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posted by cmn32480 on Sunday December 25 2016, @03:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the shooting-yourself-in-the-foot dept.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/12/nintendo-sends-cease-and-desist-notice-to-pokemon-rom-hacker/

A fan-made Pokémon ROM hack in the works for eight years was set to launch this Sunday. But a letter sent by Nintendo's Australian law firm on Wednesday has stopped those plans in their tracks.

According to Adam "Koolboyman" Vierra, developer of the fan-made Pokémon Prism project, Nintendo's Australian law firm sent him a cease-and-desist letter, which he uploaded to Google Drive with identifying information redacted. (American representatives for Nintendo were not able to confirm the letter's authenticity as of press time.) The request alleges that Koolboyman's project, which alters the source ROM of the 1999 game Pokémon Gold to create an entirely new adventure, violates multiple Australian laws.

[...] Pokémon Prism is different because it's a "ROM hack"—meaning, it's not a full game. Rather, Prism is a small patch file that is worthless without the original ROM file (which can either be legally dumped from a cartridge or maybe-not-so-legally downloaded from the Internet). Computer gaming fans would describe this kind of release as a "mod." Mods do a similar thing: they take existing, paid-for game engines and assets, and they apply a patch file that remixes existing content and adds new twists.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Pino P on Sunday December 25 2016, @10:23PM

    by Pino P (4721) on Sunday December 25 2016, @10:23PM (#445881) Journal

    So I guess if Nintendo is unwilling to allow any legitimate outlet for its fans' creativity, the solution is to stop being a fan of Nintendo IP. But how can one abstain from such companies' products without looking like That Guy who reminds people he doesn't own a TV ( The Onion [theonion.com])?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 27 2016, @02:45PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 27 2016, @02:45PM (#446348)

    But how can one abstain from such companies' products without looking like That Guy who reminds people he doesn't own a TV

    You don't. At this point, the companies are consolidating their stranglehold and the ordinary individual is not going to notice or care until something happens to something they directly care about. The law needs to change, badly, because as-is copyright law is draconian, an abomination of what it was intended to do, and rapidly becoming outright dangerous, and this is but one aspect of a much larger, deeper and more dangerous problem.

    Chances are, this is not going to happen until it's too late and some lives are ruined, or worse. Total monopoly for all eternity over particular expressions of ideas (e.g. video games) was NOT what copyright was intended for, contrary to the belief of extremely self-interested individuals who are making a buck off of that system (who usually characterize attempts to undo it as asking them to work for free, or some other related tripe that usually devolves into a massive straw man-centric ad hominum attack on whoever is proposing it).

    The Right To Read [gnu.org] was written by Richard Stallman regarding this sort of thing taken to its logical extreme and the result thereof. I do not agree with a lot of Stallman's assertions, but here I think he's right. Copyright law is a massive mess that is slowly handing control of just about anything involving information to corporations. And I don't think anything is going to be done until it's too late.