4 ms·

Laws don't cover romhacks and mods. Emulation (but only the emulator part - the dumping your games to a ROM process isn't) is covered but otherwise this is not

Laws don't cover romhacks and mods. Emulation (but only the emulator part - the dumping your games to a ROM process isn't) is covered but otherwise this is not the case by any stretch of the imagination. What's legal (in the US - in Europe, almost everything that doesn't directly enable piracy, so pretty much stopping short of allowing flashcards is legal thanks to a decision made in 2011) is building an emulator and making a cheating device for a game console. Otherwise there's no precedent for this (and game companies are reluctant to set one considering the previous times they tried to get one, it blew up in their faces) and the laws do lean in favor of the game publishers. Modern console modding involves both reverse engineering (something with only an interoperability exemption in the DMCA under fairly heavy conditions surrounding scope and not publishing your findings) and bypassing Technical Protection Measures (the laws term for any form of DRM, regardless of effectiveness - your DRM doesn't need to be good to be protected, it just needs to exist and you need a good legal team - this is how Spotify's security works btw), which is almost entirely illegal in the US unless you're either a registered library (which is pretty much the only preservation entity acknowledged by US copyright law) or need to do it to enable interoperability (under the same conditions as the reverse engineering restrictions, so no sharing your findings). Post-scriptum: I am not a lawyer, least of all a US one, speak to your actual lawyer for legal advice.

realusername 4y ago
Romhacks and mods are shared with patches, not with the original games. Game companies have also not tried to sue those websites as you pointed out, because it's guaranteed that they would lose, the website doesn't host any of their content. For breaking the protections in place indeed it's a bit different since it depends of your area, in the EU there's some interoperability exceptions which will cover breaking any DRM. You might not need to break any of those protections for an old system though anyways, you can perfectly dump a SNES cartrige and there's no DRM preventing you to do that, you only need breaking DRM to run it on the actual console.
- noirscape 4y ago
  That might protect their direct distribution mechanism, but it doesn't change the far bigger bugbear, which is Intellectual Property. Almost every mod or ROM hack makes use of the original IP its applied to, in order to market itself. A Kaizo Mario romhack for example will kinda inherently use the Mario IP to get people interested. IP that is owned by, in this case, Nintendo. Game companies haven't sued mostly because whenever it happens in a legal gray area (which is where romhacks and mods are - and a legal gray area is illegal if you don't want to retain a lawyer), they ended up getting blasted by their competitors (who often already do the same thing) in court. It's worth looking into the game industry's legal cases (or hell, look at the Sony complaints about the Microsoft takeover of ActiBliz) - the industry is more than glad to try and legally kneecap a competitor if they can get it through on a precedent. Almost funny really. SEGA did the same thing back in the 90s. I wasn't talking about SNES romhacks either (I said modern). Pretty much any system from the turn of the millennium onwards (which is the majority of systems nowadays) uses something comparable to a TPM, which means breaking them is needed and therefore, it's illegal.
  - realusername 4y ago
    > That might protect their direct distribution mechanism, but it doesn't change the far bigger bugbear, which is Intellectual Property. Almost every mod or ROM hack makes use of the original IP its applied to, in order to market itself. A Kaizo Mario romhack for example will kinda inherently use the Mario IP to get people interested. IP that is owned by, in this case, Nintendo. That's not how any of that works though, otherwise you couldn't even write an article about Nintendo themselves without their approval. Romhacks do not distribute any of the original content but are distributed with patches anyways. > Game companies haven't sued mostly because whenever it happens in a legal gray area (which is where romhacks and mods are - and a legal gray area is illegal if you don't want to retain a lawyer), they ended up getting blasted by their competitors (who often already do the same thing) in court. They don't sue because they know they will lose basically and losing would create a precedent. > I wasn't talking about SNES romhacks either. Pretty much any system from the turn of the millennium onwards (which is the majority of systems nowadays) uses something comparable to a TPM, which means breaking them is needed and therefore, it's illegal. Depends where, in the US for sure, in the EU you have interoperability exceptions which means breaking up any kind of DRM preventing interoperability (so pretty much all of them by definition) is legal. You don't need to break any protections to dump most the old system games anyways either so that doesn't apply for old games even in the US.
minimaul 4y ago
For extra fun: in the UK, "format shifting" - eg ripping CDs etc - is not legal. This means you can't rip an audio CD, DVD, or bluray, even if you don't have to bypass DRM to do it. I'd expect this translates to even dumping your own ROMs/ISOs from cartridges or discs you own, too. A huge chunk of the population ignores this, but it's another fun thing for Nintendo et al to hit you with, if they so desire.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  There is a difference though. In the US, something has to explicitly be made legal to be permitted. There has to be a law saying you have the right to do something. In the UK, something has to be specifically forbidden by law, and even then it's very unlikely that such a law will ever be enforced unless you're really making a nuisance of yourself.
  - jerf 4y ago
    US uses Common Law as derived from the UK's Common Law. In theory in both countries something has to be specifically forbidden. In practice that's not something I'd bet my not-being-in-jail on in either country. Whatever foundation of "anything not forbidden is permitted" has been crusted up with so many layers of governmental power grab that whatever the theory may be, the practice is that if it is not explicitly permitted it is forbidden, and the only reason things not explicitly permitted are allowed is because they just don't happen to make a fuss about it today.
  - Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
    > In the US, something has to explicitly be made legal to be permitted. There has to be a law saying you have the right to do something. Well that's just flat-out incorrect.
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      It's fairly correct regarding copyright, where the default is essentially that the creator owns the material and then every fair use is carved out as an exception to that default assumption. This makes fair use an affirmative defense, which is default risky because the process starts with somebody accusing you of wrongdoing (potentially criminal wrongdoing).
kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
> Laws don't cover romhacks and mods. Yes they do. They're derivative works. All Berne convention signatories recognize this.
gs17 4y ago
Micro Star v. Formgen covers romhacks and mods, although I don't know if it would be decided the same today.

