3 ms·

yes. Nintendo is even hostile to Youtubers playing their games. Is it possible to copyright even the hardware somehow? I know that they sued someone who created

yes. Nintendo is even hostile to Youtubers playing their games. Is it possible to copyright even the hardware somehow? I know that they sued someone who created an emulator while they were still selling the NES.

Karunamon 9y ago
Is it possible to copyright even the hardware somehow? A lay (IANAL, IANYL, TINLA) view of existing US case law would say no. Nintendo made and then withdrew a suit against the makers of UltraHLE, an early N64 emulator. Again, withdrawn, so nothing was decided. More interestingly, Sony tried something similar against Bleem!, a commercial Playstation emulator, in 1999. Sony lost, but the legal costs drove the company out of business anyways. So really, if you want to develop an emulator for modern hardware without getting lawyerpwned, you have to do something like: 1) Figure out a way to dump the (copyrighted) ROM that makes the various bits of the system work. The code signing involved makes this process completely illicit per DMCA, but there's apparently no standing to sue as long as you aren't distributing the results. (And then there's that fair use exemption for discussion and education besides) 2) Either clean room reverse engineer it with help, or make the dumping process easy enough that you can instruct others how to do it. PS2 emulator devs take the second option - every PS2 emulator requires a copy of the PS2 bios to work. 3) Hardware design isn't copyrightable, so you're fine with reimplementing the CPU in code. This means that if you want to make your hardware emulator-proof, it's just like all DRM. You are doomed to fail, it's just a matter of how long.
- oculusthrift 9y ago
  thanks for the informative post. i've been working on an in-browser NES emulator myself and planned to have the users use their own local rom instead of hosting them myself. good to hear that should theoretically be legal
hcs 9y ago
BIOS ROMs can be copyrighted, without which a system won't work, though they can be reverse engineered in a legally defensible way. An interesting read on the history of computer cloning here: http://www.filfre.net/2014/10/send-in-the-clones/ http://www.filfre.net/2014/10/send-in-the-clones/ The NES had no BIOS, though. What I'd be more worried about is patents, though I think they've all expired by now for anything that would have applied to the original NES hardware.
- baldfat 9y ago
  How does any computer not have a BIOS????
  - hcs 9y ago
    The cartridge just plugs directly into the CPU, essentially every game provides its own BIOS. You can only get away with this with systems where software is provided on pluggable ROMs, Fairchild Channel F being the first video game example and similarly the better-known Atari VCS (aka 2600). Technically the NES does have a ROM in the CIC lockout chip, which talks to another CIC on the cartridge to ensure it is a legitimate copy, but this is entirely irrelevant to gameplay and invisible to software (unlike similar chips on the N64 which the game could check at runtime). Indeed with the NES-101 (toploader) this was removed, arguably to improve reliability (if you ever saw the blinking LED on an NES, that's the CIC resetting the hardware).

Karunamon 9y ago

Is it possible to copyright even the hardware somehow? A lay (IANAL, IANYL, TINLA) view of existing US case law would say no. Nintendo made and then withdrew a suit against the makers of UltraHLE, an early N64 emulator. Again, withdrawn, so nothing was decided. More interestingly, Sony tried something similar against Bleem!, a commercial Playstation emulator, in 1999. Sony lost, but the legal costs drove the company out of business anyways. So really, if you want to develop an emulator for modern hardware without getting lawyerpwned, you have to do something like: 1) Figure out a way to dump the (copyrighted) ROM that makes the various bits of the system work. The code signing involved makes this process completely illicit per DMCA, but there's apparently no standing to sue as long as you aren't distributing the results. (And then there's that fair use exemption for discussion and education besides) 2) Either clean room reverse engineer it with help, or make the dumping process easy enough that you can instruct others how to do it. PS2 emulator devs take the second option - every PS2 emulator requires a copy of the PS2 bios to work. 3) Hardware design isn't copyrightable, so you're fine with reimplementing the CPU in code. This means that if you want to make your hardware emulator-proof, it's just like all DRM. You are doomed to fail, it's just a matter of how long.

oculusthrift 9y ago
thanks for the informative post. i've been working on an in-browser NES emulator myself and planned to have the users use their own local rom instead of hosting them myself. good to hear that should theoretically be legal

hcs 9y ago

BIOS ROMs can be copyrighted, without which a system won't work, though they can be reverse engineered in a legally defensible way. An interesting read on the history of computer cloning here: http://www.filfre.net/2014/10/send-in-the-clones/ http://www.filfre.net/2014/10/send-in-the-clones/ The NES had no BIOS, though. What I'd be more worried about is patents, though I think they've all expired by now for anything that would have applied to the original NES hardware.

baldfat 9y ago
How does any computer not have a BIOS????
- hcs 9y ago
  The cartridge just plugs directly into the CPU, essentially every game provides its own BIOS. You can only get away with this with systems where software is provided on pluggable ROMs, Fairchild Channel F being the first video game example and similarly the better-known Atari VCS (aka 2600). Technically the NES does have a ROM in the CIC lockout chip, which talks to another CIC on the cartridge to ensure it is a legitimate copy, but this is entirely irrelevant to gameplay and invisible to software (unlike similar chips on the N64 which the game could check at runtime). Indeed with the NES-101 (toploader) this was removed, arguably to improve reliability (if you ever saw the blinking LED on an NES, that's the CIC resetting the hardware).