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Nintendo emulating and ROMs website DMCA removal (self.emulation)

idioticworm41-LSGPC が 投稿

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

Fucking christ.. You probably already heard of this, but the main and biggest website they targeted was emuparadise.me. They haven't gotten to all websites. I'm sure the stupid people at Nintendo who made this decision look down on us people who have a passion for old games like trash. Nintendo once again made a stupid legal public decision. First YouTube, now emulation.

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[–]tomkatt[M] [スコア非表示] stickied comment (0子コメント)

I'm sure the stupid people at Nintendo who made this decision look down on us people who have a passion for old games like trash.

Not exactly off to a great start here. Alright, this has been a known thing for the past week or so, and I suppose a post about this had to be approved at some point. Let's keep it civil folks. This is a major thing in the community, I'm sure, but let's also remember Nintendo (and anyone else) has a right to protect their IPs. Nobody is entitled to Nintendo's games via ROM sites.

We don't generally allow piracy and ROM site discussion here, but since another mod approved this I'll leave it up so at least the discussion is contained in a relevant thread, since this is probably news to a lot of people.

[–]Saeta44 29 ポイント30 ポイント  (8子コメント)

Folks, cataloging\preserving roms and creating accurate emulation is one thing, but making these rom images publicly available without a license is something I can certainly understand Nintendo taking issue with.

[–]Baryn 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (6子コメント)

Fuck Nintendo, they are a huge corporation that doesn't care about you. You owe them nothing.

[–]Saeta44 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (5子コメント)

I owe them as much as I owe anyone else for their products. I don't have to be loved and adored personally by them, but they're a company. I like what they do so I choose to support them.

I'm saying that I get and understand Nintendo trying to protect their copyright. I can do what I want with that, same as anyone, but I get them doing it. Call me when their lawyers ruin someone's life because they uploaded the rom image for Contra somewhere.

[–]Baryn -1 ポイント0 ポイント  (4子コメント)

I'm saying that I get and understand Nintendo trying to protect their copyright

Do you think someone who criticizes Nintendo here simply misunderstood the situation?

[–]Saeta44 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (3子コメント)

Nope. I'm stating my stance on it, as in my original post. I don't see this move as a controversy. I like Emuparadise for what they do and feel someone should be archiving software beyond that but I'm not up in arms about Nintendo or any company getting free downloads of their software taken off the internet. As it is, this is off of a single website... or two, maybe. ISOZone seems to have a few removed too.

Edit: ah, now I get you. No, I don't think anyone misunderstood. I was reiterating that I "get" why they'd want to do this.

[–]Baryn 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (2子コメント)

It seems like you see both sides of the issue, so why aren't you up in arms?

Without download sites and unaffiliated emulation, >99% of all games would be unplayable to any but a remote few. They are even responsible for growing the commercial market in some ways.

Taking an impartial stance is your personal choice, but to downplay the validity of dissent is tantamount to saying "OK Nintendo, fuck up the medium of videogames, that's whatever."

And again I say, you lose nothing by saying fuck you to Nintendo, and you don't owe them anything besides.

[–]Saeta44 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (1子コメント)

Speaking openly, if I can get these old games easily, I'm all for it. SEGA has the right idea I think by offering the rom files themselves for use however you want essentially. Wished they'd release more but man it has to be a confusing mess out there with determining who owns the rights to a lot of these old games and who can authorize the rom image to be sold online.

Free is nice too of course. But no, I don't think we have grounds to be outraged when any company steps up and asks for these roms to be removed from free sites. I would advocate for games to be very easily accessible but frankly, ultimately that's not up to me and I don't think any company's enforcing their copyright is "fucking up the medium." I do downplay the dissent: I don't think we have a ball in that game except that we suddenly miss out on easy access to something like this. Libraries are a great example of this- I want someone official preserving things for posterity but I don't imagine that I should be given easy access to everything they've archived. All the better if it IS free and easy access.

[–]Baryn -1 ポイント0 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I don't think we have grounds to be outraged when any company steps up and asks for these roms to be removed from free sites.

So let's take this to its logical conclusion: corporations destroy all download sites and other vectors. This is good for the medium how?

Libraries are a great example of this

I agree, and that is exactly what Emuparadise is.

[–]GH56734 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I'm more surprised Nintendo just targeted the "Published by Nintendo" ones and left everything else. And not even all of those, I still see Terranigma and Starwing (Starfox PAL), as well as Marvelous that's still on the Japanese Wii U VC.

When they targeted the other "cool" site years ago, everything went in smokes, but it wasn't the same case here. Probably a policy of looking the other way and only acting when it conflicts with a commercial release they're prepping up.

