Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

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Sumez
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by Sumez »

NewRisingSun wrote:Ridiculous article. Running an advertising-supported ROM site is not "preservation". If Nintendo shuts down lostlevels, tcrf or nescartdb, then one can talk about N shutting down preservation efforts.
(and nesdev.com)
Yes, people really need to learn that distinction. There are a lot of people in the piracy/cracking communities that have the skills, insight and interest to be able to carry it out, but as a whole I would never trust the community on preservation efforts, simply because it isn't their end goal. And in the case of EmuParadise they were making money on it, completely outside of the right holders. there's no realistic way to defend that approach, and it is definitely not how you support the preservation of classic video games. The only way "solve" to the "issue", is to do it on the right side of the law.
And as a matter of fact this is already being done, with national libraries dumping images of video games, etc. I think the effort is generally weak and unorganized though.

I pointed this out in a completely constructive and unbiased manner on on Reddit and got absolutely flamed for it. People are so obsessed with their "need" to have easy access to ROM files that they are completely unable to approach the issue objectively.
Yes, I get that "pirating old games isn't hurtigt the developers", but that is completely beside the point here. Stop repeating it.
FrankenGraphics wrote:I'd buy my wallet empty if there was such a service for ROM images. Nintendo and other publishers, take note. :P
Hasn't Nintendo been doing this since the Wii?
tepples
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by tepples »

Nintendo has offered ROMs only wrapped in its own emulator, only on its own hardware, and for only a small subset of even its first-party games.
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FrankenGraphics
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by FrankenGraphics »

I do have a copy of Kirby and Castlevania 3 on my wii (and a lot more other ROMs for other consoles) just for conveniences' sake (i have these two NES games as game paks too), but their model isn't like that of the amazon music store. What if you could buy and forever own a ROM image to be used in whatever enthusiast-develope emulator that pleases me, or put on a cartridge to be played on original hardware? That'd empty the entertainment partition on my bank account in a couple of minutes. Not to mention the learning aspect. I can learn very little from a virtual console wrap, but if i can have a peek through a developers' emulator or even disassemble the ROM to get a glimpse of its techniques, and do it lawfully, then i sure would. As it is, i only dump copies i personally own for that intention.

Of course, there's no mass market in buying games for the sake of learning how to program games, but i bet there'd be a market for an amazon-style pc webshop for people who just want to own and play a no-nonsense digital copy - just like for mp3:s.

besides, virtual console is down. How am i supposed to get more retro games on my wii lawfully? what about the day the wii gives up the ghost?
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zeroone
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by zeroone »

The ISO Zone "decided to throw in the towel".
Oziphantom
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by Oziphantom »

After seeing videos and posts, and threads about my recently released game, I've come to one conclusion.

Gamers are a bunch of entitled arse hats.

However I feel there is more at play with the ROM sites. Sure the LoveRom/LoveRetro was selling them right? And they are American based so Nintendo went all out on them. Fair. However EmuParadise, and the other sites, they have been there done this, laughed it off before. They are in India and Russia and places with lower standards and protections. Yet without any evidence, notice or publicly positioned attack from Nintendo, they are suddenly packing up shop?

We don't even know if Nintendo attacked them, we just assume it is. There is something in the water... The water is pulling back before the tsunami...
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Fisher
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by Fisher »

That's sure strange!
But what they'll do with sites in countries like China, that if I understood right have no copyright laws?
Maybe the guys were already tired of the work on the site and this had given them the perfect justification to stop?

