Nintendo sues LoveROMS.com for infringement of intellectual property
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@grant2258 said in Nintendo sues LoveROMS.com for infringement of intellectual property:
It just goes to show preservation is needed if anything.
Always.
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Even if preservation is needed, and they benefited from it, they closed a website which helps with preservation... Anyway i look at it, it is stupid.
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@mediamogul said in Nintendo sues LoveROMS.com for infringement of intellectual property:
Oh, yeah... I remember watching that a while ago.
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they closed a website which helps with preservation.
These sites do help preservation as a halo effect, but make no mistake, their primary goal is driving traffic for ad revenue to line their own pockets. That and the fact that there are always five more ROM sites waiting to take the traffic off their hands makes it somewhat difficult for any of this to really matter to me personally.
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@mediamogul said in Nintendo sues LoveROMS.com for infringement of intellectual property:
Yeah, they were using files from ROM sites for the Wii store releases that had iNES headers
Although, if we confirm Nintendo actually did this, it would be kind of hypocritical of them, since they are telling us not to do this and to basically buy more of their stuff. But, in actuality they are doing this behind our backs and selling it back to us. Shady, if you ask me...
But, it's their IPs, they can do what they want to them, I guess...
Don't sweat it.
When in doubt, take a BYTE out of life.😎
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@barbudreadmon said in Nintendo sues LoveROMS.com for infringement of intellectual property:
Even if preservation is needed, and they benefited from it, they closed a website which helps with preservation... Anyway i look at it, it is stupid.
this statement is true if you look at one side of the penny and it is valid these games would be lost.
The other side of the coin is this....
There is money everywhere in emulation some call it donations call it adds call it what you like cash is cash.
People that provide a product for free wouldnt accept donations so there is a model for money there as well.
Im not for or against any of these models being better than the other. At least donations are user decidable option and adds are just annoying. Anyway back on track thats emulators back to roms.
Emulators would be useless without them and these are copyrighted weather people like it or not. Its a moral decision people make. Using newer systems that are still on sale brings the side of piracy up.
I dont think this really applies to something you cant buy anymore at that point its preservation.
Downloading something thats still on sale is piracy this is the side people ignore. If companies allow old roms people would just assume all roms are ok.
Its a very complex issue i personally dont think that is one answer but to say rom downloads are just preservation you are ignoring the tail end of the coin that is piracy. Nintendo does this every few years its just what they do nothing has changed thus far.
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@pokeengineer said in Nintendo sues LoveROMS.com for infringement of intellectual property:
@mediamogul said in Nintendo sues LoveROMS.com for infringement of intellectual property:
Yeah, they were using files from ROM sites for the Wii store releases that had iNES headers
Although, if we confirm Nintendo actually did this, it would be kind of hypocritical of them, since they are telling us not to do this and to basically buy more of their stuff. But, in actuality they are doing this behind our backs and selling it back to us. Shady, if you ask me...
But, it's their IPs, they can do what they want to them, I guess...
how can you steal your own copyrighted code it just the medium that changed?
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@grant2258 said in Nintendo sues LoveROMS.com for infringement of intellectual property:
how can you steal your own copyrighted code it just the medium that changed?
You can't, I just mentioned that they might have downloaded ROMs, yet they tell us not to.
But...
@pokeengineer said in Nintendo sues LoveROMS.com for infringement of intellectual property:
it's their IPs, they can do what they to them
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@pokeengineer said in Nintendo sues LoveROMS.com for infringement of intellectual property:
@grant2258 said in Nintendo sues LoveROMS.com for infringement of intellectual property:
how can you steal your own copyrighted code it just the medium that changed?
You can't, I just mentioned that they might have downloaded ROMs, yet they tell us not to.
But...
@pokeengineer said in Nintendo sues LoveROMS.com for infringement of intellectual property:
it's their IPs, they can do what they to them
Well they own the copyright they can request people dont take it unfortunately doesnt mean we have to listen. I think there is a big difference downloading Abandonware and something thats on sale and thats how i justify it to myself its probably just excuse to do something i shouldnt really but i can live with it. So i confess i have Abandonware :)
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@grant2258 said in Nintendo sues LoveROMS.com for infringement of intellectual property:
Well they own the copyright they can request people dont take it unfortunately doesnt mean we have to listen.
True.
@grant2258 said in Nintendo sues LoveROMS.com for infringement of intellectual property:
I think there is a big difference downloading Abandonware and something thats on sale
I agree.
@grant2258 said in Nintendo sues LoveROMS.com for infringement of intellectual property:
and thats how i justify it to myself its probably just excuse to do something i shouldnt really but i can live with it. So i confess i have Abandonware :)
Not to be mean, but I doubt that people will care that you have Abandonware, because everyone probably has downloaded it once in their life. I also doubt the FBI would be coming to crash your door anytime soon.
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"Not to be mean, but I doubt that people will care that you have Abandonware, because everyone probably has downloaded it once in their life. I also doubt the FBI would be coming to crash your door anytime soon."