People upset at Nintendo just removing only a select few of their games from piracy sites are being unreasonable, considering all of them are available for sale officially on their official stores (besides Starfox and the GC/Wii games but the latter are more of a clear-cut current gen piracy than practical reasons not to dump cartridges on your own), and complete sets exist anyways.

[–]armornick 78 ポイント79 ポイント  (9子コメント)

I mean, they do have the legal right to protect their "intellectual property". I understand that people don't like this, but anyone who thinks downloading roms isn't illegal is deluding themselves. If you want this to change, try to ask whoever is in charge for a reform of copyright laws.

[–]Baryn -4 ポイント-3 ポイント  (2子コメント)

They may have the right, but they do not have my approval.

[–]Sirotaca 25 ポイント26 ポイント  (1子コメント)

I'm mostly just surprised it took this long. Been downloading from EP for a decade and a half and have always expected it to disappear at any moment.

[–]NTripleOne 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

they got CR quite a while ago, at least like what... 2... 3 years at this point all the nintendo roms just magically disappeared.

[–]TotesMessenger 32 ポイント33 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:

If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads. (Info / Contact)

[–]SafetyPrance 14 ポイント15 ポイント  (0子コメント)

If these illegal emulators are known to you, or you have any information regarding their whereabouts, please call 1-800-255-**** during business hours. A team of cartoon animals in go-carts will be dispatched to your location shortly.

Warning: Animals may be trademarked!

[–]ThisPlaceisHell 13 ポイント14 ポイント  (3子コメント)

Yeah yeah let's remove ROMs for games that haven't been in production in 20+ fucking years. I am sad to see Emuparadise hit like this, I used to think they were immune. Should have know no good thing lasts forever.

People Making Nintendo Emulators and Nintendo ROMs are Helping Publishers by Making Old Games Available that are No Longer Being Sold by the Copyright Owner. This Does Not Hurt Anyone and Allows Gamers to Play Old Favorites. What's the Problem?

The problem is that it's illegal. Copyrights and trademarks of games are corporate assets. If these vintage titles are available far and wide, it undermines the value of this intellectual property and adversely affects the right owner. In addition, the assumption that the games involved are vintage or nostalgia games is incorrect. Nintendo is famous for bringing back to life its popular characters for its newer systems, for example, Mario and Donkey Kong have enjoyed their adventures on all Nintendo platforms, going from coin-op machines to our latest hardware platforms. As a copyright owner, and creator of such famous characters, only Nintendo has the right to benefit from such valuable assets.

Oh fuck you. "Because it's illegal." What a cop out.

[–]djpokeboy 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

the assumption that the games involved are vintage or nostalgia games is incorrect

Holy shit Nintendo really have the biggest Ego I've seen in a company. "The games aren't vintage because we're making better ones!"

[–]GH56734 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (1子コメント)

for games that haven't been in production in 20+ fucking years.

Nintendo (and Capcom) of all companies are infamous for milking out old games dry and re-releasing them again and again, even back in the Super NES days and before the Virtual Console was even a thing. The abandonware excuse doesn't hold much water here, they're still commercially exploiting the games.

For example the old SMB was on the SNES (All Stars), GBC, GBA, 3DS, Wii, Wii U...

[–]ThisPlaceisHell 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I'm talking the original cartridges. It is perfectly legal to go out to the store and buy a used copy of it, which provides 0 financial gain to Nintendo. Yet if I rip that cartridge, it's a problem in Nintendo's eyes. They don't care about morals or even legal gray areas. All they care about is ripping people off year after year.

[–]1Boomstick 5 ポイント6 ポイント  (2子コメント)

If anything I'm surprised it's taken Nintendo this long to strike Emuparadise. They were a prominent reason not to buy virtual console games for years.

[–]RAKtheUndead 3 ポイント4 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Another reason is the prices Nintendo charges for the games on the Virtual Console. Ultimately, when I got the entire Sega Genesis and Mega Drive Classics collection off Steam for less than €10, €5 for a single NES game seems a bit expensive in comparison.

[–]mushroom_taco [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

There's still plenty of reasons not to buy VC games

[–]Niko_Liez 12 ポイント13 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Virtual Console wouldnt even be a thing if people didnt preser.. I mean steal and illegally share their rom dumps.

[–]Enverex 3 ポイント4 ポイント  (4子コメント)

You probably already heard of this

I have not. Also that website is still up and still has Nintendo content on it so... what are you referring to here?

[–]raptir1 4 ポイント5 ポイント  (3子コメント)

They removed Nintendo-published games. Look for a Zelda or Mario game, for example, and you'll likely find it missing.

[–]cenasmgame 3 ポイント4 ポイント  (1子コメント)

Oh wow. Just checked, no Pokemon. Shucks, guess no one will ever be able to get those games again. >_>

[–]Ninebane 4 ポイント5 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Just not from emuparadise. ROMs are everywhere on the internet.

