ROM Site Owner Made $30,000 a Year -- Now Owes Nintendo $2.1 Million (arstechnica.com) 132
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The now-unemployed owner of a shuttered ROM distribution site has been ordered to pay $2.1 million in damages to Nintendo after trying and failing to defend himself in the case. In September 2019, Nintendo filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles resident Matthew Storman over his operation of RomUniverse.com, which offered prominent downloads of "Nintendo Switch Scene Roms" and other copyrighted game files. At the time, Nintendo said that the site had been "among the most visited and notorious online hubs for pirated Nintendo video games" for "over a decade."
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In providing summary judgment for Nintendo (as noted by Torrent Freak), the judge suggested that this was a clear case of infringement, one in which "there is no genuine issue of material fact that Plaintiff owns the copyrighted works and Defendant copied the works." While Nintendo sought $4.41 million in copyright damages -- or $90,000 each for 49 games -- the judge lowered the amount to $1.715 million ($35,000 per work). That amount should be sufficient to "compensate Plaintiff for its lost revenue and deter Defendant who is currently unemployed and has already shut down the website," the judge wrote. The judge also awarded an additional $400,000 for RomUniverse's use of Nintendo's trademarked box art, down from a massive $11.2 million ask. But Storman avoided a permanent injunction on "future infringement," with the judge suggesting that there was no "irreparable harm" given the monetary damages and the fact that the site had already been shuttered. Storman invoked the "safe harbor" protections of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), but Nintendo got him to admit that he had uploaded Nintendo's copyrighted ROM files himself. "Another attempted Storman defense based on the 'first sale doctrine' also failed to go anywhere, since the site was distributing copies rather than Storman's personal property," adds Ars.
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In providing summary judgment for Nintendo (as noted by Torrent Freak), the judge suggested that this was a clear case of infringement, one in which "there is no genuine issue of material fact that Plaintiff owns the copyrighted works and Defendant copied the works." While Nintendo sought $4.41 million in copyright damages -- or $90,000 each for 49 games -- the judge lowered the amount to $1.715 million ($35,000 per work). That amount should be sufficient to "compensate Plaintiff for its lost revenue and deter Defendant who is currently unemployed and has already shut down the website," the judge wrote. The judge also awarded an additional $400,000 for RomUniverse's use of Nintendo's trademarked box art, down from a massive $11.2 million ask. But Storman avoided a permanent injunction on "future infringement," with the judge suggesting that there was no "irreparable harm" given the monetary damages and the fact that the site had already been shuttered. Storman invoked the "safe harbor" protections of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), but Nintendo got him to admit that he had uploaded Nintendo's copyrighted ROM files himself. "Another attempted Storman defense based on the 'first sale doctrine' also failed to go anywhere, since the site was distributing copies rather than Storman's personal property," adds Ars.
Play stupid games (Score:4, Informative)
Win stupid prizes. We all have known ROMs were infringing copyright, there is an argument to be made for copyright that is no longer owned by anyone, but Nintendo still sells a majority of these games, even the originals.
The only thing you can do is shorten copyright to something more reasonable like 25 years.
Re:Play stupid games (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's ONLY a profit center if people buy the product.
Re:Play stupid games (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly, it was supposed to provide incentive for content creation in exchange for more that entering the public domain afterwards. It's become totally distorted and abusive.
The limited period of time should actually be much shorter today, because the means of distribution are much faster. Virtually all works make the vast majority of their profits in the first couple of years, after which time they either stop being sold entirely or become bargain bin filler selling at a much lower cost.
Copyright terms should be for a maximum of 5 years from first release, with the added caveat that if you stop selling a work under its original terms then it enters the public domain immediately. I'd also prohibit discrimination, you should sell to anyone who's willing to pay the asked price, not try to limit distribution by region beyond nominal shipping costs in the case of physical media.
Re: Play stupid games (Score:3, Interesting)
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The company I wrote code for 5 years ago is not still paying me for it. 5 years might be a little too short for something with as much enduring value as a novel, but I'm not sure it is necessarily self evident that you should be able to profit off a creative work indefinitely. 15 years seems like a reasonable time frame. If you can't produce enough creative output with enough popularity every 15 years to sustain yourself, then maybe "novelist" isn't a good day job for you.
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No - they paid you for the code when you wrote it.
