6 ms·

Nintendo Issues DMCA Takedown for Super Mario Bros. Commodore 64 Port

39 points by headalgorithm 8y ago

nullsmack 8y ago
Its the feel good story of the year. j/k Super Mario Bros shouldn't even be under copyright anymore. Our copyright laws are horrible and abusive.
iforgotpassword 8y ago
They issue a takedown for a 34 year old game, ported to a system that's 37 years old. That takes a while to digest. I have noticed that every now and then, youtubers complain about Nintendo being real dicks regarding let's plays or even just using trailer footage in videos, which I can't really understand since it's basically free publicity. But OK, at least those cases are probably related to recent games, so it might make someone at Nintendo think they will lose money because people will watch let's plays instead of buying the game. But this one is just ridiculous. What are they trying to accomplish? Stop this one dude who's most recent video game system is a C64 from playing super Mario bros for free?
- dyhtf 8y ago
  99.9% of players of this ROM will be people who try it out using a C64 emulator. In other words, pirates using a PC. And they released that "new" NES just a few years ago. In other words they want to keep exploiting this work of copyright, which they own.
  - iforgotpassword 8y ago
    And why wouldn't those people use a nes emulator and the original ROM then, if they seriously wanted to play the game? Anyone loading this on an emulator just wants to check it out for being a port, not for experiencing the actual game.
    - dyhtf 8y ago
      It is a port. If it's got the same levels, the same enemies, the same music, etc, it's the same game, and it certainly breaches copyright.
      - e1ven 8y ago
        No one is arguing about if it breaches copyright. They're arguing about if a) if it ought to be a breach of copyright, and b) if Nintendo ought to be taking this down.
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  Copyright enforcement "wisdom" is that if they don't stop this they lose some of their power at stopping the next copyright infringement. It does circle back though that Copyright was (constitutionally, in the US) meant to only be a temporary reprieve from the public domain/public access with the express purpose to make it likelier to entre the public domain/public access afterwards, but at this point we've pushed "temporary" beyond the span of a human lifetime for the benefits of inhuman entities (corporations). Why should 30+ year old things remain in copyright? Corporations collect nice rents on even 30 year old properties. I'm sure Nintendo appreciates how many people need to (re-)buy Super Mario Brothers every couple of years on a new console's "Virtual Console" store every few years to play it legally. Recent game Super Mario Maker even provides a legal way to remix Super Mario content in Nintendo-approved ways. But what is our culture missing out on that public domain won't see access to Super Mario until sometime nearing the end of this century (under current laws, who knows if someone might fight to expand them again), and subsequently outside the lifetimes of many of the folks that played Super Mario Brothers around its original release? Would people even remember Super Mario Brothers? Would what is left to turn back over to the public domain be archived well enough to even be useful to the public domain at that point?
  - tinus_hn 8y ago
    Trademarks work that way. Copyrights do not.
    - iforgotpassword 8y ago
      And even then, that's more or less just so you can claim unused trademarks. Just because you decidede not to act on one such infringement doesn't immediately revoke your trademark, especially if there is no financial gain for the infringing party.
    - WorldMaker 8y ago
      You are technically correct ("the best kind of correct"). The DMCA has noticeably muddied the waters. Copyright shouldn't legally work that way [in that selective enforcement weakens further enforcement], but among other parts of the DMCA over-reach, it's the increasing gray area confusion between trademark law and copyright law that the DMCA seems particularly to exacerbate. That's partly because providers (such as YouTube) often handle DMCA takedowns as all or nothing, and technically do not allow selective takedowns or make exceptions hard to handle. That's also partly because the courts seem to have allowed corporations themselves to confuse and comingle copyright and trademark laws. Recent arguments that Disney has not bothered to extend the copyright term again because they think they've bulwarked Mickey Mouse trademarks enough at this point to continue to control the properties when they expire from copyright, and that idea seems to stem from this increasingly muddy water. The laws seem clear that the water shouldn't be this muddy and trademark is not some magically stronger copyright (and copyright is not just some subtly weaker trademark) in an ouroboros of self-correlation fed by DMCA logic and corporate rent seeking. It may take some serious casework in the next few decades to fix such problems, however.
tinus_hn 8y ago
I think there is a court case that shows it is legitimate to distribute something like this as a patch that requires the original rom.
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  Except that you couldn't make a patch for a NES game that produces a C64 ROM. The patch would effectively be the entirety of the C64 ROM.
  - T-hawk 8y ago
    You could. Maybe not by the commonly available ROM patching tools. But you could write a program that takes as input the NES ROM and outputs the C64 ROM, such that that program contains nothing copyrighted by Nintendo. It would convert the level layouts and tile/sprite artwork and sound effects and music and so on (maybe even the 6502 assembly routines for jumping and physics and such), from the NES ROM to whatever the C64 port will use natively.
  - imtringued 8y ago
    Patches can be turing complete.
craftinator 8y ago
Well, Nintendo just lost a customer. There's only a certain level of petty bigotry that I can handle, and they've gone way, wayyyy lower than that. It's like the cops arresting a ten year for operation a lemonade stand without a license FFS (and that actually happened in my home town!).
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  I mean, playing devil's advocate, you've got Nintendo protecting a product that they still sell and distribute (3DS Virtual Console, Wii U Virtual Console, Nintendo Switch Online NES, NES Mini, and various other ports) — and this port is literally just the exact same game: same graphics, music, levels, mechanics. Even if the makers of this clone aren't making a profit from it, the free distribution undermines Nintendo's continued ability to sell a game that people, evidently, still wish to purchase. It isn't as though the developers of the clone couldn't have changed the graphics, music, and level design to make a brand new game for the C64. I mean, that's just devil's advocate. To me, Nintendo still makes the most delightful, charming, and enduring games in the industry. Stopping being their customer over one business practice with which you mightn't agree seems like missing the forest for the trees.
  - craftinator 8y ago
    I understand your advocacy, but their art loses it's charm when I think of the nastiness that their lawyers are wreaking. It's not like they are in a survival or scarcity environment. They are a large, multinational, multibillion dollar company. And they are loosing their million dollar lawyers on some guy for possibly damaging an incredibly small portion of their income. It's just so dirty; the more I think about it, the less happy I am playing their games. So I'd say the forest is already tarnished and dying in my eyes, unfortunately.
    - zapzupnz 8y ago
      > on some guy for possibly damaging an incredibly small portion of their income No, they're maintaining the precedent that piggy-backing off the fruits of their labour without consent is unacceptable. When they go easy on one thing, that gives carte blanche to the next. It's not dirty, it's business. > but their art loses it's charm when I think of the nastiness that their lawyers are wreaking > the more I think about it, the less happy I am playing their games The issue is with the copyright game, not the players who see no alternative but to play it. They have shareholders' investments to protect and must be seen to take action. All I can say is that Nintendo's lawyers have been doing things like this since the NES, and if Nintendo's art wasn't tarnished in your eyes back then, then this really does sound like a knee-jerk reaction.
agumonkey 8y ago
Why not embrace the idea and hire them as a one shot contract for a special port (with some tweaks from Nintendo designers ?). They used to be very collaborative in the NES/SNES days .. (based on SimCity port).
warent 8y ago
On the one hand, I do agree that this is absolutely insane and an indicator that DMCA needs serious reformation. But at the risk of causing outrage, let me play devil's advocate. To me, this is like spending years building a small model version of a Saturn V rocket to painstaking detail and then not being able to distribute it publicly. You just spent years on a hobby with little extrinsic value. What could you expect from spending so much time and energy on porting a video game created by a company that isn't owned by you onto a platform that isn't owned by you?

