Joined: 12/21/2011
Posts: 31
Location: The Magic Kingdom
I called Nintendo of America customer service yesterday, and they said using an emulator is illegal, and that you will get a huge fine if you do. I hope this NEVER happens to any of you guys, and I just wanted you to be aware, because I was worried. It's for your own good. Do NOT tell ANY game companies about TASVideos, or we will get sued for possibly millions of dollars, and there WILL be no TASVideos.org anymore. Be careful, and it sounds ridiculous that I'm even bringing this topic up, and I'm not saying we should stop TASing. I'm saying that I really care about you guys, and we should all the right to do what we want to, and the game companies come up with these ridiculous distribution rules, and I can't take it anymore. Please help me. If we get sued, then it's gonna be very tragic, so BE CAREFUL!
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
I think he's referring to the distribution of ROMs law, not SOPA. Which has also been well known for a long time, and the site has presumably put up measures to prevent it.
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I called Nintendo of America customer service yesterday, and they said using an emulator is illegal,
No, no it is not. Downloading a ROM from the internet is also, technically speaking, not illegal. What is illegal is the distribution of the ROM, and thus, the legal liability falls on the provider of ROMs, not the end user.
Nintendo of America wrote:
Are Game Copying Devices Illegal?
Yes. Game copiers enable users to illegally copy video game software onto floppy disks, writeable compact disks or the hard drive of a personal computer. They enable the user to make, play and distribute illegal copies of video game software which violates Nintendo's copyrights and trademarks. These devices also allow for the uploading and downloading of ROMs to and from the Internet. Based upon the functions of these devices, they are illegal.
This one made me face-palm. Per fair use, you are actually allowed to archive your own games, and play them via emulation. What they are saying here, is "We assume that you will use game copiers to become an internet supplier of infringing material, which is illegal, so the game copiers are totally illegal." Sorry, Nintendo, that isn't how this works.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
I think he's referring to the distribution of ROMs law, not SOPA. Which has also been well known for a long time, and the site has presumably put up measures to prevent it.
Actually, that law was for the distribution of video-game-based videos. Not ROMs.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
Not to derail the topic (in fact, if anything, I think I can only "rail" the topic), but I've always perceived video game companies as not giving a crap about what we do here for a few reasons.
First, we don't distribute ROMs, so nothing we do on this site is technically illegal.
Second, we're their biggest fans. As I recall, George Lucas had to be reined in after he got a little lawsuit-happy and went after fan works following the success of the Star Wars franchise. I'm not saying all companies turn a blind eye to shady business surrounding their IP (especially when there is often limited communication between the company and its legal department), but I perceive that savvy companies allow this kind of stuff to happen as long as it's in exaltation, not piracy.
And third, we give them good publicity. TASing is just another way to keep people thinking about video games. I, for one, am almost completely out of the video game industry, having played virtually nothing over the past year. If it weren't for TASing, I probably wouldn't be involved at all, and that would make me a former video game player instead of a potential customer. I wouldn't be surprised if there are many others for whom TASes (whether watching or making them) give them a little extra incentive to stay abreast of the industry.
That thread also discussed the "no TASVideos.org anymore" matter with all aspects, I thought.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
I called Nintendo of America customer service yesterday
That sounds like a bad idea. There are a lot of bad places to get your legal advice from, but I think "from the opposition" is one of the worst. And from a customer service line? They're just low level employees with scripts to read. They have neither a legal background nor any knowledge of the company's desires and intents beyond what makes it on to their scripts.
If you want real legal advice, retain a lawyer recommended to you by the EFF. Otherwise, just stay off the radar. Regardless of the actual law involved, they will start litigation against you if they don't like you and you're big enough of a pest (intimidation by legal threats).
I called Nintendo of America customer service yesterday
That sounds like a bad idea. There are a lot of bad places to get your legal advice from, but I think "from the opposition" is one of the worst. And from a customer service line? They're just low level employees with scripts to read. They have neither a legal background nor any knowledge of the company's desires and intents beyond what makes it on to their scripts.
If you want real legal advice, retain a lawyer recommended to you by the EFF. Otherwise, just stay off the radar. Regardless of the actual law involved, they will start litigation against you if they don't like you and you're big enough of a pest (intimidation by legal threats).
Expanding upon that point and tying it in with my own, Nintendo is always going to come down hard-line when it comes to their official policy towards ROMs. What did you expect?
Billy: "Hi, I have a question regarding ROMs."
Poorly-paid customer service representative who hates their job: "Okay, how can I help you?"
Billy: "I was wondering if it is legal to use an emulator."
PPCSRWHTJ: "Nintendo does not condone or allow illegal use of its intellectual property. Any unauthorized manufacturing, distribution, or use of ROMs will result in full legal action and a fine up to and including $20,000 and six months in prison."
Billy: "Yeah, but what if it's for a tool-assisted speedrun?"
PPCSRWHTJ: "Oh, a TAS? Why didn't you say so? Yeah, TAS away. We won't bug you. You want to know our favorite ROM sites?"
You should also not generally expect behavior from any large corporation to mesh at all with common sense. A combination of profit-seeking and risk-avoidance makes them do very strange things.
