Nintendo's got everyone scurrying for dark corners

BuZz

@bobharris Emuparadise is also full of adverts - design and layout is horrible (imho).

enderandrew

@buzz said in Nintendo's got everyone scurrying for dark corners:

@bobharris Emuparadise is also full of adverts - design and layout is horrible (imho).

I'm curious how much bandwidth cost them versus how much they made on adverts. I'd assume most people savvy enough to go there for emulators were probably using ad blockers anyway.

BuZz

@enderandrew Bandwidth is quite cheap these days. Despite people using adblockers, I'm sure it was well worth running the site for them. The rom sites mostly have individual files, so you would have to view multiple pages to get to a download (and many roms are small). I suspect they do ok out of it, but it doesn't really matter how much they make - it's not their IP.

On the ROM download pages, Emuparadise have three different sections of the page with adverts. I would be happy for all these sites to be shut down. There were projects doing ROM preservation long before these sites made it so easy to download the roms.

mediamogul

@enderandrew said in Nintendo's got everyone scurrying for dark corners:

Preservation is going to be harder.

Video game preservation is in no danger here. The only thing that's changing is the removal of the ROM websites. Anyone who cares about long-term health of this hobby should see this as a good thing, as even the best of these sites do more harm than good with their exposure and reputation as a whole.

Lurker

@enderandrew said in Nintendo's got everyone scurrying for dark corners:

@lilbud said in Nintendo's got everyone scurrying for dark corners:

One sites gone, two more will pop up.

...
I haven't seen anything to suggest that people are rushing to create new ones to fill the void because the threat of lawsuits seems more real now.

Preservation is going to be harder.

I have to add, I would refrain from using @lilbud's qwip (true or not) because in my head I keep responding with " Wait? does that make us Hydra? Or at least working with Hydra?"

But a more on topic opinion. I feel that once Nintendo put out the classic nes and classic supernes they went gunning for anyone who might dare divert revenue they could sponge up. So while that pressure is there the void of sites will remain for awhile, but overtime the great eye of Sarum... I mean Nintendo will move away and sites will slowly creep back into place. You just might find yourself having to dig a bit deeper into the web to find them.

Lastly I agree; Preservation is going to be harder, but I am hopeful that their are groups who will rise to that challenge. I'm just glad that I was introduced to this world before it got just that much harder.

lilbud

@lurker said in Nintendo's got everyone scurrying for dark corners:

I feel that once Nintendo put out the classic nes and classic supernes they went gunning for anyone who might dare divert revenue they could sponge up.

Nintendo put out the classic mini consoles purely for money.

They were gunning for the type of people who would only buy the system because they like one game on it and dropped $60 - 70 on it.

thelostsoul

@lurker said in Nintendo's got everyone scurrying for dark corners:

Lastly I agree; Preservation is going to be harder, but I am hopeful that their are groups who will rise to that challenge.

Preservation isn't harder, spreading will be harder. The emulators and games will be save somewhere, multiple times.

qrayg

@lilbud said in Nintendo's got everyone scurrying for dark corners:

One sites gone, two more will pop up.

Hydra, is that you?

lilbud

@qrayg That's how I think Nintendo chooses to see romsites and those who download roms.

obsidianspider

@lilbud said in Nintendo's got everyone scurrying for dark corners:

Nintendo put out the classic mini consoles purely for money.

That's why they do anything. They're a company. They don't make games just for the heck of it.

RedBatman

https://hothardware.com/news/emuparadise-rom-site-shuts-down-following-nintendo-legal-actions

ClassicGMR

Also - as part of the topic - if you read Nintendo's statement on their website they also would love to target emulators. However I doubt highly they could win those cases in court. I could be wrong here but I think this has come up many times and essentially there's nothing copyright or proprietary about them (unless we're talking about the BIOS too).

https://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp#emergence

We've all discussed to death whether ROMs are good or bad, pure or evil, valuable or harmful but it seems that a lot of sites are just deciding it's not worth it to carry them anymore. That was my initial point. What do you all think of the sites that, after decades of fighting in a lot of cases, suddenly deciding they're just not going to bother anymore. I honestly believe it has to be because N has gone from letters to lawsuits

I do agree with @BuZz though - EMUParadise had a cruddy layout and is loaded with advertisements. I use AD Block Plus in Firefox so I don't see most of them but they're always begging me to turn off my blocker when I visit sites like that. Hell, Yahoo is now popping up a window asking me to do it when I check my email... but that's another rant for another thread. 😉

mediamogul

@classicgmr said in Nintendo's got everyone scurrying for dark corners:

they also would love to target emulators. However I doubt highly they could win those cases in court.

Winning the court case is rarely important in these situations. Companies like Nintendo go to court all the time over cases that they know they can't win. It's often just used as a tactic to eliminate adversaries who don't have the money to fight for all the years it would take to do so. Sadly, if Nintendo were to decide to take action against RetroPie for example, it'd probably just be the end of RetroPie, whether they actually had a leg to stand on or not. That's why I also collect dolls from many lands as my backup hobby.

lilbud

@mediamogul said in Nintendo's got everyone scurrying for dark corners:

That's why I also collect dolls from many lands as my backup hobby

I got woodworking and occasional electronics work. I have a few backups in case Retropie were to go the way of the dinosaur due to Nintendo.

Or the way of Emuparadise. you decide.

mediamogul

@lilbud

Hopefully it'll never come to that. I'm not ready give up never beating 'Ghouls and Ghosts' any time soon.

thelostsoul

@mediamogul Nintendo is aiming the roms and as you said, there is nothing in emulators illegal about. Spreading roms was illegal from day one, so it's no wonder what happened. RetroPie doesn't contain anything Nintendo could do against. Some of proprietary content like images of an actual SNES console could still be a problem, but in a waaaay lower priority than a rom site. I just don't fear anything here.

Clyde

@lilbud I also understood your term "more will pop up" as a reference to new sites, so thanks for the clarification.

But without new sites, the number of the existing ones will dwindle with every legal blow from the IP holders. Thus, there will be less and less sites available to step up for closed ones.

edit: And the remaining ones may drift more and more into shady businesses, because only staunch criminals will be willing to take the growing risks.

mediamogul

@thelostsoul said in Nintendo's got everyone scurrying for dark corners:

RetroPie doesn't contain anything Nintendo could do against.

If they so chose, they could always make the claim that RetroPie and projects like it facilitate piracy. Thankfully they do seem to be preoccupied with ROMs at the moment, so let's hope their lawyers don't learn to multitask. The only truly definable area where we arguably infringe in any way is through the unlicensed use of their logos. Sometime in the future that may need to be reconsidered if it's ever contested to be outside of fair use.

thelostsoul

@mediamogul The logos was my first thought too. In the US there is a fair use rule for that, unless you earn money by using it, fan sites should be allowed. Wouldn't be it make a sense to host it in the US? Besides that, all these files could be downloadable by included scripts. Some Linux based operating systems are doing this with copyrighted and proprietary stuff too. Just in case we/you get in trouble.

mediamogul

@thelostsoul said in Nintendo's got everyone scurrying for dark corners:

Besides that, all these files could be downloadable by included scripts.

It's a good thought, but I don't think there's a perfect solution that would be legally clear in all regions. For example, making material available as a separate download is considered the same as including it outright in the UK and probably other areas. Make no mistake, I'm not advocating that anything be done about this at the moment. It's not even completely clear that there's a violation at all. With any luck we'll never have to worry about any of this.