39 points by headalgorithm 8y ago

Its the feel good story of the year. j/k Super Mario Bros shouldn't even be under copyright anymore. Our copyright laws are horrible and abusive.

iforgotpassword 8y ago

They issue a takedown for a 34 year old game, ported to a system that's 37 years old. That takes a while to digest. I have noticed that every now and then, youtubers complain about Nintendo being real dicks regarding let's plays or even just using trailer footage in videos, which I can't really understand since it's basically free publicity. But OK, at least those cases are probably related to recent games, so it might make someone at Nintendo think they will lose money because people will watch let's plays instead of buying the game. But this one is just ridiculous. What are they trying to accomplish? Stop this one dude who's most recent video game system is a C64 from playing super Mario bros for free?

dyhtf 8y ago
99.9% of players of this ROM will be people who try it out using a C64 emulator. In other words, pirates using a PC. And they released that "new" NES just a few years ago. In other words they want to keep exploiting this work of copyright, which they own.
- iforgotpassword 8y ago
  And why wouldn't those people use a nes emulator and the original ROM then, if they seriously wanted to play the game? Anyone loading this on an emulator just wants to check it out for being a port, not for experiencing the actual game.
  - dyhtf 8y ago
    It is a port. If it's got the same levels, the same enemies, the same music, etc, it's the same game, and it certainly breaches copyright.
    - e1ven 8y ago
      No one is arguing about if it breaches copyright. They're arguing about if a) if it ought to be a breach of copyright, and b) if Nintendo ought to be taking this down.
WorldMaker 8y ago
Copyright enforcement "wisdom" is that if they don't stop this they lose some of their power at stopping the next copyright infringement. It does circle back though that Copyright was (constitutionally, in the US) meant to only be a temporary reprieve from the public domain/public access with the express purpose to make it likelier to entre the public domain/public access afterwards, but at this point we've pushed "temporary" beyond the span of a human lifetime for the benefits of inhuman entities (corporations). Why should 30+ year old things remain in copyright? Corporations collect nice rents on even 30 year old properties. I'm sure Nintendo appreciates how many people need to (re-)buy Super Mario Brothers every couple of years on a new console's "Virtual Console" store every few years to play it legally. Recent game Super Mario Maker even provides a legal way to remix Super Mario content in Nintendo-approved ways. But what is our culture missing out on that public domain won't see access to Super Mario until sometime nearing the end of this century (under current laws, who knows if someone might fight to expand them again), and subsequently outside the lifetimes of many of the folks that played Super Mario Brothers around its original release? Would people even remember Super Mario Brothers? Would what is left to turn back over to the public domain be archived well enough to even be useful to the public domain at that point?
- tinus_hn 8y ago
  Trademarks work that way. Copyrights do not.
  - iforgotpassword 8y ago
    And even then, that's more or less just so you can claim unused trademarks. Just because you decidede not to act on one such infringement doesn't immediately revoke your trademark, especially if there is no financial gain for the infringing party.
  - WorldMaker 8y ago
    You are technically correct ("the best kind of correct"). The DMCA has noticeably muddied the waters. Copyright shouldn't legally work that way [in that selective enforcement weakens further enforcement], but among other parts of the DMCA over-reach, it's the increasing gray area confusion between trademark law and copyright law that the DMCA seems particularly to exacerbate. That's partly because providers (such as YouTube) often handle DMCA takedowns as all or nothing, and technically do not allow selective takedowns or make exceptions hard to handle. That's also partly because the courts seem to have allowed corporations themselves to confuse and comingle copyright and trademark laws. Recent arguments that Disney has not bothered to extend the copyright term again because they think they've bulwarked Mickey Mouse trademarks enough at this point to continue to control the properties when they expire from copyright, and that idea seems to stem from this increasingly muddy water. The laws seem clear that the water shouldn't be this muddy and trademark is not some magically stronger copyright (and copyright is not just some subtly weaker trademark) in an ouroboros of self-correlation fed by DMCA logic and corporate rent seeking. It may take some serious casework in the next few decades to fix such problems, however.

