8 ms·

I got a C&D from them 20+ years ago for hosting a ROM site. That's fair enough. I complied. But this seems ridiculous. What if they're plugging an 8-BIT NES to

I got a C&D from them 20+ years ago for hosting a ROM site. That's fair enough. I complied. But this seems ridiculous. What if they're plugging an 8-BIT NES to an adapter and into a capture card? The whole thing seems silly as I don't see it's costing them money. But it's their product they can do what they want.

the_gorilla 2y ago
> But it's their product they can do what they want. To the extent that we let them. There's no natural rights going on here, so theoretically (if you believe in democracy) we still get to decide how much power foreign companies have.
- musicale 2y ago
  The US belongs to various international copyright conventions. The assumption is that countries will respect each others' copyrights. And the US currently has an extremely long copyright period, life of the author + 70 years. Some (Larry Lessig and others) have argued that this violates the constitution's establishment clause for copyright, but so far the supreme court disagrees, and copyright reform also seems dead in the legislative branch. (And on the executive side, the copyright office is not sympathetic, and international treaties also impede copyright reform.) But your thought experiment is interesting - suppose the US decides that Nintendo's copyrights no longer hold, and suppose that Japan decides that Microsoft's copyrights no longer hold? If it were only for old games and obsolete software, perhaps little would change. If it were for recent games/software, then I think it might change the incentives to localize games/software for other markets.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    A large part of the US economy depends on IP law, including copyright; they're not going to suddenly abandon it. They could, however, shorten the terms to much more reasonable lengths. It wouldn't hurt the US economy to shorten copyright terms to 50 years, for instance. If they shortened them to 30 years, it would have no real effect on the software industry, though Nintendo would be pissed. I don't think Microsoft would care much about people passing around copies of MS-DOS 3.3.
    - musicale 2y ago
      > If they shortened them to 30 years, it would have no real effect on the software industry, though Nintendo would be pissed. I don't think Microsoft would care much about people passing around copies of MS-DOS 3.3. Well Windows 95 is coming up soon on its 30th... (and come to think of it MS already open sourced MS-DOS "4.0" for any retro-masochists who might want it.[1]) I'm sure MS Word and Excel must have improved slightly in 30 years, but by how much? They don't seem much more responsive than they were 10 years ago, and most of the shiny new Windows/Office features seem to be things I hate like annoying autocorrect, pointless UI redesigns, new advertisements and telemetry, and worthless and intrusive AI nonsense. Maybe with some incompatible save formats and clunky "cloud" features added in for good measure. Office's largest enhancement seems to be Office 365, which offers an inferior and sluggish imitation of the desktop apps running in a web browser. This is possibly useful for people stuck with crappy Chromebooks, ARM-based tablets/phones, or Linux. [1] https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS
      - 3np 2y ago
        Different company but if I ever got serious about doing graphics/photo editing again I might actually prefer a dedicated ~2010-era CS installation on a virtualized legacy box over anything that either Adobe or the rest of the market has to offer today. CS4~6 felt pretty "done". Creative Cloud still sucks. Surely that's a gaping hole in the market waiting to be filled?
        musicale 2y ago
        At least we have Affinity, Pixelmator, and a few others.
      - shiroiushi 2y ago
        >Maybe with some incompatible save formats I thought Office used OO-XML, which they released as an open standard (mostly) back in the 2000s. I use it at work (unfortunately) and that seems to be what it still uses, and LibreOffice seems to work fine with it too. I don't think anything's changed here in a long time, but I could be missing something. >new advertisements I see nothing wrong here at all. Advertisements in Windows and Office are good things, for MS shareholders: they increase profits. Sure, they make the user experience worse, but who cares about them? If you don't like it, use LibreOffice. >Office's largest enhancement seems to be Office 365, which offers an inferior and sluggish imitation of the desktop apps running in a web browser. I'd say this is the biggest enhancement by far. Yeah, it's slower than running in a native app, but it was obviously a direct challenge to Google Docs, which I think came out earlier and popularized the idea of a browser-based office suite. The main advantage of it is not being tied to a single PC (or worse, a Windows PC), and probably more importantly, being able to easily share documents with others, even editing them simultaneously. That really is a killer feature for many.