I mean, you could call them up and say "Hey, I loved X game you made so much that I made some free advertisements for it and put them on TV!" and they'd send you a cease-and-desist just because they couldn't control the content of the advertisements -- even if said ads were professionally-made and said nothing the corp wouldn't say themselves.
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Joined: 12/21/2011
Posts: 31
Location: The Magic Kingdom
Thank goodness, we're not gonna get sued. I am so obsessed with TASing that I think about it all the time, so I was concerned about this, because pretty much my whole life here is based on using emulators to abuse glitches and tricks in video games. I would probably die if we got sued. Now that you've explained this, now we're okay, so there is no point in continuing this topic.
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they're never gonna get us
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Bisqwit wrote:
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
I really thought this topic was a joke.
We don't have to worry about getting sued. To my knowledge, this has never happened in the history of speedrunning. I don't think it ever will. Putting up a movie of a game is an as accepted practice as putting up screenshots or written guides.
I called Nintendo of America customer service yesterday, and they said using an emulator is illegal, and that you will get a huge fine if you do.
Either you are misquoting (I'll be nice and assume that you did indeed call them rather than invent this whole story), or Nintendo is claiming rights they don't have.
There's no law in existence that would make using an emulator illegal. An emulator is a piece of software written by someone, and that someone owns the copyright to that piece of software. It's this author's own decision what the usage license of the software is. Nintendo cannot hijack the rights to this software for themselves.
At most the technology being emulated could be patented in some countries, which would grant legal protection for Nintendo against emulators. However, Nintendo's older consoles are so old that any possible patents on them have long since expired. IIRC the maximum time one can hold a patent even in the US is something like 20 years and eg. the NES is older than that. (It might be different with newer consoles.)
What is illegal is taking software from Nintendo and using it without permission. This breaks copyright. This includes the console's ROM and any game software owned by Nintendo. However, this is completely different from using an emulator. Nintendo cannot hijack the rights to using a third-party software that does not use any copyrighted material from Nintendo.
Now, the interesting question is: If you legally own, for example, a physical NES and a physical game cartridge, are you allowed to download the same game from the internet and play it with an emulator? AFAIK this depends on the country. For example in Finland you are completely allowed to do this (because you own the legal right to play the game regardless of the format in which it might be stored; no usage license can override this basic right). It becomes illegal only if you don't legally own the game.
So yes, if you don't legally own a game and you download and play it, you are breaking copyright. However, that doesn't mean that using an emulator is illegal. That's just BS.
Bobo the King wrote:
First, we don't distribute ROMs, so nothing we do on this site is technically illegal.
Not true. Distributing copyrighted music is technically illegal. (Whether the copyright holders will pursue is a different story.)
Either you are misquoting (I'll be nice and assume that you did indeed call them rather than invent this whole story), or Nintendo is claiming rights they don't have.
Nintendo has a long history of claiming rights that they don't have. There was a warning in the manual of every NES game distributed in the US that it was illegal to sell your used nintendo game, for instance.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Older games are avaible on the Wii-Shop-Channel or e-Shop. Nintendo earns money with them. So downloading ROMs on any site would not be that good for Nintendo.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Warp wrote:
Not true. Distributing copyrighted music is technically illegal. (Whether the copyright holders will pursue is a different story.)
Not just music. The visuals are copyrighted too. In fact any video that shows identifiable content from any game, however brief, technically violates copyright.
If anyone chose to pursue this, we could probably put up a decent defense using the fair use claim, but I'm not so sure whether that would stand, despite the fact our works are significantly transformative. The obvious problem would be the fact that these videos are chiefly meant for entertainment (as we explicitly mention on this site), and the fact that we usually show the entire game, including the ending and the crucial parts, which probably triggers the substantiality claim.
Another important argument is that this sort of thing has never been pursued before; the industry really just doesn't seem to care, whether it's speedruns or game videos of any other kind.
In fact any video that shows identifiable content from any game, however brief, technically violates copyright.
Not always. In most countries using short segments of a work of art for the purpose of review, commentary or parody is fully allowed. Of course what is "short enough" is not completely clear and usually up to the courts to decide in cases of dispute.
For some reason (that is still unclear to me), though, music seems to be an exception to this. Pictures and short segments of film and text are ok for the purposes I mentioned above, but not music. I don't really understand how the music industry got an exemption for this.
To be safe, we need to consider what would fly in both the United States (where YouTube is hosted) and the uploader's country (if different from the United States).
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Warp wrote:
Dada wrote:
In fact any video that shows identifiable content from any game, however brief, technically violates copyright.
Not always. In most countries using short segments of a work of art for the purpose of review, commentary or parody is fully allowed.
Yes, and that's called "fair use" under US copyright law. But my point is that something under fair use technically also violates copyright—just in a way that's permissible.
Fair use is a fickle thing. Any of a number of conditions can cause a judge to argue that fair use is not warranted.
Warp wrote:
I don't really understand how the music industry got an exemption for this.
Do they? A quick skim of the Wikipedia article shows at least one case where fair use was applied.
But it's likely that judging standards are higher when music is concerned.
edit:
arflech wrote:
To be safe, we need to consider what would fly in both the United States (where YouTube is hosted) and the uploader's country (if different from the United States).
No, we only need to keep the country in which the content is hosted in mind.