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"but I'm not sure it is necessarily self evident that you should be able to profit off a creative work indefinitely."
Why not? There's a big difference between the original author profiting from a creative work and others profiting from the same work. The original author should be able to profit from their work indefinitely. Why should others profit from their work at all, even after many years?
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Re: Play stupid games (Score:2)
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To exemplify your point, the first Harry Potter book came out in 1997. The first Harry Potter movie came out in 2001. If there was a five year protection period, the studio would have sat on the idea for one year and released the film based on public domain, with J.K. Rowling receiving no further revenue on her books nor royalties for the massively popular films.
Too short a term creates incentive for studios to stall for time and mine not-yet-out-of-date material that is suddenly public domain.
The current t
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There is a reasonable argument to be made that things like books can take a great deal of time to create and to generate income, so maybe 5 years is a bit short but 15 at the most should be sufficient.
The problem is copyright is essentially infinite at the moment. Nintendo released many of these games in the 1980s, and keeps selling them to us again and again.
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Doesn't really matter how long it takes to create, as it typically doesn't get published until it's finished and copyright wouldn't apply until the date of first publication - prior to publication it's a trade secret and protected by different laws.
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But if you can only put out one book every 5 years it becomes an issue. Books can take a very long time to compile all the needed information or to write the story, and I think it's reasonable to say that we would like to encourage such works.
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Well copyright exists as a deal between society and the content creators.
In exchange for society giving content creators exclusive rights for a limited time, content creators provide their content to the public domain at the end of this time.
The default position is no copyright, you can copy anything however you want.
As there are many more consumers than creators, under a truly democratic society the people would demand something in exchange for allowing copyright to exist.
A system that results in copyright
Re: Play stupid games (Score:2)
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So shorter copyright? Sur
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I'm not sure about the "2 years" thing. Nowadays, with digital distribution many works can be sold virtually forever and some gain a cult following and make decent profits for a long time. For example, the game Nier Automata is said to have gained steam after a while and made good money after it had been released for a long time. Also, the Witcher 3 game got a nice boost in sales when the Netflix series based on the same universe was released 4 years after the game initial release.
So shorter copyright? Sure. 5 years? I think that's too short.
The point of copyright isn't to grant a monopoly for as long as a work has commercial value. The point is to grant a monopoly for a sufficient time to incentivize the work's creation in the first place. The two games you quoted made back their production cost plus a hefty profit already. Also, we shouldn't size copyright terms according to the rare outlier that still sees sales long after its release, if we did that, well, people are still buying "The Lord of the Rings", and probably will be for the fore
Re: Play stupid games (Score:2)
The idea that someone would not want to say, write a book, because 40 years after he or she dies it would go into the public domain is ludicrious.
It does increase the value of the rights to a book, which would otherwise decrease rapidly during your lifetime, right?
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idea that someone would not want to say, write a book, because 40 years after he or she dies it would go into the public domain is ludicrious.
The increase in duration may incentivize the author by increasing the amount of money which the author could sell off their rights for -- Assuming the author retains their rights, and the work is wildly successful: e.g. proves to be lasting favorite, then the price for a company to come in later and buy out some or all the author's rights, say for a movie, etc,
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>If I write a book I want every dime of profit resulting from my work forever. It's my work,
In a world with infinite copyrights your book would be found to be derivative or earlier works, and the ownership would not be given to you, but instead to parties that have inherited the rights to works written thousands of years ago.
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> If you independently create something...
That has never happened in the history of human civilization. *Every* work is inspired by the work that came before it. Melodies, harmonies, writing styles and plots. Any decent artist adds a little something new to the mix, but even with the greats, 95+% of their creation is likely to be a remix of older themes. Especially for the sort of popular stuff that makes money - people like what is comfortable, which is to say, what is very similar to what they've a
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Alright, how's this for a compromise?
Ten year copyright. At the end of the ten years, you can extend for another ten years for X dollars (I'll let experts do the math on what X should be, just work with me here). At the end of those ten years you can extend for another ten years for X times X dollars. At the end of those ten years, another ten for X times X times X and so on.
Most forms of entertainment today is only really profitable for the first few months to years. We still talk about Harry Potter today,
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How about having it be a tax on its revenue instead? Tax that at 1%, after say five years, 5%, then 10%, 20%, 50%, 75%, then 100%, then 150%, 200%, and just keep escalating that until you either start giving it away for free or abandon its copyright. Append a caveat that the product must be "reasonably accessible" and you're golden.