- surgical_fire 2y ago
  > Which basically proves Nintendo has little to no moat apart from laws preventing their executables from being run elsewhere. That would cause foreign countries to also ignore copyright held by US companies. Copyright laws only work as well as they do because all countries that matter sort of play by the same rules.
atoav 2y ago
Do they really get to do whatever they like forever with e.g. games and consoles they neither sell nor maintain anymore? The NES was discontinued in 95, that was nearly 3 decades ago. I don't think they should have the right to prevent hackers to emulate it and share their findings. Current consoles, yeah maybe, but even then the question would be why they should get a monopoly on the games developed for their platform..
- musicale 2y ago
  > I don't think they should have the right to prevent hackers to emulate it and share their findings They do not. Emulation is legal. However it is worth considering that: 0) NES Classic was sold as recently as 2018 1) Nintendo currently rent out NES games as part of Switch online 2) Copyright law ("lifetime" + 70 years) is on Nintendo's side for games themselves 3) Fair use can be a defense against infringement in some cases 4) Although it might or might not be fair use, I feel no guilt downloading Super Mario Bros 3 for an emulator since I've purchased it at least ten times by now, own multiple copies of the game on physical media, and am currently renting it through Switch online. On the Sony/PlayStation side, I own a PS Classic, which actually runs a version of an open source PS1 emulator PCSX, amusingly enough. (I'm a bit disappointed that it's not a descendant of Connectix's emulator though.[1]) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment,_Inc._v._Connectix_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment,_I....
  - bigtex 2y ago
    NES Classic only supported 30 built-in games, with no official way to purchase or download more.
    - musicale 2y ago
      Same for the SNES classic. And both are no longer available. ;-(
  - randmeerkat 2y ago
    > Nintendo currently rent out NES games as part of Switch online If Nintendo really cared about this they should create their own version of Spotify for legacy video games and charge a monthly subscription fee for the entire library that’s cross platform and mobile friendly. The strength of Nintendo really is their games, not the hardware. I don’t understand why Nintendo is so attached to their hardware in 2024, especially in the age of the Steam Deck.
cies 2y ago
> But it's their product they can do what they want. It's just because of IP-law that they get to do this. If there were no IP-laws, it would be: "I bought their product, now it's mine, and I get tot do what I want." This is just overstretching of IP-laws if you ask me. This madness has to stop.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  >This is just overstretching of IP-laws if you ask me. This madness has to stop. IP laws aren't a natural concept that exists by itself in nature, they're a construct manufactured and enforced by the governments. So if governments made them, then governments can easily rewrite them if they wish so. But for that there needs public support and presure form voters to the politicians, but IP laws aren't something the average person cares or even ever thinks about, not when their core worries are inflation, CoL, housing, healthcare, education, etc, so the issue of IP laws is played exclusively on the battlefield of corporations and who has the most money for lobbying. And corporations don't want laxer IP laws since that gives smaller players more leverage, versus the current status quo the favors the large plyers with the biggest litigation warchests to create large moats for them.
hyperman1 2y ago
For a whole lot of software companies, the main competitor is the old version of the software. Same for Nintendo: Newer games might be nicer to look at, but old games are just as much fun. So working older copies of their games do cost them money, and they'd rather see them disappear.
- 3np 2y ago
  Indeed. This is a bit aprocryphal but I believe to recall reading about them attempting to shut down second-hand video game shops using legal threats somewhere in the 90s?
  - 3np 2y ago
    I guess this is it: Nintendo took Blockbuster to court arguing that rentals constituted copyright infringement. They also sued Galoob for the Game Genie under the premise that using the Game Genie to alter the game in any way constitutes producing an infringing derivative work. They lost in both cases. https://web.archive.org/web/20060515021332/http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=1&cId=3146206 https://web.archive.org/web/20060515021332/http://www.1up.co...
- wasteduniverse 2y ago
  [dead]

the_gorilla 2y ago

> But it's their product they can do what they want. To the extent that we let them. There's no natural rights going on here, so theoretically (if you believe in democracy) we still get to decide how much power foreign companies have.

