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The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Decompilation

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Re: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Decompilation

#91

Post by bitwize »

pjerem wrote: post #19
vore wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's a real legal defense. Code is just as subject to copyright as game assets (why wouldn't it be? it's just another kind of game asset), and the whole extracting assets thing making decompilations free from copyright infringement that gets bandied about is complete armchair lawyering. It's only by Nintendo's good graces these are still allowed to be hosted on GitHub.

> Code is just as subject to copyright as game assets The decompiled code is not the code that Nintendo wrote. This isn't the equivalent of steeling original code but more like generating a brand new code that would compile to the same executable.

It is, however, what is known in copyright as a "derived work", meaning that it is under the same copyright with the same owner as the original work.

It's Nintendo's code. Distributing it without permission is violating copyright.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Decompilation

#92

Post by bitwize »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #37
pjerem wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Code is just as subject to copyright as game assets The decompiled code is not the code that Nintendo wrote. This isn't the equivalent of steeling original code but more like generating a brand new code that would compile to the same executable.

Why is it always the same on every thread of this type? Perhaps I can grab the code segments of a Windows ISO, apply a series of mechanical transformations, and proceed to call it Freedows and freely distribute it as my own? I am having trouble understanding the thought processes that lead to these conclusions. Too much ChatGPT? By this logic copyright protection on software would be meaningless. The GPL would be mea…

> Freedows

Core memory unlocked: https://web.archive.org/web/20001109160100/http://www.freedo...

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Decompilation

#93

Post by mjg59 »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #74
mjg59 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They took the distributed game binary and ran it through a tool that produced an approximation of source code. At this point the decompiled code is clearly a mechanical transformation of the game binary, and so holds the same copyright status. This code is then cleaned up such that it compiles and functions and variables are given sensible names. This is, arguably, a creative endeavour, but it's also clearly a deriva…

> They took the distributed game binary and ran it through a tool that produced an approximation of source code. > At this point the decompiled code is clearly a mechanical transformation of the game binary, and so holds the same copyright status. Courts disagree with you. Sony Computer Entertainment v. Connectix Corp. https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=716676913673727... > The object code of a program may…

Where's the disagreement there? The court concluded that reverse engineering to gain access to the non-copyrightable elements the object code contained was legitimate. It didn't assert that decompiled code wasn't subject to copyright.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Decompilation

#94

Post by a_e_k »

geiagal wrote: post #21
okl wrote: post #8

I guess that proposing symbol names could be an apt use case for AI. Some papers are referenced here: https://github.com/nforest/awesome-decompilation#ai-based-de...

thanks for the link! I do a lot of hand decompilation and I wonder if AI could be helpful...

I saw the idea in a link and a discussion here on HN about a year ago:

G-3PO: A protocol droid for Ghidra, or GPT-3 for reverse-engineering - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34250872 - Jan 2023 (44 comments)

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Decompilation

#95

Post by matheusmoreira »

mjg59 wrote: post #93
matheusmoreira wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They took the distributed game binary and ran it through a tool that produced an approximation of source code. > At this point the decompiled code is clearly a mechanical transformation of the game binary, and so holds the same copyright status. Courts disagree with you. Sony Computer Entertainment v. Connectix Corp. https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=716676913673727... > The object code of a program may…

Where's the disagreement there? The court concluded that reverse engineering to gain access to the non-copyrightable elements the object code contained was legitimate. It didn't assert that decompiled code wasn't subject to copyright.

Decompiling code is a reverse engineering method that provides access to the non-copyrightable elements of the code.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Decompilation

#96

Post by lrvick »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #88
lrvick wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will de-compile proprietary software and GPL it, and others will have AI clone/port GPL code to new languages then back to the original language again to de-GPL code. Overall this will make software copyright laws pointless, but in the end everything anyone cares about will be open source. I am here for this outcome.

Frankly I think you have a very rosy view. If this were to happen I foresee companies would immediately start treating code as if it was a private key, using ridiculous hardware protection mechanism, tivoization, SaaS, and the like as much as possible. The entire reason code is so accessible right now is because companies only care about making it "inconvenient" for home piracy, relying on the threat of legal action…

Show me a popular hardware platform that users get to hold in their hands whose users have not dumped the firmware, or at least the firmware decryption key as with virtually every drm solution in history.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Decompilation

#97

Post by mjg59 »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #95
mjg59 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where's the disagreement there? The court concluded that reverse engineering to gain access to the non-copyrightable elements the object code contained was legitimate. It didn't assert that decompiled code wasn't subject to copyright.

Decompiling code is a reverse engineering method that provides access to the non-copyrightable elements of the code.

Yes. It also provides access to the copyrightable elements of the code. In this respect the decompiled code is identical to the object code, which is also made up of a mixture of copyrightable and non-copyrightable elements. Combining copyrightable and non-copyrightable elements into one thing gives you a work that copyright can be asserted over. The argument in the case you cited is that the defendant extracted the non-copyrightable elements and built their own work based on those. That's not what's happening in the case under discussion here, which is derived from the copyrightable elements as well.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Decompilation

#98

Post by LocalH »

lrvick wrote: post #96
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly I think you have a very rosy view. If this were to happen I foresee companies would immediately start treating code as if it was a private key, using ridiculous hardware protection mechanism, tivoization, SaaS, and the like as much as possible. The entire reason code is so accessible right now is because companies only care about making it "inconvenient" for home piracy, relying on the threat of legal action…

Show me a popular hardware platform that users get to hold in their hands whose users have not dumped the firmware, or at least the firmware decryption key as with virtually every drm solution in history.

Xbox One is probably the closest. I'm not aware of any Xbox One games being decrypted.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Decompilation

#99

Post by AshamedCaptain »

lrvick wrote: post #96
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly I think you have a very rosy view. If this were to happen I foresee companies would immediately start treating code as if it was a private key, using ridiculous hardware protection mechanism, tivoization, SaaS, and the like as much as possible. The entire reason code is so accessible right now is because companies only care about making it "inconvenient" for home piracy, relying on the threat of legal action…

Show me a popular hardware platform that users get to hold in their hands whose users have not dumped the firmware, or at least the firmware decryption key as with virtually every drm solution in history.

I have multiple Samsung Qualcomm smartphones which to this day do not have an unlocked bootloader. Ironically one reason to choose the otherwise terrible Exynos.

And even on the ones which do, you lose access to some hardware features -- the very definition of tivoization...

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