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If you can keep paying for the extension, then chances are you made it so that only the wealthy will be able to extend copywrites.
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But with an exponential growth it gets severely prohibitive eventually.
Imagine 100 dollars for the first extension. That's 10,000 for the second, 1,000,000 for the third, 100,000,000 for the fourth (the 50 year mark), and an insane 10,000,000,000 for the fifth extension rising to the 'GDP of some countries' of 1,000,000,000,000 for the sixth extension. NO IP is going to be worth enough to keep extending at that point. Not even Disney ears a trillion dollars on the exclusive rights for Mickey Mouse in a deca
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The idea was that the extension fee increased exponentially. Not even Disney would be able to keep up with that.
A reasonable $100 fee for the first 10-year renewal becomes $1,000,000 after just 4 extensions, or 50 years. Out of reach for most of us, but still reasonable for popular books and movies. JK Rowling could keep Harry Potter and Disney could keep their more popular movies.
At 80 years, however, it's a much nastier 1,000,000,000 -- Disney could do it, but what 80-year-old Disney movie would be wor
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That would be horrible. Just imagine that you wrote a song, and 10 years later the nazi party selected to use that song as their official party song.
Having control(Aka copyright) about how anything you create are used should not be time limited.
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So throw up a Kickstarter to gather funds to renew the copyright so they can't do that? Or don't make edgy songs that could conceivably be used by nazis to promote their ideology in the first place?
Re: Play stupid games (Score:2)
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Hence why there is some ying and yang.
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If I write a book I want every dime of profit resulting from my work forever. It's my work,
Not if you're dead. Then it belongs to your estate since you can't own anything when you're dead.
That aside, it's nice that you want things. Disney agrees with you because it (greatly) benefits them. However it creates an artificial restriction on things over a century old in many cases. I'd love to hear a logical defense of that.
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Re:Play stupid games (Score:5, Insightful)
renewal fees that go up can help alot + abandonwar (Score:2)
renewal fees that go up can help alot and fix abandonware issues.
Re:Play stupid games (Score:5, Insightful)
it should be no more than the copyright owner's life plus 25 years.
Please, no. Just pick a number and stick with it. It should not be based on "lifetimes".
If you have a site with tens of thousands of files, it is not reasonable to have to search for the date-of-death for every author, who may not even be known.
If the copyright owner is a corporation, then 25 years.
The obvious workaround is to register the copyright in the name of the CEO's 2-year-old kid and then license it back to the corporation. With a life expectancy of 80 years, plus 25, that is over a century of protection.
Re: Play stupid games (Score:2)
I know it's pretty common to complain about the quality of mass media around here, but I assure you it'd be far worse if created by a 2-year-old.
Oh, you're confusing claimant and author for copyright terms... not so obvious then I guess.
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> The obvious workaround is to register the copyright in the name of the CEO's 2-year-old kid
Sounds like you just threw away 2 years and 9 months of extra profits due to poor planning.
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It should not be based on "lifetimes".
I'll compromise on the definition of a corporation's lifetime to be 0, since it's not alive.
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Something the constitution clearly states the government has no power or authority to issue.
I'm curious about this. Do you have more information?
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I assume they're referring to this language in the constitution:
“To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”
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Originally, copyright in the country was 14 years with one 14 year renewal. At the time, making copies was an expensive, slow, labor intensive process, and distribution around the country
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Having shorter terms will actually cause MORE things to be made, not less, as you will need to continue producing new content in order to have a continuous revenue stream.
Re: Play stupid games (Score:2)
> the copyright owners life plus
No. "To the author and for limited times." As far as the author is concerned, anything beyond his life is infinite.
Seven years, renewable once is plenty. Sam Clemens had planned to add a new chapter to Tom Sawyer every seven years. Oh, sure, go buy the incomplete one if you like.
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anything beyond his life is infinite.
While that may be true, it is not infinite for a studio that has an intriguing work for someone who published a books at 75 years old, and someone that might otherwise have bought the rights would instead wait it out and take it upon author's death.
It should be some time period from time of release/publication, without any lengthening or shortening based on the lifespan of any particular human.