tinus_hn 8y ago

I think there is a court case that shows it is legitimate to distribute something like this as a patch that requires the original rom.

zapzupnz 8y ago
Except that you couldn't make a patch for a NES game that produces a C64 ROM. The patch would effectively be the entirety of the C64 ROM.
- T-hawk 8y ago
  You could. Maybe not by the commonly available ROM patching tools. But you could write a program that takes as input the NES ROM and outputs the C64 ROM, such that that program contains nothing copyrighted by Nintendo. It would convert the level layouts and tile/sprite artwork and sound effects and music and so on (maybe even the 6502 assembly routines for jumping and physics and such), from the NES ROM to whatever the C64 port will use natively.
- imtringued 8y ago
  Patches can be turing complete.

craftinator 8y ago

Well, Nintendo just lost a customer. There's only a certain level of petty bigotry that I can handle, and they've gone way, wayyyy lower than that. It's like the cops arresting a ten year for operation a lemonade stand without a license FFS (and that actually happened in my home town!).

zapzupnz 8y ago
I mean, playing devil's advocate, you've got Nintendo protecting a product that they still sell and distribute (3DS Virtual Console, Wii U Virtual Console, Nintendo Switch Online NES, NES Mini, and various other ports) — and this port is literally just the exact same game: same graphics, music, levels, mechanics. Even if the makers of this clone aren't making a profit from it, the free distribution undermines Nintendo's continued ability to sell a game that people, evidently, still wish to purchase. It isn't as though the developers of the clone couldn't have changed the graphics, music, and level design to make a brand new game for the C64. I mean, that's just devil's advocate. To me, Nintendo still makes the most delightful, charming, and enduring games in the industry. Stopping being their customer over one business practice with which you mightn't agree seems like missing the forest for the trees.
- craftinator 8y ago
  I understand your advocacy, but their art loses it's charm when I think of the nastiness that their lawyers are wreaking. It's not like they are in a survival or scarcity environment. They are a large, multinational, multibillion dollar company. And they are loosing their million dollar lawyers on some guy for possibly damaging an incredibly small portion of their income. It's just so dirty; the more I think about it, the less happy I am playing their games. So I'd say the forest is already tarnished and dying in my eyes, unfortunately.
  - zapzupnz 8y ago
    > on some guy for possibly damaging an incredibly small portion of their income No, they're maintaining the precedent that piggy-backing off the fruits of their labour without consent is unacceptable. When they go easy on one thing, that gives carte blanche to the next. It's not dirty, it's business. > but their art loses it's charm when I think of the nastiness that their lawyers are wreaking > the more I think about it, the less happy I am playing their games The issue is with the copyright game, not the players who see no alternative but to play it. They have shareholders' investments to protect and must be seen to take action. All I can say is that Nintendo's lawyers have been doing things like this since the NES, and if Nintendo's art wasn't tarnished in your eyes back then, then this really does sound like a knee-jerk reaction.

agumonkey 8y ago

Why not embrace the idea and hire them as a one shot contract for a special port (with some tweaks from Nintendo designers ?). They used to be very collaborative in the NES/SNES days .. (based on SimCity port).

warent 8y ago

On the one hand, I do agree that this is absolutely insane and an indicator that DMCA needs serious reformation. But at the risk of causing outrage, let me play devil's advocate. To me, this is like spending years building a small model version of a Saturn V rocket to painstaking detail and then not being able to distribute it publicly. You just spent years on a hobby with little extrinsic value. What could you expect from spending so much time and energy on porting a video game created by a company that isn't owned by you onto a platform that isn't owned by you?