musicale 2y ago
The US belongs to various international copyright conventions. The assumption is that countries will respect each others' copyrights. And the US currently has an extremely long copyright period, life of the author + 70 years. Some (Larry Lessig and others) have argued that this violates the constitution's establishment clause for copyright, but so far the supreme court disagrees, and copyright reform also seems dead in the legislative branch. (And on the executive side, the copyright office is not sympathetic, and international treaties also impede copyright reform.) But your thought experiment is interesting - suppose the US decides that Nintendo's copyrights no longer hold, and suppose that Japan decides that Microsoft's copyrights no longer hold? If it were only for old games and obsolete software, perhaps little would change. If it were for recent games/software, then I think it might change the incentives to localize games/software for other markets.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  A large part of the US economy depends on IP law, including copyright; they're not going to suddenly abandon it. They could, however, shorten the terms to much more reasonable lengths. It wouldn't hurt the US economy to shorten copyright terms to 50 years, for instance. If they shortened them to 30 years, it would have no real effect on the software industry, though Nintendo would be pissed. I don't think Microsoft would care much about people passing around copies of MS-DOS 3.3.
  - musicale 2y ago
    > If they shortened them to 30 years, it would have no real effect on the software industry, though Nintendo would be pissed. I don't think Microsoft would care much about people passing around copies of MS-DOS 3.3. Well Windows 95 is coming up soon on its 30th... (and come to think of it MS already open sourced MS-DOS "4.0" for any retro-masochists who might want it.[1]) I'm sure MS Word and Excel must have improved slightly in 30 years, but by how much? They don't seem much more responsive than they were 10 years ago, and most of the shiny new Windows/Office features seem to be things I hate like annoying autocorrect, pointless UI redesigns, new advertisements and telemetry, and worthless and intrusive AI nonsense. Maybe with some incompatible save formats and clunky "cloud" features added in for good measure. Office's largest enhancement seems to be Office 365, which offers an inferior and sluggish imitation of the desktop apps running in a web browser. This is possibly useful for people stuck with crappy Chromebooks, ARM-based tablets/phones, or Linux. [1] https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS
    - 3np 2y ago
      Different company but if I ever got serious about doing graphics/photo editing again I might actually prefer a dedicated ~2010-era CS installation on a virtualized legacy box over anything that either Adobe or the rest of the market has to offer today. CS4~6 felt pretty "done". Creative Cloud still sucks. Surely that's a gaping hole in the market waiting to be filled?
      - musicale 2y ago
        At least we have Affinity, Pixelmator, and a few others.
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      >Maybe with some incompatible save formats I thought Office used OO-XML, which they released as an open standard (mostly) back in the 2000s. I use it at work (unfortunately) and that seems to be what it still uses, and LibreOffice seems to work fine with it too. I don't think anything's changed here in a long time, but I could be missing something. >new advertisements I see nothing wrong here at all. Advertisements in Windows and Office are good things, for MS shareholders: they increase profits. Sure, they make the user experience worse, but who cares about them? If you don't like it, use LibreOffice. >Office's largest enhancement seems to be Office 365, which offers an inferior and sluggish imitation of the desktop apps running in a web browser. I'd say this is the biggest enhancement by far. Yeah, it's slower than running in a native app, but it was obviously a direct challenge to Google Docs, which I think came out earlier and popularized the idea of a browser-based office suite. The main advantage of it is not being tied to a single PC (or worse, a Windows PC), and probably more importantly, being able to easily share documents with others, even editing them simultaneously. That really is a killer feature for many.
surgical_fire 2y ago
> Which basically proves Nintendo has little to no moat apart from laws preventing their executables from being run elsewhere. That would cause foreign countries to also ignore copyright held by US companies. Copyright laws only work as well as they do because all countries that matter sort of play by the same rules.