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The term of 'lifetime of the author plus 50 years after his death' was set by the Berne Convention in 1908. Sonny Bono would not be born for another 27 years. Walt Disney was 7 years old at the time, so I doubt he had much to do with it either.
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For some things, longer terms make sense. Actors, for example, don't have very stable work. A lot of them rely on residuals for both living and retirement. Longer terms are very important for them.
Some works do hold their value over a longer period of time, and it is only right to reward authors who produce our most beloved content. 30 years is not unreasonable, and might even be a bit on the short side, for something like Star Wars.
For most stuff, however, the original 14 year term is more than adequat
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Nintendo sells only a small fraction of their total library, but still owns all of em due infinite mickey copyright.
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And different arguments could be made for NES, SNES, and N64 ROMs NOT available in that library thing whose name I forget.
The guy was making money off actively sold games. He was basically signing his own death certificate.
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If you make enough money to pay for the nintendo lawyers time, they come after you
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Nintendo has released versions of its old games that can run on the Switch.
So, they are actually selling some of the older games - they're not "abandonware".
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They were abandoned for a very long time. Many of their works still are.
Not that any company is going to make that mistake again. It's practically free to keep software like that available these days. There's no need to manufacture or warehouse anything.
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The only thing you can do is shorten copyright to something more reasonable like 25 years.
Or better - first ten years are automatic and free, after that you need to register the work and pay the copyright office $1 for the following year, doubling after that each year. Thus costing about $1000 for the next ten years (actually $1023 in total for the first 9 years being charged), about $1million for the following 10 (actually $1,048,575 in total for the first 19 years being charged), $1billion for the next ten (actually $1,073,741,823 in total for the first 29 years being charged).
This generates r
if (Fine Income) { ... ? } (Score:2)
What happens when some guy making $30,000/year gets a $2,100,000.00 fine?
Uh, ... ...asking for a friend...
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They declare bankruptcy and get the debt discharged.
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Re:if (Fine Income) { ... ? } (Score:5, Informative)
They declare bankruptcy and get the debt discharged.
From a legal websie: "If the lawsuit resulted in a judgment, the bankruptcy will eliminate your liability as long as the debt qualifies for discharge. But keep in mind that if the judgment is for a nondischargeable debt, bankruptcy will not get rid of it." What are nondischargeable debts? Things like criminal penalties, fines, and restitution. I think his $2.1M judgement is classified as "restitution".
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I heard that in the US student loans were considered as such relatively recently (last 10y). Can a US local confirm this?
I mean it kinda makes sense since student loans are given without collateral, and that they're given to people who will only be able to make a (profitable) living maybe some years after college, so preventing bankruptcy to clear that debt is (somewhat) understandable. Even then it still feels like a slavery pledge of sorts only really available in the US, due to the high price of higher e
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The concrete will drive the water out and become the original arrogate and lime much sooner than the rebar will melt. In fact concrete is made originally by baking limestone to get the sand and lime.
You won't get anything from that Uber driver (Score:2)
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I don't think this qualifies as "random disaster".
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Usually a wage garnishment at the maximum allowed by your state of residence and then the leftover ends up in the estate and if it overwhelms the assets of the estate it disappears.
That's if it can't be removed in bankruptcy (which I thought judgements in a case like this usually don't, but other posters seem to think it can).
They destroyed this guy because they could (Score:2)
Re:They destroyed this guy because they could (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem in the past has been the copyright industry misusing these laws to go after individuals for individual violations of copyright. That's why you ended up with ridiculous $x00,000 judgments for violating copyright on a few dozen songs. Because the law was written to be used against people illegally selling those songs for thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue. Not against someone downloading a single copy of a few dozen songs.
But what this guy did seems to be a pretty clear case of commercial copyright infringement. Which is exactly what the law is designed to protect against.
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What was the actual profit...
Not relevant. Relevant was that you used the term profit and afterwards revenue. That alone makes it commercial copyright infringement and the law takes no consideration of how much actual money was made, only on the value of the infringed work to the holder.
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actually, in bankruptcy court profit and revenue make _all_ the difference.
Re:They destroyed this guy because they could (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem in the past has been the copyright industry misusing these laws to go after individuals for individual violations of copyright. That's why you ended up with ridiculous $x00,000 judgments for violating copyright on a few dozen songs. Because the law was written to be used against people illegally selling those songs for thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue. Not against someone downloading a single copy of a few dozen songs.
