this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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You see...
It's okay when THEY do it.
It's not okay when YOU do it.
That's how they function.
Well yeah, as the owners they have the exclusive right to determine what's okay. They're just following the rules as they've been laid out by centuries of corporate lobbying for more exploitable copyright laws. Those are what we need to focus on if we want more fair use of intellectual property that the rights holder has already sufficiently profited from - the thing that such protections were initially meant to ensure to a much more reasonable extent.
You had me in the first half ngl (more like first sentence but close enough)
But they DO have the exclusive right. People want to be told the world is different - that it's better - but if we want to change it we need to see it for what it is. If we say "They don't have the right!" before we've done the work necessary to strip them of the right, then we'll never even understand how to start fixing this broken system.
I completely agree with that take, I was just making a joke about how the first sentence reads like the start of a comment that's about to defend Nintendo
They aren't the owners of most of the games though, did they ask, in writing, all of the rightsholders for the games they made?
Did they ask the artists if it was ok to re-use their work in a 'new title'? (according to Nintendo, emulation is transformative)
Would you want to enter a legal battle with Nintendo? This system is broken in a lot of different ways, one of which is the incredible expense of legal fees even if you're in such an open-and-shut case as someone clearly using your intellectual property without your consent. The one with deeper pockets wins regardless of what the law says.
Well, you know, the games are theirs to begin with.
I see what you mean, and you are correct, but I think it's more about the games that are being emulated than emulation in itself right?
It would be, if they didn't target the emulators and only targeted the roms/game data.
The only time the emulators are targeted is when the creators try to profit off them, or am I mistaken?
That's definitely not the case for Switch emulators.
Yuzu was charging for early access to their emulator, which is what prompted Nintendo action.
Ryujinx doesn't seem like any legal action was taken, sounds like the creator was given a chunk of cash by Nintendo to take it down.
I hate Nintendo, but you gotta keep the facts straight
I don't think they paid him off, I think it was more along the lines of "We won't do anything to you if you stop now"
They also shut down Yuzu forks using the DMCA. If they paid Ryujinx's dev it was the equivalent of the Mafia bribing a judge while waving a picture of his family.
Totally the same /s
That, and when Nintendo's code is used in some way to develop the project. Japan has very strict laws on reverse engineering any software, which Nintendo is always set to capitalize on.
Which is still a legal thing to do.
I don't disagree they are their games, but is it their emulator, or did they just download one of the many online? Really doesn't matter, just love to see companies bitch about something, then turn around and do it themselves.
What about the fan games that were made of pure passion for the IP that they've taken down?
To name a few:
Pokemon Uranium
Pokemon Prism
Mario Maker 64
Another Metroid 2 Remake
Zelda Maker
Ocarina of Time 2D
Zelda 30
There are countless others I'm sure.
FUCK Nintendo.
They have to protect their IPs, it is what they have to do by law if they don't want to lose then.
https://www.varnumlaw.com/insights/enforce-your-intellectual-property-or-risk-losing-it/
So it is not really Nintendo's fault that the IP laws are the way they are.
the fact that its law doesnt necessarily mean the right or moral thing. just means lobbyists might have been paid for it.
Doesn't change a thing, Nintendo is bound by law to protect their IPs.
Why the law is this way and if it should be changed (which it should IMHO) are completely different questions.
i think we are mostly arguing that it has to be changed when this topic comes up. its not just nintendo and not just games though too.
Yes, like many things in the space of copyright and patents, this should be changed and defanged.
But the only changes we will ever see is making it more and more into a weapon against consumers. Nintendo, Disney and all the other big IP holders will never allow for anything else, they will use their money and power to prevent it.
if we continue doing nothing about it, yeah
I understand needing to protect your IP, in some sense, but what I'm getting at is that when a fan game is made, it is a homage to a beloved franchise that fosters love for the IP. If you were a smart company, you would foster this love for your franchise, to entrench the fans you already have, and to gather more fans because you are seen as the company that "does no wrong", which in turn also increases your profits. Imagine if instead of taking these love letters to your franchise down (which makes you look like an absolute fucking ass to most), you made a feature of it on an official channel. Look at Scott Cawthon and his Five Nights at Freddy's franchise. He encourages people to make fan games using his original ideas and that encourages people to not only love his own games, but to go out and start developing their own little games that include ideas that Scott may not have even thought about including before. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is a good way of protecting your IP by taking down blatant rip offs of your game that want to steal money from your fans, and cause confusion to new fans. Then there is the bad way, which is taking down these passionate love letters to your franchise that encourage others to look at the original source and see why they even decided to take the time to create the fan game in the first place. IF the fan game is trying to monetize, then by all means, send a warning. Tell them to not monetize it, and they are free to continue. If they continue, Cease and Desist. Hopefully that makes sense.
If they would carte blanche allow fan games of their IPs then that would weaken the IPs, which could lead to them loosing the IPs completly. For that it is irrelevant if the games are monetized or not.
Nintendo would need to implement some kind of process for developers of fan games to get them officially licensed. But for that to be effective as a tool to protect the IP they could not just give such a limited fan game license to everyone who request it, so a complex request process with multiple steps would be needed, and they would need to deny lots if not even most of the requests.
And this gets even more complicated when the very complex japan software patent system is added to the mix.
Could Nintendo be less shitty? Oh yes they could, but they decided to go the Cobra Kai way and strike first, strike hard, no merci!
Wait are we arguing that the owner of something isn't entitled more than someone who stole it?
FTFY. The problem is not with Nintendo being against emulators because of piracy, they're against emulators even if you own the game and the hardware but want to preserve the hardware (just like they do in the museum).
And if the counter-argument is that you don't own the game when you buy it, then by that same logic you don't steal it when you pirate it.
A) Yes, if you buy a game you don't own the game. Only a license to use the software (in this case the game) was bought. This was, in general, even the case back then when games were sold on cartridges or discs. And it is for sure the case now with digital distribution.
B) Also yes, pirating a game is most of the time not theft but it is still against the law to use a unlicensed copy of any software.
If Nintendo were only showcasing games developed AND published by Nintendo, that might be the argument.
They're not though, some of the games they're showing they didn't develop or publish.
Nintendo says emulation is transformative, that due to the recompiler, it's a new work. Do they have permission from all the rightsholders for third party games to make a transformative work?
Do they even have the permissions from artists who might have licensed their work to Nintendo for X game, but not for the newly emulated 'Y'