closer to the line like what you described.