Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak • Hacker News Board

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#21

Post by zozbot234 » Tue, May 05, 2020, 12:35 PM UTC

boredgamer2 wrote: post #17

It would be amazing to see the Gameboy/N64 emulator hacker community expand, and NEW games begin to be developed based on these docs. Maybe Nintendo could double-down on this and turn it into good publicity

The article mentions that this would be unwise due to these documents being released illegally. Reverse engineering some existing system for the purpose of interoperability (as is common among homebrew enthusiasts) is legal; hacking into a Nintendo subcontractor's IT and leaking internal documentation obviously isn't.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#22

Post by nougatbyte » Tue, May 05, 2020, 12:36 PM UTC

sickcodebruh wrote: post #13

> The PC emulation community could also theoretically use the data to improve their software so that it imitates the original systems perfectly. However, since the leaked documentation has been illegally obtained this would put them in murky territory. I'd love to hear opinions about this whole thing from folks who work on emulators.

Don't have a link at hand right now but: the Dolphin (GameCube/Wii emulator) developers posted a statement on Twitter saying if they would use these instructions instead of doing the reverse engineering on their own, Nintendo would shut them down.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#23

Post by zozbot234 » Tue, May 05, 2020, 12:37 PM UTC

EvenThisAcronym wrote: post #14

dubcanada wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I am gonna remove this google "download nintendo leak routefree" and you'll find what you need somewhere in the results.

> However I MUST say this is from 4chan so BE CAREFUL about what you download and how you play with stuff. The only danger in downloading something leaked on 4chan is that you run the risk of learning a little more about dolphins than you might have liked.

Nah, Dolphin is 100% open source and above board, they're going to avoid this stuff like the plague.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#24

Post by roblabla » Tue, May 05, 2020, 12:42 PM UTC

sickcodebruh wrote: post #13

> The PC emulation community could also theoretically use the data to improve their software so that it imitates the original systems perfectly. However, since the leaked documentation has been illegally obtained this would put them in murky territory. I'd love to hear opinions about this whole thing from folks who work on emulators.

I don't work on emulators myself but I know a few people who do. Their position thus far as been to stay as far away from the leak as possible. What they're hoping for is that someone will use it to improve the documentation on the various *brew wiki. Then that documentation could be used to improve the emulators.

Directly using the code to improve the emulator is a huge liability. It makes it very easy to make a copyright violation case. For an example, look at ReactOS, that had to cease development to eliminate copyrighted code back in 2006[0].

[0]: https://www.linux.com/news/reactos-suspends-development-sour...

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#25

Post by dathinab » Tue, May 05, 2020, 12:43 PM UTC

EvenThisAcronym wrote: post #14

dubcanada wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I am gonna remove this google "download nintendo leak routefree" and you'll find what you need somewhere in the results.

> However I MUST say this is from 4chan so BE CAREFUL about what you download and how you play with stuff. The only danger in downloading something leaked on 4chan is that you run the risk of learning a little more about dolphins than you might have liked.

Or Having a virus sneaked in.

Through it's very unlikely.

But you always have that risk when downloading anything (from anywhere).

4chan is a very special place, it has many "good" people but it also has "bad" people.

(Note that both "good" and "bad" are very opinionated, which is why they are quoted).

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#26

Post by dathinab » Tue, May 05, 2020, 12:45 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #23

EvenThisAcronym wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However I MUST say this is from 4chan so BE CAREFUL about what you download and how you play with stuff. The only danger in downloading something leaked on 4chan is that you run the risk of learning a little more about dolphins than you might have liked.

Nah, Dolphin is 100% open source and above board, they're going to avoid this stuff like the plague.

True I don't think they would take the risk, it's just not worth it.

Through I'm wondering if Nintendo will try to use that as a excuse just claiming they used that material.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#27

Post by Kye » Tue, May 05, 2020, 12:48 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #19

coldpie wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From enthusiast perspective - it's a boon for preservation purposes. Sort of. It's obviously illegal to distribute, and arguably using it as a reference for re-implementation in emulators or in hardware would be a derivative work, and so also illegal. This could make things harder for emulator and hardware developers who now have to screen new contributors to ensure they have not been exposed to this material. It w…

> emulator and hardware developers [...] now have to screen new contributors to ensure they have not been exposed to this material. You cannot prove a negative. The most a project can do is to have people signing waivers that state they have not been exposed and/or will not copy stuff, effectively discharging responsibility on the individual.

This isn't a hypothetical concern.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS#Internal_audit

>> "On 27 January 2006, the developers responsible for maintaining the ReactOS code repository disabled access after a meeting was held to discuss the allegations. When approached by NewsForge, Microsoft declined to comment on the incident. Since ReactOS is a free and open-source software development project, the claim triggered a negative reaction by the free software community; in particular, Wine barred several inactive developers from providing contributions[citation needed] and formal high level cooperation between the two projects remained difficult as of 2006.[33] Contributions from several active ReactOS developers have been accepted post-audit, and low level cooperation for bug fixes has been still occurring."

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#28

Post by roblabla » Tue, May 05, 2020, 12:50 PM UTC

To be clear, this doesn't just contain the source code of the software. It also contains the Verilog for the N64 GPU and other important hardware component, which is hugely important. From what I gather, it also contains full version history from their VCS.

While it is very interesting, it's worth noting that anybody hoping to use this for anything "serious" risks getting the Nintendo lawyers on their ass. Emulators won't touch this, neither will console clones. This leak is both a blessing and a curse.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#29

Post by sgift » Tue, May 05, 2020, 12:55 PM UTC

lidHanteyk wrote: post #16

gregjw wrote: post #2

Is this bad? Am I misunderstanding? What financial damage does this do when Nintendo no longer manufacturers this console or actively developers for it and hasn't for years, or a decade in the N64/GameCube's case?

You might be missing the concept of "face" [0]. This is only bad in that it causes Nintendo to lose face, and Nintendo hates losing face. For example, examine Wikipedia; Nintendo's page about legal disputes [1] is whitewashed to reword all of Nintendo's abuses towards Free Software and the public domain as "protection" of Nintendo's "property". Face allows Nintendo to take their holier-than-thou attitude. It is why t…

5/6 sounds interesting to me. On the one hand Nintendo is the IP holder of the original ROM, so they would be the only ones allowed to legally download it if I understand it correctly. On the other hand the ROM was modified and contains a header which was made by someone else. So, to that part they don't hold the rights to download it? Or is it okay, because it's a derivative of their work?

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#30

Post by zurn » Tue, May 05, 2020, 12:59 PM UTC

roblabla wrote: post #28

To be clear, this doesn't just contain the source code of the software. It also contains the Verilog for the N64 GPU and other important hardware component, which is hugely important. From what I gather, it also contains full version history from their VCS. While it is very interesting, it's worth noting that anybody hoping to use this for anything "serious" risks getting the Nintendo lawyers on their ass. Emulators…

I'm betting the emulators will use this. They develop against the ROMs without permission too, after all.

Of course they won't incorporate unlicensed copyrighted things from the leak in their own code, but they don't need to.