While the rest of your comment is spot on, the above should be tempered with the knowledge that the publishers haven't gone after individual downloaders (See, e.g., Sony v. Tenenbaum). Both in the Napster and BitTorrent eras, they've gone after uploaders - there's both a technical and legal reason for this.
Technically, it's much easier to identify an uploader than a downloader: you find someone hosting the file, block all other potential servers, and download a full copy from them. Boom, you just proved distribution. But for a downloader, they have to get the full copy of the file from you, and if they hit any other servers, well, you can't be sure that they weren't getting a licensed copy somehow.
Legally, someone who purely downloads may be format shifting - maybe they have a hard copy of the DVD or CD and are just downloading it rather than ripping it. It hasn't been tested, but there's a strong argument under Sony v. Betamax that that may be legal. Regardless, it's not one that the publishers want to test. Additionally, if they did download a full copy from you - see above regarding the technical difficulty - there's an argument that they just got a licensed copy... after all, you put up the server to catch downloaders and made it available for download, so they may have an implied license. Again, not anything the publishers want to test in court.
So, really, all of these cases are the same on that front - they're about illegal distribution. The real distinction is profit vs. non-profit, but that's already worked into the law - doing it for profit can be criminally charged under 17 USC 506, while doing it not for profit is limited to just civil damages and injunctions. So yes, this is unlike Tenenbaum and similar cases from the late 90s/early 2000s, but not because those cases were egregious examples of the publishers going after small downloaders.
Disclaimer: I'm an IP attorney; not your attorney; this is not legal advice; etc.
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Maybe not, but the one thing this forum needs now and then is a good dose of reality, instead of the fiction regularly pumped around.
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Did you actually read that article? The headline says 'downloading', but the actual complaint was distributing and making available for distribution.
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The federal appeals court reversed a district court's decision to reduce Jammie Thomas-Rasset's owed damages to $54,000 from $1.5m. Tuesday's ruling (pdf) sets the damages at $220,000 and forbids Thomas-Rasset from making sound recordings available for distribution.
Journalists frequently just describe them as going after downloaders, but that's poor journalism. It's always sharers - leeching (downloading without uploading) is technically illegal, but almost impossible
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Not Abandonware (Score:5, Informative)
The summary specifically mentions ROMs for the Nintendo Switch. That's their current platform. This isn't some Super Nintendo site with ROMs for consoles that haven't been produced in decades. It's not even Wii or WiiU games (many of which have been repackaged for the Switch, I hear). This is pirating games that are actively being sold.
While it's fine to argue that copyright should be shorter (I would argue 20 years is more than enough), such policies wouldn't have mattered here.
Contact your local Congressmen/women (Score:2)
To have the copyright laws changed in such a way that big tech can't sue unless they also provide access to all this abandonware.
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That's only ... (Score:3)
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I suppose if Nintendo felt it was worth their time, they could go back to court to get a garnishment judgement to extract money from his paychecks. There are limits that vary by jurisdiction as to how much they could extract per paycheck
I don't hold out much hope that Nintendo will se
Apparently that's $30k a year per game (Score:2)
Not $30k a year total. So he made way more than that.
I still find it mind boggling how much money can be gotten that way. I mean $30k pay for many years of hiring some 16 year old pupil to write games for you. With such a source of income, he could have started a legitimate profitable business publishing games.
The Market for Old ROMS (Score:2)
Granted the judgement is related to ROMs for Switch games, but in the wider context of previous takedowns (see, e.g., this article [polygon.com]) I'm curious about the market in general for these older games. More specifically, how much did Nintendo derive the market demand for these old games from the very fact that these ROM sites existed, versus how much of that was derived from surveying the market.
I think there's also a lot to be said for the original creativity and ingenuity that went into making these games as ca
needs reform from disney vault stuff and can't buy (Score:2)
needs reform from disney vault stuff and can't buy rom.
I don't want to use Nintendo emulation I want to use on my system with stuff that Nintendo dose not have.
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As someone who makes copyrighted material, I agree that there are some real problems with it. Fair use, for example, is not written into law, but rather a matter of court precedent, so unless you have the money to fight off accusations of infringement, you either create entirely original works, or you don't publish anything at all.
The trouble, though, with shortening a copyright term is that, as an artist, I know that it sometimes takes an entire lifetime to build a career. In many cases, artists become