[–]michaelao [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

rip fire emblem

[–]angelrenard 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I would say the YouTube nonsense is way more pitchforks-and-torches-worthy than cracking down on actually illegal activity. We should be more surprised that there are still prolific direct download sites for ROMs than that big companies are trying to shut them down.

[–]garou666 9 ポイント10 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I've already got full rom sets of pretty much every Nintendo game. They can do whatever the fuck they like.

[–]Zeether 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (3子コメント)

This happened to Coolrom as well. Not even surprised, to be honest.

[–]djpokeboy 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (2子コメント)

Coolrom was legit? I remember making an account on there when I was a kid with an alternate email, and instead of getting an account activation email I just got a bunch of spam.

[–]tomkatt 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (1子コメント)

Besides your experience they were showing video ads on every download if you didn't use ad blockers, and they had a malware/adware riddled downloader tool they were trying to push. Nintendo knocked them for good reason.

[–]djpokeboy 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Oh boy. Good riddance then.

[–]Ninebane 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Nintendo has been doing this for at least a decade too you know.

[–]djpokeboy 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Well it's to be expected, Nintendo aren't going to let people pirate their games and get away with it forever.

[–]DaveTheMan1985 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (1子コメント)

They just want Control over every game. Even IF they doing Nothing with the Games

[–]Towns_Person 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Well, I mean, it is their intellectual property. They are well within their rights to keep it from being distributed, even if they have no intention of using it in the future.

But, with how Nintendo has been doing its' Virtual Console (And probably intends to continue doing with the Switch), I'm sure they have every intention of re-releasing as many of their games as possible through VC. So it really only makes sense for them to crack down on the distribution of their older titles.

[–]YBXDGaming 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I got full sets for a bunch of their systems quite a while ago in preparation for something like this (which was inevitable). Still sad to see them hit like this, however. I guess if I want more GCN/NDS/Wii stuff, I'll just have to look elsewhere. Oh, well. 😱

[–]Ninebane 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (9子コメント)

Huh... emuparadise.me is not down? Can you be a bit more specific about what Nintendo did to them or did you just discover that distribution of copyrighted material is illegal?

Edit: Thanks for the answers!

[–]massReduced 7 ポイント8 ポイント  (0子コメント)

They removed specific games like SMW and Metroid Prime. Basically Nintendo-published games.

[–]Silencement 3 ポイント4 ポイント  (0子コメント)

You can't download games published by Nintendo on it anymore.

[–]andermetalsh 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Buy second hand games. Japan is plenty of cartridges, call someone from /r/japan, maybe they'll send you 7-8 games for $100.

I bought a Japanese Wario land 3 for $10.

[–]MatrixEchidna 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (2子コメント)

What? The website you mentioned seems to be working just fine.

This Nintendo legal text has been around for several years now, people keep bringing that up as if it were new.

Well, what I can say is: independently of your particular moral standing on the matter, Nintendo should have the right to remove it, because, well, it's piracy and they do suffer losses from it (even if not from all pirates). They can come up at any second and decide to sell one of the games the webpage is distributing for free, and you have no standing to complain. It's different from their crusade against fangames, that they did have the right to do, but very little moral standing to go along and got their much deserved backlash.

[–]YBXDGaming 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (1子コメント)

If you look closely, all the sections for Nintendo systems have completely disappeared.

[–]MatrixEchidna 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

They didn't. But as others pointed out, Nintendo-published titles are gone now, as I found out after posting this.

[–]Lord_Y 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (10子コメント)

curse them, I mean, what'd they gain from having a copyright case against people who play retro games from 80s and 90s that no one sells anymore, its not like they're losing any money from somebody playing DQI on an emulator

[–]FrostMute 5 ポイント6 ポイント  (9子コメント)

Um.... THEY THEMSELVES sell these games... What even are you talking about?

[–]Lord_Y -3 ポイント-2 ポイント  (8子コメント)

well TIL that they sell these on virtual consoles, but do they even get a revenue from it ? I mean, for example if I was a pokemon fan I'd rather spend my money on playing Pokemon Sun/Moon on 3DS rather than repurchase Pokemon Red/Blue just for nostaglia. they may have a case but come on thats total BS and they're just doing it for the sake of complete monopoly, DMCA laws are total BS.

[–]tomkatt 7 ポイント8 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Either way, they're selling them on VC. Here's a list of all the pokemon games available on Virtual Console, many of which are on the 3DS.

I've no issue with this, beyond that Ninty needs to get its shit together and unify the VC platform for their various consoles and handhelds.

The fact that you have an issue with this indicates that you'd still like to play the games, which from Nintendo's perspective means they still have value on their platforms as a product.

they're just doing it for the sake of complete monopoly,

I don't think you really understand what that term means. Nintendo taking away free Pokeymans has nothing to do with a monopoly.

