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Retro game repository EmuParadise says it's finished distributing ROMs
Nintendo has had enough of pirates and the websites that enable them, like EmuParadise. After shutting down a handful of sites and a Game Boy Advance emulator on GitHub in July, the publisher has seemingly done the work to convince EmuParadise to shut down. This massive online library of downloadable old games started 18 years ago, and up until this moment it hosted nearly complete libraries of games for various consoles that you could download and play on emulators.
Playing ROMs, as these game files are often referred to as, on an emulator exists in a legal gray area, but distributing these copyrighted works for download on the internet is obviously and clearly illegal. But Nintendo and other publishers have mostly avoided investing resources in tracking down and enforcing its legal right in many of these cases over the last couple of decades. For Nintendo, however, something has changed, and it is cracking down. And EmuParadise has confirmed that it is going to do what it must to avoid facing legal action.
"We will continue to be passionate retro gamers and will keep doing cool stuff around retro games, but you won't be able to get your games from here for now," reads an EmuParadise blog post. "Where we go with this is up to us and up to you."
Also at Kotaku and TechCrunch.
Previously: Nintendo Sues ROM Sites
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday August 09 2018, @03:41PM (7 children)
I mean, yes, it is. But also most of these roms are literally a quarter century old, made by companies that don't exist anymore, not sold anywhere, and are only being protected in the vaguest interests of a general principle.
Opt-out archiving is a necessary thing to not lose cultural artifacts. And yeah, I've got no objection to owners opting out.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday August 09 2018, @05:05PM (2 children)
As for first-party games, Nintendo certainly still exists. Copyright in third-party games is owned by whatever company bought the defunct company's copyrights at bankruptcy auction. Try researching whether the auction house has deposited notices of transfer with national copyright offices. (See for example "Recordation of Transfers" by the US Copyright Office [copyright.gov].)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday August 09 2018, @05:15PM
Or the law is dumb and needs to be changed but also not respected until it's changed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 09 2018, @07:53PM
Good luck trying to track that down 5 years later, let alone 20 or more. Plus, video game companies go defunct all the time (especially in the 90s and earlier) without having transferred the copyright. And even if they did transfer the copyright, not everyone registers that. Why waste time and money registering copyright on something that doesn't actively generate revenue, after all.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday August 09 2018, @05:50PM (2 children)
If it truly is a company that doesn't exist, isn't sold, and nobody owns the rights to it..... who's going to sue you for copying it? Who will have standing to do so?
This is just a pre-emptive action to protect against someone who does very much have the rights to sue for it.
(By the way... should copyright also allow for the right for something to fade into obscurity or nothingness by failure of the creator to give permission? I don't know that the public served thereby, but the individual might be.)
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday August 09 2018, @06:44PM (1 child)
Well, actually, it's still nintendo shutting down access to 3rd party developed tools and roms to their previous second parties on the basis that they enable and facilitate piracy.
Not the particular roms that belong to nintendo. But the facilitation of access.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday August 09 2018, @09:13PM
You've got a point. The way I read it is that Nintendo was issuing threats and takedown orders. Those developers they are threatening (or their project/webhosts) are either voluntarily taking them down or voluntarily complying instead of facing an actual lawsuit. The most recent Nintendo takedown notice I read stated that the emulator site was hosting ROM copies, not just an emulator. And EmuParadise did host ROM images, not just provide emulation software.
As to being second or third parties... that would be a ground for refutation of the DMCA claims if Nintendo did not possess the legal authority to claim copyright on the titles being infringed. (Or did you mean that the 3rd party developed tools didn't belong to Nintendo? Or that the ROM codes being offered did not in fact originate from Nintendo-copyright-controlled media? Cleanroom development is not grounds for DMCA/Copyright, but Trademark infringement. Somehow I doubt that most ROM distributors are actually parallel developing their code.
Busting someone because they wrote an emulator.... a grey area, likely. And I don't think anybody really wants to press the button to see what the US Supreme Court (or most anyone else) would rule. But that also means the emulator writers don't want to fight it either (or at least anybody with enough money to fight the battle).
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 09 2018, @11:29PM
I do have an objection to opting out. These things should be archived regardless of the wishes of the "owners," since they are part of culture. Copyright durations should be from 5-14 years at most, given how easy it is to replicate and spread art in the digital age. The entire point of copyright is to add to the public domain, not for "owners" to jealously guard their works. This is also why digital restrictions management should be illegal.