Yea traveling to the uk for a few roms would seem extreme lol. The point im trying to make is I know its questionable (in law but not clear) im not going to make any excuses for what I do. I enjoy playing the games i played when i was younger that are no longer on sale
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I was having a conversation with a friend of mine earlier this afternoon who was telling me his son bought a Wii at a flea market but it wouldn't load discs. So, he bought a tri-screw screwdriver set for $15 and they took it apart, blah, blah. Long story short; they got the system running again and his son now ~essentially~ got a great deal on a console.
I offered that he could have fixed the system for nothing if he used a couple small flat-head screwdrivers and then after removing all the tri-screws he could just replace them with regular phillips head screws. He's a car guy and knew this was a good solution but wanted his son to make the decisions himself. Not a problem.
The point I make is that the extra effort would have been a tough choice but the end result would have been worth it. That's how I see emulation of old roms. I don't condone actively emulating current systems and stealing image files so you can save $20 on a digital download. I think it's great that people are trying to emulate systems on current PCs but I will draw a line in the sand when it comes to newer systems. Give it ten years and somehow the "Raspberry Pi 5 A+" will be half the current size and easily emulate PS2, PS3, Xbox and Xbox 360 with 10 fps on Xbox One and PS4. It's just a matter of time. Emulation Station will be mostly automated even more than it already is.
In regards to emulation: the amount of effort generally required to get roms and consoles working in an alien environment is extremely tedious many times. The amount of effort required to go after websites for hosting 30 year old games that have long since been abandoned by game companies that haven't existed in many cases for 25 years that were made by people that have retired 10-15 years ago and have seen very little money for their effort is astonishing. Nintendo got really lucky with their original NES and later with the SNES. They then had a slew of missteps and slightly recovered from their own foolishness with DS, 3DS and the Wii. WiiU and Switch are classic examples (at least as far as I'm concerned) of more Nintendo missteps.
A relatively small handful of people are trying to keep these old games from retiring in to obscurity. I do it with games and game music. Emulators and roms are kind of like old vinyl records. Getting and keeping working copies of history is extremely difficult sometimes. We're all like unpaid librarians of game history.
Of course, there's some of us that just like old games and the nostalgia and don't give a crap what Nintendo does.
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@mediamogul said in Nintendo sues LoveROMS.com for infringement of intellectual property:
their primary goal is driving traffic for ad revenue to line their own pockets
With tons of people using ads blocker (last time i checked some stats, it was above 60%), the cost for hosting those terabytes of roms, and the fact i never saw a rom website abusing on ads, i don't think they make that much money. They should sue people illegaly selling their IPs on amazon or ebay instead...
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@barbudreadmon said in Nintendo sues LoveROMS.com for infringement of intellectual property:
i don't think they make that much money.
And yet they still try regardless. We have somewhat of a problem here on the forums with people creating accounts for companies to increase their search engine ranking by placing information in the account profile listing. This seems to be done by a handful of people paid to promote many companies. A few months back measures were put in place to make the activity futile, but we still have about half a dozen show up a day. They can't be gaining anything, but they still keep at it. The same can be likely be said for most of these fly-by-night ROM sites. Who knows all the scams they're running for revenue. The one thing you can count on though is that they're not taking such a big chance out of the kindness of their hearts.
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I'm glad at least one website has gotten a DMCA waiver so they can preserve these bits. (We don't link to ROMs, so I'm not going to name it, even without a URL.) I understand that Nintendo needs to protect their IP, but at this point most of the games on their old systems are really abandonware.
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@pokeengineer said in Nintendo sues LoveROMS.com for infringement of intellectual property:
@mediamogul said in Nintendo sues LoveROMS.com for infringement of intellectual property:
Yeah, they were using files from ROM sites for the Wii store releases that had iNES headers
Although, if we confirm Nintendo actually did this, it would be kind of hypocritical of them, since they are telling us not to do this and to basically buy more of their stuff. But, in actuality they are doing this behind our backs and selling it back to us. Shady, if you ask me...
But, it's their IPs, they can do what they want to them, I guess...
It's a grey area. They are actually gaining profit from the said rom. They see that rom as their property, so as long as nintendo earn money out of it, it's fine. It's a bit like when an artist streams their content on spotify they will get certain royalties, but if you download it for free off a popular file sharing site then the artist and producers receive no money and the ads on said website gather revenue for things like prostitution and drugs ( a lot of the funding for torrents and similar sites comes from dodgy businesses, usually crime).
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One thing to keep in mind is that these shady ROM websites are not the only places where this material is made available. They're just the easiest to access for a quick fix. There are much more reliable sources where these files are chronicled, with special care taken to assure clean and unmolested ROM dumps. These efforts are an actual labor of love for preserving the past by individuals such as ourselves and generally have no hidden agenda or revenue model in place. Also, in observing them for nearly twenty years, these types of places almost never get harassed for copyright violation, due mostly to the lack of advertising that they don't require.
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The operators settled to pay Nintendo $12 millon. I wonder if this is a mere symbolic amount which they don't ever have a chance to pay off, or if they really earned that kind of money with LoveROMs and/or other enterprises.
edit: This article suspects that the amount really is symbolic to discourage others, and that Nintendo may "privately demand a smaller sum".
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