atoav 2y ago

Do they really get to do whatever they like forever with e.g. games and consoles they neither sell nor maintain anymore? The NES was discontinued in 95, that was nearly 3 decades ago. I don't think they should have the right to prevent hackers to emulate it and share their findings. Current consoles, yeah maybe, but even then the question would be why they should get a monopoly on the games developed for their platform..

musicale 2y ago
> I don't think they should have the right to prevent hackers to emulate it and share their findings They do not. Emulation is legal. However it is worth considering that: 0) NES Classic was sold as recently as 2018 1) Nintendo currently rent out NES games as part of Switch online 2) Copyright law ("lifetime" + 70 years) is on Nintendo's side for games themselves 3) Fair use can be a defense against infringement in some cases 4) Although it might or might not be fair use, I feel no guilt downloading Super Mario Bros 3 for an emulator since I've purchased it at least ten times by now, own multiple copies of the game on physical media, and am currently renting it through Switch online. On the Sony/PlayStation side, I own a PS Classic, which actually runs a version of an open source PS1 emulator PCSX, amusingly enough. (I'm a bit disappointed that it's not a descendant of Connectix's emulator though.[1]) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment,_Inc._v._Connectix_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment,_I....
- bigtex 2y ago
  NES Classic only supported 30 built-in games, with no official way to purchase or download more.
  - musicale 2y ago
    Same for the SNES classic. And both are no longer available. ;-(
- randmeerkat 2y ago
  > Nintendo currently rent out NES games as part of Switch online If Nintendo really cared about this they should create their own version of Spotify for legacy video games and charge a monthly subscription fee for the entire library that’s cross platform and mobile friendly. The strength of Nintendo really is their games, not the hardware. I don’t understand why Nintendo is so attached to their hardware in 2024, especially in the age of the Steam Deck.

cies 2y ago

> But it's their product they can do what they want. It's just because of IP-law that they get to do this. If there were no IP-laws, it would be: "I bought their product, now it's mine, and I get tot do what I want." This is just overstretching of IP-laws if you ask me. This madness has to stop.

Rinzler89 2y ago
>This is just overstretching of IP-laws if you ask me. This madness has to stop. IP laws aren't a natural concept that exists by itself in nature, they're a construct manufactured and enforced by the governments. So if governments made them, then governments can easily rewrite them if they wish so. But for that there needs public support and presure form voters to the politicians, but IP laws aren't something the average person cares or even ever thinks about, not when their core worries are inflation, CoL, housing, healthcare, education, etc, so the issue of IP laws is played exclusively on the battlefield of corporations and who has the most money for lobbying. And corporations don't want laxer IP laws since that gives smaller players more leverage, versus the current status quo the favors the large plyers with the biggest litigation warchests to create large moats for them.

hyperman1 2y ago

For a whole lot of software companies, the main competitor is the old version of the software. Same for Nintendo: Newer games might be nicer to look at, but old games are just as much fun. So working older copies of their games do cost them money, and they'd rather see them disappear.

3np 2y ago
Indeed. This is a bit aprocryphal but I believe to recall reading about them attempting to shut down second-hand video game shops using legal threats somewhere in the 90s?
- 3np 2y ago
  I guess this is it: Nintendo took Blockbuster to court arguing that rentals constituted copyright infringement. They also sued Galoob for the Game Genie under the premise that using the Game Genie to alter the game in any way constitutes producing an infringing derivative work. They lost in both cases. https://web.archive.org/web/20060515021332/http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=1&cId=3146206 https://web.archive.org/web/20060515021332/http://www.1up.co...
wasteduniverse 2y ago
[dead]