What I really wished was Nintendo taking down scumbag sellers who sell cheap knockoffs as original stuff with absurd prices.
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by FrankenGraphics »

Maybe the guys were already tired of the work on the site and this had given them the perfect justification to stop?
This was what i thought too. It seems plausible. We don't know what they earn from their knock-off sites, and eventually they might just've grown out of being interested in maintaining it. It may just have passed over the "not worth it" threshold.
What I really wished was Nintendo taking down scumbag sellers who sell cheap knockoffs as original stuff with absurd prices.
One thing that annoys me is that Instagram (which seems to interleave ads between authentic posts at an alarming rate of 1:4 to 1:6 these days), is an intense outlet for knock-off s/nes classic mini consoles. If you've somehow shown any interest in retro games in your online presence, you'll be flooded by these cheap emulator in a box ads, all more or less pretending to be the real deal. They usually show the exact same emulator GUI as the one used in the official nes mini, so i guess the whole thing is stolen.
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by Oziphantom »

It could just be fear. Nintendo has rattled sabers but never beheaded before. However LoveRetro/Roms got nuked, hard.

I think there has been a large rise in ROM usage of late. The "why would you buy a NES mini - HAHA LOSERS, I just bought a PI and have ALL THE GAMES and ALL SYSTEMS on it and it cost me less." brigade won't help the image either.
Erockbrox
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by Erockbrox »

Here is my take on the matters.

I only pirate old games. Not new ones. I believe that if the game is being sold at the local store right now then do not pirate the games. But if the games are 20-30 years old then I don't see anything wrong with it.

I have competed in tournaments and high score challenges and speed runs and there have been many times where I just needed the rom to practice for a game and I needed easy access to such roms.

Yes, I have a collection of games for all of my systems, but sometimes just having a rom pack that allows me easy access is just way more convenient than jumping all of my own roms myself. Currently I don't even have a rom dumper.

My view point is that when games become old and the systems are no longer being supported then using a rom falls under fair use. Note that I'm not saying making money off of selling them is fair use, but using them privately is. I understand that copyright laws exists, but lets be honest here, tons of people download old NES roms off the internet all the time breaking these copyright laws. So I think that the current laws are counter productive.

You can also argue, what are laws anyway? Really in my viewpoint the only real laws that exists are the laws of physics, chemistry and math. These are the true universal laws that just simply exist. Copyright laws are human created laws and these laws are subject to change over time. In fact if you study USA copyright law its one of the most confusing set of laws that exists. The laws have changed over and over. Disney also lobbied congress men to extend the copyright law so that the old Mickey Mouse cartoons wouldn't fall into public domain for another 20 years.

Look at prohibition, in the USA at one time they banned alcohol and what did people do? They made it themselves and drank it anyway. People then realized that it was a stupid law in the first place and so it was changed. I think the same is true with video games. Instead of going against the natural flow of things go with it. Allow old games to be downloaded period. In fact I think Nintendo should offer all of their old NES, SNES and N-64 roms on their own website for FREE. By doing this it will only draw in more traffic to their site.

Also as a company if you have to rely on your old and dusty 30 year old games to stay a float in the business market then you are behind as a company. What a company needs to do is just create new and exciting games and do this non stop. Companies need to forget about trying to protect their old software because once the game is published and its out there on the internet then you cannot stop people from downloading it. You cannot defeat the internet period. So quit trying to do so.

This is also why I say, go out there to the stores and buy the currently available games. Buy them so that the developers get paid because whether everyone likes it or not later down the road that same game will be pirated, I guarantee it.

The last thing that I want to say here is that ALL copyrighted works no matter what they are will eventually fall under public domain. And I can't wait to see what Nintendo will do once this happens.
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by Bregalad »

Erockbrox wrote: Look at prohibition, in the USA at one time they banned alcohol and what did people do? They made it themselves and drank it anyway. People then realized that it was a stupid law in the first place and so it was changed.
While I agree with all that you said, this comparison doesn't make any sense. Comparig prohibition of alcohol in the states and modern prohibition of drugs makes some sense, but it doesn't compare to ROMs even remotely. That would apply if videogames alltogether were prohibited because they'd be considered harmful/addictive, but that's clearly not the case here.
Erockbrox
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by Erockbrox »

The point that I was trying to make is that while some laws seem to make sense on paper, in practice it may be another story.

