Nintendo targeting illegal use of copyright text and logos. Retropie next?
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I wouldn't think Retropie has permission to use Nintendo logos.. especially in software where roms will be used. What's going to happen with that?
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does retropie use even use official logos ? I didnt realize you could copyright text whats this world of patents coming to lol
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well, Trademark. I thought the logos used through the software were legit?? https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Super-Nintendo-Entertainment-System
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i could be wrong but im pretty sure the official logo is in red and white like the top of the page
https://www.nintendo.co.uk/? -
That's the logo that is used for several Emulation Station themes, including Carbon which is the default theme for RetroPie. I've always been a bit worried that this would be an issue some day. Until this news, I was actually more concerned about Intellivision sending a cease and desist, as they are notorious for actively seeking out unlicensed use of their logo. Still, there's a decent chance that nothing will come of this and if it does, the logos can be replaced with artistic abstractions like many themes already use.
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You can compare Retropie to torrent sites. Both platforms are not illegal by themselves..but they are often used for illegal activities..which is why a lot of torrent sites have been taken down. I can imagine a similar future for Retropie...especially with all those sellers out there, who are bundling Retropie and games with the hardware.
(Of course the key difference being torrent sites linking directly to illegal software.)
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@bobharris I don't thing the comparison is fair. If anything, Retropie is more similar to a video player like VLC - sure it can play copyrighted material and in for some cases that material is not legally obtained or owned -but the project does not distribute nor facilitate obtaining such material.
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yea thats like comparing a car to a sonic jet fighter.
The fact is most things in life can and do get abused by people. Anything that has a good use like a knife can abused as well they arent going to stop selling knifes because a few nutters abuse them to cut people up instead of veggies.
An emulator can run homebrew as well as commercial software so the activity of downloading roms is the issue and possibly logo trademarks. It seems patents are stopping innovation everywhere and making a few rich.
Dont kid yourself its all about loosing any rights when you create something... Just because someone has claimed a patent on a font a name, a shape or something equally barmey.
Look at the mobile phone market thats why no one can do anything much royalties left right and center for every part you put in a phone its fecking ridiculous. Big corp will own all our intellectual rights on every bit of technology and sady stop innovation all in the name of greed. Legally right and morally right are two different things. The poor man knows this only too well. Speech over lol
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@mitu In the Netherlands you can't use Retropie legally at all (excluding homebrew, which is maybe 0.00001% of all users). It's against the law to use a copy of a game, even if you made the copy from a game in your collection.
But I agree with you, which is why I added a line in my comment.
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@bobharris said in Nintendo targeting illegal use of copyright text and logos. Retropie next?:
@mitu In the Netherlands you can't use Retropie legally at all. It's against the law to use a copy of a game, even if you made the copy from a game in your collection.
But I agree with you, which is why I added a line in my comment.
retropie isint any games its a bunch of emulators nothing illegal there. Someone selling retropie with roms is illeagle in any country.
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eBay certainly isn't helping any.
I've said it before in another thread - we're not saints. We all know where to get games to play and we all know we're shady. Most of the stuff I have has been with me since 1996/AOL days. I just transferred them from one PC to the next. Now it's all on external drives so no more copying. Anything I download these days is homebrew or some new prototype someone found etc... My MAME set is over 14 years old but why keep updating what works? There's nothing else I am interested in.
Having said all of that I do not approve of anyone selling them for profit. I usually report listings I come across that includes games whether it be a Raspberry Pi, PSP, XBox, multicart. (I don't actively look for these listings - I'm sure there are thousands of them.) I bookmark the listing, report it and periodically check if it's still up. For the month of July I bookmarked 63 links... eBay pulled ONE.
Maybe Nintendo should go after eBay and Amazon first. They are responsible for what's listed on their sites and actually have people to investigate and remove offending listings BUT they don't actively do it because it'll cost them money/sales. They are also 2 HUGE platforms that make people aware that this stuff exists so it promotes it in a back-handed way.
I always wondered if Nintendo was afraid to take on eBay and Amazon over anything... maybe this proves it?
EDIT: WOW... I just did a RetroPie search on Amazon... this is an actual copy/paste listing title:
"RetroPie 4.1 16GB MicroSDHC Card for Rapsberry Pi 3 and 2 WITH ROMS"
How did that even get listed with the term right there in the title? I'm certainly not going to buy it so I can report it but that's the Amazon way of doing things - you can't report something is illegal or a fraud without a "test buy".
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@mediamogul having been active in the intellivision community, intellivision productions wasnt super active in going after copyright infringements. Keith robinson didnt want to offend his fans. The people who still played intellivision even on the original systems. He was very aware of the homebrew market as well and never went after them even though he went to many shows selling products alongside the homebrewers. He did want us to have our shirts that had his ip on it state that intellivision logos were copyrights of intellivision productions. No biggie. He loved receiving homebrews games that were individually numbered and he would get number 47 which is snuck into the covers of several intellivision games. Keith was one of the coolest dudes ever. Sucks he died. I was planning on giving him a t-shirt with the intellivision brotherhood logo i had designed but he died before the portland retro gaming expo.
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That all sounds very reasonable. I didn't mean to give the impression that I have anything against a rights holder protecting their IP. I'm in the business of content creation and marketing myself. I know first hand the importance of protecting a creative work and I don't fault Keith Robinson one bit. My comment was only meant to highlight that the rights holder was known for being actively protective. Perhaps I should have said "proactive in", rather than "notorious for". All that said, I'd love to see your Intellivision Brotherhood logo design that you mentioned above.
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@mediamogul about 300 people have shirts, mugs or other stuff with this logo. (Minus the box art part.)
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Very nice! I really like the coat of arms concept.
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I am no specialist at trademark law whatsoever, but I thought you could use a trademarked logo for "informational" purposes and could see how using the logo to describe the company (within the RetroPie software) is legal. You use the logo to describe something in your software.
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@barrymossel said in Nintendo targeting illegal use of copyright text and logos. Retropie next?:
I thought you could use a trademarked logo for "informational" purposes
That could perhaps be used as a defense, but even having the full legal right to do something won't keep you out of court. Big companies often press matters they know they can't win, because they know they don't have to. They can afford to keep something like this in the courts for years, while their opposition usually can't. If Nintendo raised an issue with us and all they asked was that we remove their logos, I personally believe it would be in the best interest of the project to simply comply and be thankful a more serious claim wasn't made, like facilitating piracy.
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@edmaul69 I believe I've seen this before and I am still impressed with it every time. :)
AtariAge maybe?
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@classicgmr yes atariage. I am pimpmaul69 on atariage.
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