realusername 4y ago

Romhacks and mods are shared with patches, not with the original games. Game companies have also not tried to sue those websites as you pointed out, because it's guaranteed that they would lose, the website doesn't host any of their content. For breaking the protections in place indeed it's a bit different since it depends of your area, in the EU there's some interoperability exceptions which will cover breaking any DRM. You might not need to break any of those protections for an old system though anyways, you can perfectly dump a SNES cartrige and there's no DRM preventing you to do that, you only need breaking DRM to run it on the actual console.

noirscape 4y ago
That might protect their direct distribution mechanism, but it doesn't change the far bigger bugbear, which is Intellectual Property. Almost every mod or ROM hack makes use of the original IP its applied to, in order to market itself. A Kaizo Mario romhack for example will kinda inherently use the Mario IP to get people interested. IP that is owned by, in this case, Nintendo. Game companies haven't sued mostly because whenever it happens in a legal gray area (which is where romhacks and mods are - and a legal gray area is illegal if you don't want to retain a lawyer), they ended up getting blasted by their competitors (who often already do the same thing) in court. It's worth looking into the game industry's legal cases (or hell, look at the Sony complaints about the Microsoft takeover of ActiBliz) - the industry is more than glad to try and legally kneecap a competitor if they can get it through on a precedent. Almost funny really. SEGA did the same thing back in the 90s. I wasn't talking about SNES romhacks either (I said modern). Pretty much any system from the turn of the millennium onwards (which is the majority of systems nowadays) uses something comparable to a TPM, which means breaking them is needed and therefore, it's illegal.
- realusername 4y ago
  > That might protect their direct distribution mechanism, but it doesn't change the far bigger bugbear, which is Intellectual Property. Almost every mod or ROM hack makes use of the original IP its applied to, in order to market itself. A Kaizo Mario romhack for example will kinda inherently use the Mario IP to get people interested. IP that is owned by, in this case, Nintendo. That's not how any of that works though, otherwise you couldn't even write an article about Nintendo themselves without their approval. Romhacks do not distribute any of the original content but are distributed with patches anyways. > Game companies haven't sued mostly because whenever it happens in a legal gray area (which is where romhacks and mods are - and a legal gray area is illegal if you don't want to retain a lawyer), they ended up getting blasted by their competitors (who often already do the same thing) in court. They don't sue because they know they will lose basically and losing would create a precedent. > I wasn't talking about SNES romhacks either. Pretty much any system from the turn of the millennium onwards (which is the majority of systems nowadays) uses something comparable to a TPM, which means breaking them is needed and therefore, it's illegal. Depends where, in the US for sure, in the EU you have interoperability exceptions which means breaking up any kind of DRM preventing interoperability (so pretty much all of them by definition) is legal. You don't need to break any protections to dump most the old system games anyways either so that doesn't apply for old games even in the US.

minimaul 4y ago

For extra fun: in the UK, "format shifting" - eg ripping CDs etc - is not legal. This means you can't rip an audio CD, DVD, or bluray, even if you don't have to bypass DRM to do it. I'd expect this translates to even dumping your own ROMs/ISOs from cartridges or discs you own, too. A huge chunk of the population ignores this, but it's another fun thing for Nintendo et al to hit you with, if they so desire.

Gordonjcp 4y ago
There is a difference though. In the US, something has to explicitly be made legal to be permitted. There has to be a law saying you have the right to do something. In the UK, something has to be specifically forbidden by law, and even then it's very unlikely that such a law will ever be enforced unless you're really making a nuisance of yourself.
- jerf 4y ago
  US uses Common Law as derived from the UK's Common Law. In theory in both countries something has to be specifically forbidden. In practice that's not something I'd bet my not-being-in-jail on in either country. Whatever foundation of "anything not forbidden is permitted" has been crusted up with so many layers of governmental power grab that whatever the theory may be, the practice is that if it is not explicitly permitted it is forbidden, and the only reason things not explicitly permitted are allowed is because they just don't happen to make a fuss about it today.
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  > In the US, something has to explicitly be made legal to be permitted. There has to be a law saying you have the right to do something. Well that's just flat-out incorrect.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    It's fairly correct regarding copyright, where the default is essentially that the creator owns the material and then every fair use is carved out as an exception to that default assumption. This makes fair use an affirmative defense, which is default risky because the process starts with somebody accusing you of wrongdoing (potentially criminal wrongdoing).

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago

> Laws don't cover romhacks and mods. Yes they do. They're derivative works. All Berne convention signatories recognize this.

gs17 4y ago

Micro Star v. Formgen covers romhacks and mods, although I don't know if it would be decided the same today.