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Thanks, yeah, I was thinking along those lines: of course Mario 3D models, textures, audio, etc, are Nintendo’s copyright, but what about the decompiled code it
by tambourine_man 5y ago
Thanks, yeah, I was thinking along those lines: of course Mario 3D models, textures, audio, etc, are Nintendo’s copyright, but what about the decompiled code itself?
That seems a much harder line to draw
- derefr 5y agoIIRC there have been court rulings that using someone else's data but in your own structure (e.g. someone else's geo-referenced place named but structured into your own map; or someone else's database of phone numbers but structured into your own phonebook) is perfectly legal, and not a copyright violation. The decompilation process didn't result in C source code that exactly matches the C source code that Nintendo wrote. (For one thing, the identifier names are different. Probably they use different-but-equivalent control structures in places. Intermediate variables might be introduced that didn't exist in the original.) And as such, that code isn't something Nintendo owns. This is why the Oracle vs. Google Java lawsuit had to be about header files that were copied verbatim — because Oracle had no grounds to stand on for suing for infringement for the reverse-engineered-and-rewritten implementation code. (Note that Nintendo could in theory have patented some of the high-level process stuff going on in their code; but that's rare and unlikely enough in litigious America, let alone in Japan.)
- charcircuit 5y agoThe decompiled code is a derivative work of the ROM which is a derivative work of the original code.
- tambourine_man 5y agoMeaning, illegal from your point of view?