[–]FrostMute 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (6子コメント)

DMCA laws are bullshit?

Do you have any monetized work I can re host, slap my name on and charge for, myself, since you seem to think that's acceptable?

I'll wait...

[–]ShonumiGBE+ Dev 6 ポイント7 ポイント  (4子コメント)

Honestly speaking, the DMCA is pretty much crap. I say this as someone who does put my own creative works online, and as someone who is very concerned about the direction of copyright laws.

Just off the top of my head, anti-circumvention should always be allowed, imo, not just for compatibility or research. It shouldn't be illegal in the US to unlock your phone unless the Librarian of Congress graciously grants an exemption. It shouldn't be illegal to get past encryption to dump my own video games. It makes no sense that such broad fair use exemptions are solely the decision of one person (and no one else, really) and those exemptions might not be around in a few years if the Librarian decides not to renew them.

Then there is the ugly little matter of DMCA takedown requests. I think it's a fair idea, in theory, but in reality it's far too easy to abuse, and enforcing the clause about abuses is practically impossible. If the supposed rights-holder indeed acts in "bad faith", most courts to date have shrugged and let it slide. The level of proof necessary to prove "bad faith" DMCA takedowns is obscenely high.

And then you have rights-holding companies demanding more and more from others (like Google) that go beyond DMCA takedowns, all the while threatening the loss of their "safe harbor" status, or at least a drawn out civil court case. And in Germany, I believe, they had a court ruling for similar DMCA-esque takedown requests which basically says Google can't even tell users about the takedown, like a gag-order. Reeks of something foul, if you ask me.

So, yes, as someone with a stake in how copyright laws works, I'll tell you the DMCA was a horribly conceived law that in some ways holds us back. It's part of the reason I swing hard left when it comes to IP law (favoring OSS and Free Culture a la CC licenses). The DMCA is bullshit.

[–]FrostMute -4 ポイント-3 ポイント  (3子コメント)

I'm still waiting for that copy of your work, while I read this novel... This terrible novel.

Again, I'm just going to post it as my own and charge for it. I expect no legal recourse.

[–]ShonumiGBE+ Dev 4 ポイント5 ポイント  (2子コメント)

Here's what I've written since 2014 -> http://www.writerscafe.org/DS_Baxter

Feel free to copy as much as you want. It's all under the Creative Commons. The only requirement is attribution.

[–]FrostMute -2 ポイント-1 ポイント  (1子コメント)

This isn't monetized. This isn't intellectual property that would be protected... What does this have to do with DMCA?

[–]ShonumiGBE+ Dev 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

The site has ads. They make money based on the amount of views.

And everything I have online is pretty much in 2nd draft until I do 3rd and 4th revisions before self-publishing. Obviously that's going to take a while with 2+ years worth of material, so I'm still in the editing phase.

This is IP that would be protected under DMCA if the CC license were violated. CC licenses (along with GPL licenses) don't eliminate copyright, unless you specifically put something in the public domain. They just ease the restrictions to be far more permissive than current copyright laws. If you copied my work without attribution, I could sue and have standing in court (the DMCA just makes it easier to get it removed online, pre-existing laws give me the right to complain about it to the authorities no matter what). But I find the DMCA a terrible law that was badly implemented with little forethought to modern technology, and I hate how restrictive copyrights are, which is why I use CC licenses. If someone did copy my work without attribution, I certainly wouldn't use the DMCA, even if it is available to me. It's just too heavy-handed compared to other methods, and it's really irksome to my principles of sharing my work.

[–]Lord_Y -2 ポイント-1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

come on, no one slapped his name on these games, everybody knows that Nintendo created pokemon, these people just are giving it for free and no one claimed pokemon as his own, and no one sold these roms. thats why these laws need to be reformed.

[–]raptir1 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Yeah, very disappointing. If they would provide a way to buy these and use them in an equivalent fashion (on my computer and phone, primarily) I would happily do so, but to enforce their copyright here when the legal distribution of these games is so limited is just a dick move.

[–]SCO_1 -3 ポイント-2 ポイント  (2子コメント)

Guess it's time to go full TOR.

[–]DaveTheMan1985 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (1子コメント)

But Downloading/Torrents are Slow on TOR

[–]SCO_1 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Yeah, but that's the price you pay for actually making it troublesome to be traced.

I'm not actually going to use TOR though, i'm uneasy about increasing its security by obfuscating exit IPs more when things like CP exist there. It's unfortunate, but when people are pushed underground, unfortunate things happen even accidentally.

Though there are better alternatives anyway with the figleaf for the hoster 'i didn't know what i was hosting' with cryptography that makes it troublesome to serve DCMA takedowns automatically but still allows tracking down when endpoint people get involved in serious crimes instead of unprofitable to prosecute peon shit.