Prohibition may have seemed like a good idea in theory, but when testing in a real life social economy, it falls flat on its face. I think the same can be said about old roms for video games. Companies may try and take down rom sites and say that it is illegal, yet the reality is that everyone and their grandma is going to do it. So why not change the laws to better our society?

Here is something to note about copyrights.
a Congressional Research Service study indicated that “only 2 percent of works between 55 and 75 years old continue to retain commercial value. For the other 98 percent of works, no one is benefiting from the continued copyright during the last part of the term.


Source

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/arti ... in-drought
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Fisher
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by Fisher »

I understand that there's really absurd laws, here's a few examples from my country!
But I think that old games are like quick and easy money for developers, so maybe that's one of the reasons for all this.
Definitely it's easier to repack old stuff than try to make newer. :roll:
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Bregalad
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by Bregalad »

Erockbrox wrote: Prohibition may have seemed like a good idea in theory, but when testing in a real life social economy, it falls flat on its face. I think the same can be said about old roms for video games. Companies may try and take down rom sites and say that it is illegal, yet the reality is that everyone and their grandma is going to do it. So why not change the laws to better our society?
Ah, I completely agree. However, the reason why they banned alcohol is completely different than why they hold copyright laws. Alcohol was really harmful for a lot of people prior to and during prohibition. Emulation, on the other hand, only prevents Nintendo from making quick cash by selling ROMs, because people already have them. It's a problem for the copyright holder, not a problem for the consumer - on the other hand alcohol is a problem for the consumer.
But I think that old games are like quick and easy money for developers, so maybe that's one of the reasons for all this.
Definitely it's easier to repack old stuff than try to make newer. :roll:
Exactly. And if they were there "in time" selling ROMs legally in the early 2000s, then it probably would have worked. But since then they came way too late to the market (Nintendo started with Wii, and Sony with PSP I think to re-sell old ROMs/ISOs) and it's way too restrictive - you need to buy new hardware instead of being able to run it on your PC, you can't have savestates, you can't install translation or bugfixespatches, etc, etc... In the end the ROM illegaly downloaded is a better product than what the copyright holders offers, that's why it's so popular.
Oziphantom
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by Oziphantom »

Death is part of Life, without Death life can not continue ;)

The main issue here though is, there is the expectation that you get to play these games.
If they sold them to me I would buy them, but since they don't I have to pirate them..

No. You don't have the right by some law or whatever to play these games, they don't have to sell them to you, and you don't have to play them. If they do sell them then "yay, awesome" pick it up and play to your hearts content. If they don't then that is their choice and it sucks, but that's life. As somebody from the PAL territory I know that feeling.

If I want to watch an old movie like Laurence of Arabia for example, I don't get to watch it, I need to find somewhere I can buy it from. Its an all time classic and I'm sure if I look I will find it on Blu-ray easily. But its not 8mm film like it was back in the day though... I need to buy a blu-ray player to watch it, I can't use my original Hanimex, and they don't sell it so I will just download it and make my own print. Or there is <insert obscure movie that is not popular> but nobody sells it I should be able to make my own copy on 8mm for free.
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by tepples »

The difference is that the entire movie industry has adopted one high-definition physical format as an industry-wide standard: Blu-ray Disc. This was preceded by another industry-wide standard-definition format: DVD. Pretty much any brand of video disc player that you buy nowadays will play both formats, and desktop computers can also play DVD. Thus a movie released in DVD format will hit basically 99% of video disc players currently in use. Any movie publisher can release movies in the dominant format upon payment of a uniform royalty, and notable movies that have been released in neither are few and far between. And though DVD preceded BD, a 20-year DVD collection still works on every BD player.

Compare this to video games, where most formats have only one brand of player, backward compatibility with previous formats is an afterthought at best, and companies routinely release games exclusive to one format as a way to sell a particular company's players. The only notable multi-brand video game formats I've seen are 3DO, CD-i, Windows PC, and Android, only two of which became popular among users. It's as if the format wars from the launch of consumer videotape (VHS vs. Betamax) and high-definition video discs (BD vs. HD DVD) were playing itself out over and over.
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